Can a man become a woman?

Prominent Democrats prefer not to say.

Axios reported this week on its recent survey of all the top contenders for the Democratic Party’s 2028 presidential nomination, focusing on questions regarding gender ideology and policy.

Among them: “Should transgender girls be able to participate in girls’ sports?” and “Do you believe transgender youths under age 18 should be able to be placed on puberty blockers and hormones?”

And, of course, the grandaddy of them all: Can a bird who wants to be a bee, or vice-versa, make it happen?

Almost every one of close to 20 would-be commanders-in-chief — including former Vice President Kamala Harris, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — passed up the chance to knock these softballs out of the park.

Indeed, the only three who attempted to respond to the inquiry were former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Rahm Emanuel, the ex-Chicago mayor and former White House chief of staff.

None of them chose to articulate a thoughtful response to a topic that continues to make headlines; they all simply referred Axios to previous statements.

And only Emanuel proved capable of furnishing a forthright “No” on the all-important question: Can a man become a woman?

The other two nodded to critics of overreach on the trans sports issue, while making their preeminent sympathies plain.

Shapiro: “Look, I think it’s a tough deal being born into the wrong body. And I don’t think these kids deserve to be persecuted and bullied by the president of the United States.”

This from the chief executive of a state that’s suing to ensure that children suffering from gender dysphoria can be subject to irreversible hormone treatments and sex-change surgeries.

Buttigieg: “I think the approach starts with compassion.”

“We should be empowering communities and organizations and schools to make the right decisions,” he proclaimed, eager as always to show off his ability to say so much and so little at the same time.

Sure, but can a man become a woman?

Some especially dishonest actors feign outrage at the idea that the answer even matters.

“‘Can a man become a woman’ is such a rage bait bulls–t question,” cried The Bulwark’s Tim Miller in one particularly notable tantrum. “It has no bearing on policy.”

His whinge echoed Dr. Nisha Verma, a Democratic witness who shamed herself in a Senate hearing last week by hemming and hawing when Sen. Josh Hawley asked her if, in Verma’s professional opinion, men can get pregnant.

“I’m not really sure what the goal of the question is,” the physician — who utterly refused to answer it — told the flabbergasted senator.

The fact that it sent Miller into a tailspin is a dispiriting verdict on his character, not on the question itself.

And the goal of asking the question, Dr. Verma, is to ascertain whether the respondent is compos mentis and in possession of a backbone composed of, if not steel, something stronger than straw.

A necessary but insufficient bit to figure out before handing out nuclear codes, no?

This gets to the heart of the Democrats’ transgender problem, famously and ably exploited by the Donald Trump campaign in a 2024 attack ad with the tagline, “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

That wasn’t transphobic demagoguery meant to divide Americans or capitalize on hatred.

To the contrary, most everyone on the sane side of the transgender debate feels for those afflicted by the mistaken idea that they were born in the “wrong” body.

Of course they deserve compassion.

And upon reaching adulthood, of course they have a right to do as they wish.

But they also deserve the truth — which is that try as they might, they can’t change an X chromosome into a Y or a Y into an X.

The policy implications of that incontrovertible fact, contra Miller, are profound.

More consequential still, though, is what a refusal to recognize the truth says about a person.

If someone with designs on the world’s most powerful office won’t answer a query as basic as this, they’re either totally detached from reality — or embarrassingly fearful of a wildly ideological, decidedly minority interest group.

In any case, they don’t belong within a country mile of the White House.

That’s one message Americans were trying to get across to Democrats when they chose Trump over Harris.

Evidently, only a 66-year-old operative who peaked during the Obama years was listening.

Which means that come 2028, the Democratic nominee for president will again enter the general-election arena with a massive credibility deficit of his or her own creation.

Isaac Schorr is a senior editor at Mediaite.