If you make it past the first sentence, you’ll discover Erin is making a broader point, and using Iowa merely as al lens to focus it

Before I make my case, I want to be clear about what I am asking, because the people who respond to this piece will not be. I am not asking any of my readers to vote Republican. I am not asking anyone to stay home and sit the election out. I am not asking my readers to abandon the Democratic Party, which I want to win in a wave election this year. And I am not asking anyone to abstain from every Democratic politician who has ever taken a single poor or uneducated stance toward transgender people. What I am asking is that transgender people, and the people who care about us, find the line they would draw on any other fundamental human rights issue, and draw it here: do not give the worst anti-transgender Democrats your vote. Leave that line blank, vote for every other candidate, and make sure the story of 2026 is not that the Democratic Party has to accept anti-transgender policy in order to win.