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Seth Moulton Says Dems Proving His Point After Backlash to Trans Comments
Newsweek that the backlash he has faced following his comments about transgender athletes is indicative of how divided the Democratic Party is.Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat, has faced heat since the election for saying that Democrats are out of touch with the majority of the country's views on issues such as allowing transgender female students to compete in women's sports.In a New York Times article last week, Moulton said Democrats "spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face." Leaders from the Democratic Party have now said Moulton is "playing politics.""No one issue lost us this election, but there is exit polling that shows that cultural issues played an outsized role," Moulton told Newsweek. "We lost, in part, because we shame and belittle too many opinions held by too many voters and that needs to stop."Following Vice President Kamala Harris' loss in the 2024 election to President-elect Donald Trump, Moulton said his party is leaning too heavily on identity politics rather than embracing the issues everyday Americans care about.Moulton told MSNBC that he was "just speaking authentically as a dad" when he told The New York Times that he doesn't want his two daughters "getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete."Massachusetts Democratic Party chair Steve Kerrigan told The Boston Globe that Moulton's comments "do not represent the broad view of our party." On Tuesday, Governor Maura Healey told reporters that Moulton is just "playing politics" and that "it's important in this moment that we not pick on particularly vulnerable children."Though she did not mention Moulton by name, his fellow Massachusetts representative, Democrat Ayanna Pressley, posted to social media that she would stand with the LGBTQ+ community."I will always stand with trans people and the entire LGBTQ+ community," Pressley posted to X, formerly Twitter.