Opinion: A congressman just admitted the truth. Will Democrats listen?

If you need an example of why Democrats just faced a resounding election defeat, look at what happened recently to Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton. He’s a Democrat.  
After former President Donald Trump’s reelection victory, Moulton gave several interviews surmising about the Democrats’ losses. 
He told a local NPR station that his party was “out of touch” with the views of most Americans. 
In an interview with The New York Times, he got more specific about where the left’s ideology is out of step with much of the country. “I have two little girls,” Moulton said. “I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.” 
Indeed. 
It didn’t take long for the backlash to hit, with some in mainstream media labeling his comments “controversial.” One of Moulton’s top aides reportedly resigned. And the head of the political science department at Tufts University called Moulton’s office and said he would no longer send interns to work for the congressman. 
While progressives may want to smear Moulton as a hate-monger, his comments on transgender athletes in girls and women’s sports align with the vast majority of the country. 
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The congressman smartly hasn’t backed down in the face of this attempted cancellation, and his fellow Democrats would be wise to listen to his commonsense approach. 
“If the radical left continues to define the Democratic Party, then we’re just going to keep continuing to lose,” Moulton told MSNBC this week.
Moulton said on CNN his party is often too focused on how it can cancel people “rather than actually having debates about issues that Americans care about.”
It’s one of the reasons so many voters turned away from Democrats this election. They were sick of being called “racist,” “transphobic” or “sexist” simply for having views that differed from the far left. 
Issues related to transgender young people demand debate, not name-calling that shuts down conversation. 
Trump made this and other gender issues a big part of his campaign, and it paid off for him.
The country is nearly evenly divided between states that are trying to limit medical “gender-affirming care” for transgender children and those that encourage a broad range of treatments and procedures. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a related case this term.
Progressives like to say that the science is on their side. Yet, recent studies highlight that there is still a lot unknown about the long-term consequences of gender hormones and surgeries in young people. That research also shows that caution is warranted. 
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In October, The New York Times revealed that Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a doctor and proponent of gender treatment for adolescents, has purposely avoided releasing results of a study on puberty blockers. 
The study, which began in 2015, tracked the effects of puberty blockers (drugs that prevent the natural changes that occur during puberty) in 95 children over the course of two years. 
Olson-Kennedy didn’t get the results she had expected. The puberty blockers did not lead to mental health improvements, according to her research. 
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You’d think that would be valuable information to have, especially because nearly $10 million in federal taxpayer dollars have fueled the broader research. 
Olson-Kennedy’s excuse? She didn’t want her work to be “weaponized” by opponents. 
“It is a scandal of epic proportions, and a perfect example of why so many Americans have lost trust in our public health institutions,” Kelsey Bolar, senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum, told me. 
Bolar has worked closely with young people who regret the transgender treatments they received and has helped share their stories, including what happened to Cristina Hineman, who is suing Planned Parenthood for giving her testosterone at 18. 
Clearly, the science isn’t settled. 
On this and other important issues facing the country, Democrats should heed Congressman Moulton’s advice: “We’ve got to have these debates … and we start by listening to Americans.”
Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. Contact her at [email protected] or on X, formerly Twitter: @Ingrid_Jacques