(LifeSiteNews) — Ezra Klein, a prominent progressive figure at the New York Times as well as the author of a bestselling book on political polarization, has found himself at the receiving end of a vicious barrage of criticism from his own side. His crime? Klein complimented Charlie Kirk and went so far as to say that American liberals should grieve his death with their conservative compatriots. As Klein wrote in his column:

You can dislike much of what Kirk believed and the following statement is still true: Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way. He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion. When the left thought its hold on the hearts and minds of college students was nearly absolute, Kirk showed up again and again to break it. Slowly, then all at once, he did. College-age voters shifted sharply to the right in the 2024 election.

The backlash came, in part, from the African American writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, who condemned Klein’s olive branch. In response, Klein invited Coates onto his podcast to discuss the issue. Coates doubled down by calling Kirk a “hatemonger” and Klein, to his credit, insisted that grieving with those who were devastated by Kirk’s loss was important.

Klein went on to emphasize that the American Left has been on a crippling losing streak, and that progressives are going to have to find a way to reach voters who have abandoned the Democratic Party in droves over the past decade. The lengthy conversation was a fascinating microcosm of the conundrum that the Left currently finds itself in: The very premises they have accepted as fact are abhorrent to so many Americans that they cannot find an electoral path forward.

Indeed, Klein and Coates are good representatives of the two primary warring factions on the Left: One side (Klein) wants to figure out how to win; the other side, represented by Coates, insists on demanding ideological purity above all, and damning all who disagree as bigots. That discussion—and paradox—was crystallized in a single exchange on transgenderism, which promptly went viral on social media:

Ezra Klein calls the belief that women have a right to single-sex sports & spaces “fundamentally and morally wrong.”

He admits most Americans disagree, yet lacks the theory of mind to imagine that millions might support single-sex spaces for reasons other than hatred or… pic.twitter.com/hohXX2cjXD

— WomenAreReal (@WomenAreReals) September 29, 2025

“The majority of the country believes things about trans people, about what policy should be towards trans people, about what language is acceptable to trans people, that we would see as fundamentally and morally wrong,” Klein said. “And what, politically, not in a column or something, but politically, should our relationship with those people be? Do we win them over? Do we compromise with them? This feels like a very salient question.”

“The Republican Party is going to make sure that this is a relentlessly salient question,” he continued. “So where do we go on that?” Coates responded by insisting that the Democrats have done nothing wrong; that sometimes, this is just how history unfolds. That sometimes, hate wins.

Klein did not explain why he believes that it is fundamentally immoral for women to want their own private spaces, and he clearly did not expect or intend this one-minute clip of a lengthy conversation to be the bit that went viral. But the responses, if he is genuinely interested in understanding why the Democratic Party—and people like himself—are so abhorrent to so many ordinary people, are instructive.

It is not just that many people agree with him. It is that they—and, it bears mentioning, every preceding generation—believe that his views are “fundamentally and morally wrong.”

“To Ezra Klein and HR ‘head girls’ and Emma Watson and all the cowardly editors and journalists who know that men can’t be women, you’re gonna lose,” wrote women’s rights activist Jennifer Sey.

You attacked anyone who said the obvious — MEN CANNOT BECOME WOMEN — and said that we were morally deficient and evil and Nazis and bigots. But as the tide turns and it is turning, you’ll pretend you were always on the side of sanity. But we’ll know. Because you said it loudly, and you dragged your friends, and you unleashed the mob on good and decent people, all to curry favor with the violent bullies who you pretended were on ‘the right side of history.’ We’ll know.

Meghan Murphy concurred: “Do you honestly not understand, Ezra Klein, that none of this is about ‘trans people’—it’s about men in women’s spaces like bathrooms, changerooms, female prisons, women’s shelters, and of course it’s also about males competing as ‘female’ in sport… are you really not getting this or are just being disingenuous?”

So did Sal Grover: “Imagine having a conversation about an issue that impacts 50% of the population and yet never mentioning them, not even a vague anecdote. All it proves is they haven’t researched the issue at all or listened to a single woman.”

There were many more comments like that—thousands of them. I hope that Ezra Klein reads them, and that they help him to understand something: Those who disagree with him are not hatemongers, bigots, transphobes, or any other epithet that he and Coates and the progressive squad might lob at them. They are simply very, very angry. They are angry that they were punished professionally, legally, and socially for stating that men could not become women. They are angry that progressives insisted that they were contributing to a “trans genocide” for affirming age-old truths.

And they are angry that they are being told, by men like him, that they are fundamentally immoral for believing what every previous generation has believed about biological sex.

Coates is right about one thing: There cannot be a compromise on fundamental reality. Progressives hold that there are (at least) 72 genders. What are we supposed to do? Split the difference and say that there are 36, and we’ll work our way up from there? Allow some trans-identifying men into some women’s changerooms? Lock up some trans-identifying men in women’s prisons with vulnerable populations?

We can’t. Because that would be fundamentally and morally wrong.