The “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you” ad was identified as the key winning campaign ad. Not so much because most Americans are opposed to transgender issues (though they are now) but because it highlighted an out-of-touch party obsessed with an issue of interest to 0.0001% of the country while most Americans wanted the party to address the economic pain they were feeling.

The New York Times has a poll highlighting much the same thing.

Many Americans say they do not believe the Democratic Party is focused on the economic issues that matter most to them and is instead placing too much emphasis on social issues that they consider less urgent.

Asked to identify the Democratic Party’s most important priorities, Americans most often listed abortion, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and climate change, according to a poll from The New York Times and Ipsos conducted from Jan. 2 to 10.

The issues that people cited as most important to them personally were the economy and inflation, health care and immigration, the poll found. The kinds of social causes that progressive activists have championed in recent years ranked much lower….

On lesbian, gay and transgender rights, people perceive the Democratic Party’s priorities as particularly misaligned with their own. Just 4 percent of Americans listed L.G.B.T.Q. issues as very important to them personally. But 31 percent said they were a Democratic Party priority.

The same percentage of people cited abortion as a top issue for the party, while 13 percent identified it as one of the top three concerns to them personally.

Even self-identified Democrats were only somewhat more likely than other Americans to mention abortion and L.G.B.T.Q. issues as important to them personally

The essence of a winning strategy is making the enemy fight on the turf most damaging to them.

Getting rid of DEI is a good thing, but making that into the focus of the clashes between Republicans and Democrats becomes vital for defining the Dem opposition to Trump and the GOP as ‘wokeness’.

Having Democrat pols and media swarm to defend transgender issues and illegal aliens yet again makes them seem even more out of touch to independents and even members of their own party.

The Democrats want to talk about economics, they want to talk about the impact of tariffs, but their own activist wing dooms them to talking about men in dresses.

The flip side of this equation though is that unless the economy improves and people’s lives get better, that same side of the stick will whack once more, as it did in 2020, and Democrats will take the House in 2026.

The Trump administration will need to balance anti-wokeness with delivering real economic gains or much of this will be for nothing.