Regular people love getting free money from the government regardless of its large scale economic consequences, but "we gotta play to the prejudices of the electorate even if it's politically or personally distasteful" pitch never involves vulgar economic populism bc Third Way hates that.
Yeah, it's almost certainly true that the public does not respond well to gender affirming care provided to prisoners & felons, because the public on some level just thinks those people should die. But the public also loves free money, deflation & low prices, & loathes bailing out banks AND YET.
We do not wholly concede on the topic of vulgar economic populism, bc we understand that the social and economic repercussions of such policy would be disastrous. Even if one discounts morality, the same must be true on issues of social justice & civil rights.
Third Way's actual pitch is basically "we promise that you can avoid Real Damage if you just make these rhetorical sacrifices & disassociate yourself from Those People." I don't think that is at all correct.
In any case though, if you do make those big rhetorical sacrifices, the GOP will just keep saying "The Democrats are the party of [insert slur here]," and they will put you on the spot until you directly renounce the marginalized, not merely the "annoying" rhetoric that bugs the consultant class.
A lot of the public also thinks things like gender affirming care for prisoners is the reason their quality of life sucks which is exactly what both parties want so rich folks don’t have to pay their share.
I actually don't think that's an especially significant portion of the popular distaste so much as them just being vindictive and thinking that felons aren't people deserving of rights.
I agree 100% on the vindictiveness but I also think for some (not all) people those views can be changed when the government and fundamentals aren’t constantly using certain populations as the cause for everything wrong in our country.