Among swing voters who broke for Trump, according to a post-election survey by Democratic polling firm Blueprint, the most frequent criticism of Vice President Kamala Harris was that she focused excessively on "cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class.”

Among all swing voters in that Blueprint poll, the attack ad against Harris, which aired more than 15,000 times, successfully turned transgender surgeries for prisoners into a bigger issue for voters than inflation or immigration.

After the success of Trump’s advertising, there is no longer any argument about the Republicans' political wisdom in highlighting transgender rights to label Democrats as weak on traditional family values. What is puzzling about the success of the strategy is that there are few transgender people.

There are even fewer transgender athletes competing with women. And there are few tax dollars spent on surgeries to help them change their bodies.

Still, one-third of the Trump campaign’s advertising budget in October was devoted to “gender-changing surgeries” for the small number of transgendered, incarcerated, undocumented immigrants.

The ads, ending with the line, “Kamala is for they-them; President Trump is for you,” ran repeatedly, especially during football games.

The advertising triggering American anxiety over transgender people was so successful that it distracted from the reality that there is no past policy difference on the issue between the parties.

© The Hill