In the final month of the presidential campaign, the Trump team centered on the vice president’s past support for taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgeries for federal prisoners and immigration detention.

One ad ended with the sentence: “Kamala is for them. President Trump is for you.”

The Trump campaign spent more than $21 million on transgender-themed ads in the first half of October, according to data compiled by AdImpact; That’s about a third of their entire ad spend and nearly twice as much as they spend on spots about immigration and inflation.

This is the kind of investment a campaign will make if there is hard data showing that an ad mobilizes public opinion.

After Trump’s convincing victory, moderate Congressman Seth Moulton of Massachusetts said his party should rethink its approach to cultural issues.

“Democrats spend too much time trying not to offend anyone, instead of being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face.” Moulton told the New York Times., external “I have two little girls, I don’t want them to get run over on the playing field by a male or former male athlete, but as a Democrat I shouldn’t be afraid to say that.”

Progressive Democrats, meanwhile, reject that characterization and argue that defending minority rights has always been one of the party’s core values. Congressman John Moran wrote about X in response, external: “If you want to use an election loss as an opportunity to attack our most vulnerable, you should find another job.”

Political strategist Mike Madrid offers a grim assessment of where the Democratic coalition stands today.

“The Democratic Party was based on what was essentially an unholy alliance between working-class people of color and wealthier white progressives driven and animated by cultural issues,” Madrid said. “The only thing holding this coalition together was anti-Republicanism.”

He said once this glue dissolved, the party was poised for defeat.