octopus_ink

Clearly it would, but IMO that's not a reason not to support the idea. Look what happened to Target. Better yet, look what happened to Costco at the same time.

That's a depressingly low number.

We have to fight the $$$! That’s my point.

I agree with this.

But if we do it to the exclusion of other concerns, we increase the vulnerability of these marginalized groups for an indeterminate period of time.

Conservatives fight the culture war because they have swallowed propaganda about these groups and now (still, I'd argue) hate them. Members of those groups and their allies fight the culture war because the writing is on the wall for what is going to happen to people in those groups if we don't.

Yes, those things are true. And he's the exception.

First I want to say that I was more terse in parts of my reply than you deserved, I apologize.

Let me make my main point slightly differently.

For people who are not members of those groups,these can be used by politicians as wedge issues.

For many people who are members of those groups, the current administration presents an immediate existential threat.

So making the decision to not focus on those issues in an attempt to curry favor with people who have already proven difficult to peel off when Kamala also tried to tack right for their votes (forgive my use of another meme below) seems careless with other peoples' lives, to me.

And I still say this kind of thinking just further incentivizes D to move further right. "Look, we went right and won!" It's now very, very clear that winning votes is all that matters to many incumbent Democrats.

LGBT, woke, and immigrant issues are amplified by those in power to get more votes on the right

OK agreed!

and distract from the most important issues: oligarchy and wealthy elites who are exploiting the poor and working class.

I agree with you that they use them to distract from those issues, but I disagree with how you are ranking them. I will attempt to explain that at the end.*

This, done correctly, might even get some support from outside the left (remember luigi?, glimpses of far left and far right joining together).

I agree here too, but that support will be limited, insincere, a facade, a brittle alliance, because the moment they have to support policies that will help people not like them, or that require them to accept policies based on someone else's deeper understanding of a topic than their own (for one example a global pandemic and the precautions an uncertain world needed to take until treatments and vaccines could be developed), they will go running back to maga, or at least to whatever is remaining of R at that point in time.

This doesn’t mean throw minorities under the bus

I believe you think it doesn't. I think you can't possibly be considering how such an approach will allow for harm to those groups until your plan bears fruit. (which it may not ever do)

It means switching priorities, to get power.

During the period of time between the switching and the power, it means willfully risking the lives of other people who are members of groups that (apologies for my assumption if I'm wrong) it doesn't sound like you consider yourself a member of. The willfully is important. There's no avoiding that we all make decisions that will have external impacts we haven't considered, but there's no way around that this is a choice to increase the vulnerability of those groups for an uncertain period of time.

For the next bit, I'm going to copy paste a bit from a prior reply also, with some edits.

and distract from the most important issues: oligarchy and wealthy elites who are exploiting the poor and working class.

I said I'd more thoroughly explain my disagreement with you on this point.

I am NOT queer, nor a minority. But if I were a member of one of those groups, I’d probably be pretty upset that you are telling me I should accept that I'm going to lose my gender affirming care or the protections of the civil rights act with nary an expectation of backing from allies, because for an indeterminate amount of time they have decided they need to let me and others like me suffer for a political gambit that may or may not pan out.

EDIT: So it's a distraction to the RIGHT who eat up the fake bullshit about these groups. But to the people who are in those groups it's a legitimate existential threat. (Forgot to tie it all together in the first draft)

IMO that sort of thinking brought us Hillary (vs Bernie) and Biden (vs Bernie) and contributes to the rightward walk of the Democrats exemplified by the latter half or so of Kamala's campaign and by memes such as this:

You are absolutely correct! Doh!

Then you aren't expressing yourself very well.

Shut the fuck up about woke and LGBT stuff.

I knew you people would disagree but I don’t care.

It’s working because of people like you

I’m saying the LGBT stuff doesn’t matter nearly as much as you think it does.

Your way isn’t working, because you don’t understand that it’s not actually your way

That might have to be the only priority for a moment til we have a functioning government that has the power to actually change all our lives for the better.

That got us Hillary instead of Bernie, then Biden instead of Bernie. And this thinking exactly perpetuates the ratchet effect. We always have to win just a little harder, then we can change what matters. THAT is what got us here.

I am NOT queer, nor a minority. I'm among the very last group of people that will be sent to the camps. But my values don't require me to be personally affected to stand firm by my fellow humans.

Edited to add:

But if I were a member of one of those groups, I'd probably be pretty upset that you are telling me I should treat my very existence as a "wedge issue" to be avoided. I won't go further for fear of putting words in someone's mouth.

There's a poem about this very attitude.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came

And you know what? You can plainly see it happening.

All during the election it was LGBTQ. But that's kinda back seat (for now) -

Then it was undocumented immigrants that were criminals.

It took no time at all before we heard about non-criminal undocumented immigrants being swept up. And then Native Americans.

Now it's clearly people who have made honest mistakes.

And Trump now says he wants to send protesters to El Salvador too.

He's going to come for the queer folks.

He's going to come for you if you aren't a cis white male or tradwife to one. It's just a matter of time.

We stand together or not at all.

“We’ll win by converting Republicans… but as leftists.”

Yep.

Kamala tried that, but as a centrist - all that talk about her glock, all that lack of talk about climate change or palestine (or LGBTQ issues), all that time being chummy with Cheneys.