You can watch this episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon above or by following this show on YouTube or Substack. You can read a transcript here.
Democratic candidates in swing states are distancing themselves from transgender rights. That approach in some ways resembles how the party in the past broke with civil rights causes and Black leaders to court white voters. Paul Frymer, a political science professor at Princeton University, wrote a book called Uneasy Alliances: Race and Party Competition in America that argues that African Americans are a “captured minority.” They are so supportive of the Democratic Party that both parties ignore their interests, he says. In the latest edition of Right Now, Frymer discusses the plight of African Americans, transgender Americans, and other voting blocs whose policy goals are strongly opposed by the Republican Party. He also discusses how the Democrats have positioned themselves on racial issues over the last few decades. The “post-racial” approach of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama isn’t in vogue among Democrats, but nor is the more focused attention that the party gave racial issues in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests.
