In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, The New York Times reported on a clash of views¹ between two Democratic members of Congress. “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face,” said Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts. “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

Representative Pramila Jayapal, of Washington, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, took a different view. Describing herself as “the proud mom of a daughter who happens to be trans,” she said: “We need to create space for people’s fears and let them get to know people […] and we need to counter the idea that my daughter is a threat to anyone else’s children.”

My purpose in citing this exchange is not to ask who is right, but to urge that in the context of Trump’s triumph over Vice President Kamala Harris, we ask two other questions. Did Harris’s stance on the transgender issue contribute to her loss? And among the many important issues on which US policy would have differed under Harris from what is likely under Trump, where does the transgender issue rank?

The Trump campaign repeatedly hammered Harris² on the issue. One ad³ that ran more than 17,375 times in the last three weeks of October, at a cost of more than $10 million, refers to a convicted murderer sentenced to life imprisonment in California and told viewers: “Kamala Harris pushed to use tax dollars to pay for his sex change…. Kamala’s agenda is they/them, not you.” Another ad, aired 13,445 times, used similar language, but also accused Harris of “letting biological men compete against our girls in their sport.” According to an analysis⁴ conducted by Future Forward, a leading pro-Harris political action committee, watching that ad moved 2.7% of viewers in favour of Trump (who won the popular vote⁵ by 2%).

Harris never responded to these attacks. Trump’s campaign directors presumably believe that their expenditure on more than 30,000 airings of these ads was money well spent. They may be right.

So, let’s turn to the second question: among all the issues affected by Trump’s victory, where does the transgender issue rank? Suppose that we pose this question from the standpoint most favourable to advocates of transgender rights. Assume that transgender people are not a threat to anyone else, whether in public bathrooms, prisons, or sports. Also assume that the belief that they are is a mere prejudice that harms trans people, prevents them from participating in sporting activities, makes them more vulnerable to mental illness than they otherwise would be, and, most tragically of all, drives some to suicide.

Even on these assumptions, nothing that Trump is likely to do on the transgender issue can compare in importance with other actions he is likely to take. If the US reneges on its commitments under the Paris climate agreement, as Trump has said it will under his leadership, why would countries like China, with much lower greenhouse-gas emissions, feel any need to do their share? But without the US and China taking strong actions, global warming will exceed the two degree Celsius limit set by the Paris accord, with consequences far more catastrophic than those we have already seen in recent years.

Likewise, if Trump stops or even reduces US support for Ukraine, that democratic country of nearly 40 million people is likely to fall to Russian dictatorship, and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression may not stop there. Then there is the threat that Trump poses to democracy in America, the damage he is likely to do to healthcare access and welfare provisions for people in need, and of course his sweeping plans to deport millions of undocumented aliens.

Progressives face an acute dilemma. Should they stand up for every cause that they believe to be right, irrespective of its importance compared to the other issues at stake, or are they justified in taking a more centrist position on some less significant questions on which they have been unable to win over an important section of the electorate? In my view, our focus should be on the issues that matter most to the world as a whole.

The Trump campaign, in a one-minute ad⁶ released in the final days of the campaign, targeted what it sensed was another Democrat weakness. The ad starts by saying that under the Biden-Harris administration, America “took a wrong turn”. One aspect of this is that those who “dared to speak the truth” were accused of “hate speech”.

Of course, what the Trump campaign considered to be “the truth” was often very far from that. But the accusation that the label of hate speech has been used to shut down open debate resonates with Moulton’s sense that, “as a Democrat”, he was barred from expressing any reservations about trans athletes.

If our fellow progressives are afraid to speak out on sensitive issues, how will we ever discover what people really think—or what the truth really is?

This article was first published on Project Syndicate.