They may only be four percent of our country -- but the LGBT community is getting 100 percent of the Left's attention. Over the weekend, 10 of the Democrats vying for President Trump's job tried to persuade Americans that the most pressing issue facing our country is the pursuit of taxpayer-funded gender surgery. If pandering were an Olympic sport, Joe Biden could have medaled. Instead, he settled -- like they all did -- for new records in extremism.
GLAAD CEO Sarah Ellis would have you believe that "LGBTQ issues have been... left out of the 2020 presidential primary conversation." That's interesting, since most Americans probably feel like it's all the Democrats ever talk about. From Biden calling the Equality Act his "number one priority" to Julian Castro saying even transgender "women" need abortion, sexual politics have dominated this political cycle in a way most people can't believe. Surely there are more pressing issues facing our nation than putting a Drag Queen Story Hour in every library -- but you wouldn't know it by the talking points of the Democratic field.
Most of Saturday's event was spent fighting for the most radical social space in U.S. history -- led by "moderate" Joe Biden, whose best argument for president is that he'll turn our prisons into a gender-neutral free-for-all. "In prison," he argued, "the determination should be that your sexual identity is defined by what you say it is [and] not what the prison says it is." That, ironically, was tame compared to his other kooky suggestions. The former vice president's platform for America also includes outlawing talk therapy, forcing religious hospitals to perform gender mutilations, and putting taxpayers on the hook for transgender plastic surgery.
The soundbites were almost impossible to believe. "We should outlaw, nationally, conversion therapy," Biden argued. "There should be a law against it, period." Followed by: "Obamacare... does cover [gender reassignment] surgery...Trump by executive order struck all of that out of the Affordable Care Act. I would reinstate it all. Every LGBT person... should be able to have full health care without limits." Then, as if that weren't enough, the former second-in-command went on to say that the government should punish hospitals who don't want to perform transgender surgery. "It is simply against the law when I'm president."
Of course, this grab bag of LGBT radicalism is all designed for one thing: winning the nomination. There's just one problem -- the same that one Hillary Clinton ran into three years ago: You can't win the White House with the same extremism that charms the core of today's Democratic party. For now, these promises may open up the Left's wallet, but they never pay off come Election Day.
And it's no wonder. Even sympathetic voters would agree that there are far bigger issues facing America than gender-neutral pronouns. With all of the tension on the world stage, with immigration reaching its boiling point, and people looking to Washington to keep the economic boom going, the front-runner of the Democratic party says putting men in girls' bathrooms is the most important thing of all? And yet, the DNC is so tone deaf that its candidates aren't participating in one -- but two -- LGBT forums this fall.
Interestingly, if you ask Americans what their biggest concerns are heading into next year's election, the LGBT agenda doesn't even make the list! In April, when Fox News ran the numbers, immigration (21 percent) and the economy (10 percent) were the only two that even had double-digit mentions. Gallup's team got the same response in the lead-up to the midterms. When they asked voters, Biden's number-one priority wasn't even on the map. Even climate change, which is usually dead last on Americans' minds, had more fans.
Brad Polumbo, one of the people who suffered through this three-hour spectacle, probably felt like a lot of viewers when he wrote, "I expected the debate would be full of left-wing virtue signaling and pandering. But I never quite expected this many Democratic candidates to say openly crazy things -- and be proud of it."
Welcome to 2020.
