In the final month of the presidential campaign, Trump’s team made the vice president’s past support for taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for federal prisoners and detained immigrants a central focus.

One ad ended with the phrase: “Kamala is for them. President Trump is for you.”

The Trump campaign spent more than $21 million on ads on transgender issues in the first half of October — about a third of their total ad spending and nearly double what they spent on ads on immigration and inflation, according to compiled data. by AdImpact.

It is the type of investment that a campaign makes if it has concrete data that demonstrates that an advertisement is moving public opinion.

After Trump’s convincing victory, Congressman Seth Moulton, a moderate from Massachusetts, said his party needed to rethink its approach to cultural issues.

“Democrats spend too much time trying not to offend anyone instead of being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face.” Moulton told the New York Times., external “I have two little girls, I don’t want a male athlete or former athlete running them over on the field, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

Progressive Democrats, meanwhile, reject that characterization and argue that defending minority rights has always been a core value of the party. Congressman John Moran wrote in X in response, external: “You should look for another job if you want to take advantage of an electoral defeat as an opportunity to attack the most vulnerable.”

Mike Madrid, the political strategist, makes a brutal assessment of where the Democratic coalition is today.

“The Democratic Party was built on what is truly an unholy alliance between working-class people of color and wealthier white progressives driven and animated by cultural issues,” Madrid said. “The only glue that held that coalition together was anti-republicanism.”

Once that glue came off, he said, the party was set for defeat.