... one of Trump’s top pollsters is on the record throwing cold water on the GOP-wide 2026 anti- Hasan piker electoral strategy which is still going strong at the NRSC [National Republican Senatorial Committee], etc.This follows a report that even the centrist Democratic group Third Way now believes that Democrats shouldn't adopt right-wing framing when talking about trans issues:
... this is a pollster who trump has leaned on for good news when others predict doom.
Anyway, it’s not just public polling showing the anti Piker strategy ... is a fucking dud.
Per our sources familiar with the data, different GOP orgs have private internal polls that scream at them about a) how basically no one knows who hasan piker is and those who do were largely voting Republican anyway and b) there is scant, if any, evidence that the sustained strategy has moved the needle in Republicans favor....
The intra party face palming over the gop and trump admin Hasan Piker obsession, where they seem to earnestly believe this was a “gift” to them in their campaigns this cycle, is merely one hilarious,, miserably online symptom of how deeply screwed the GOP and President trump likely are on Election Day.
For Third Way, the terms of engagement have changed, Lanae Erickson, the group’s senior vice president for social policy, education and politics acknowledged in a wide-ranging interview....A number of Democratic candidates have echoed right-wing anti-trans messaging:
“On this issue, the dynamic has really shifted,” she said. Republicans and the right have grown far more extreme, while advocates for trans people have moved to a “more pragmatic place.”
“The MAGA folks took from the 2024 election that this was a great issue for them, that it was one that united their base and made Democrats uncomfortable,” Erickson said. “And that was all true at that moment, but now they’re going way beyond any concerns the public had.”
Rep. Marcy Kaptur, an Ohio Democrat whose past record was generally supportive of LGBTQ people, referred to “transgender ideology” and keeping “boys out of girl’s sports” in an ad. The state’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Amy Acton, said in a statement that she opposed “boys playing in girls’ sports” and then her campaign set off several negative news cycles with its adversarial stance to queer people who were taken aback by her calling trans girls “boys.”Acton has a small but growing lead in the polls -- but in Michigan, the Democrats' Senate candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, is also leading, even though he's refused to attack trans people (and responded to a question from Fox's Jesse Watters about the essentially nonexistent practice of castrating trans girls in childhood by asking if Watters was circumcised).
I don't want Democrats to throw trans people under the bus, but the polling success of both Acton and El-Sayed suggests that this issue doesn't really matter to voters this year one way or another, as long as Democrats are keeping the focus on issues voters care about.
That's Lanae Erickson's recommendation:
Addressing trans issues directly while refocusing attention to Republicans’ policy failures – including a war with no clear goal, economic distress and rampant corruption – is the tactic widely promoted among strategists advising the Democrats....That's what's working for Democrats. It's certainly working for El-Sayed, whose message centers economic concerns and Medicare for All. He hasn't abandoned trans people, but he has put distance between himself and Hasan Piker, regularly chiding interviewers for being excessively interested in "a Twitch streamer from California."
“One person who’s done this extremely well is Jon Ossoff,” Erickson said of the senator from Georgia. “You talk about the corruption, about all the things that are wrong in our government and what is making people’s lives hard.
“And then he adds, ‘and it’s not transgender kids.’ And I think that has helped to really inoculate him against some of these attacks.”
Abdul El-Sayed: "Weijia, with all due respect, this is the third time you've asked about a Twitch streamer ... their whole game is to make us fight culture wars so that we don't pay attention to the fact the president has made $2.2 billion ... "
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) September 13, 2026 at 10:53 AM
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Kamala Harris didn't have a strong, compelling economic message in 2024, so culture-war attacks hurt her -- the "Kamala is for they/them" message probably wasn't what defeated her, but her inability to distinguish herself from President Biden on the economy left her vulnerable. Democrats are talking this year about the issues voters care about. That makes them much less vulnerable to the culture war -- even when they stand up to culture-war attacks. That's how you beat Republican culture warriors.
