During the 2020 presidential race, the Bernie Sanders campaign decided to tout an endorsement from Joe Rogan. The backlash was swift: Democratic Party insiders and party-aligned activists demanded that Sanders apologize and rescind his support for the endorsement. The general consensus seemed to be that, as an avatar of “regressive” masculinity, Rogan could not be tolerated inside the blue tent. Last month, in a sign of just how much the political calculus has changed since then, the Democratic Party announced that it was willing to spend a small fortune to “find” its own “Joe Rogan.”
By now, the Democratic Party’s “masculinity problem” is a well-known phenomenon. Men are increasingly getting red-pilled and leaving the party that once consistently swept national elections with votes from blue-collar and white-collar men alike. Last month, the Democratic Party announced its intention to spend ghastly amounts of money to better understand the minds of men and thus develop a strategy about how best to draw them back into the party fold.
Politico now provides more context about the Speaking with American Men (or SAM) project, which says it is willing to spend $20 million to understand the modern man and how best to appeal to him. SAM has already completed an initial round of research on its exotic subject, which it has shared exclusively with Politico. The outlet notes that this first foray into Dude Studies included 30 focus groups and a national media consumption survey. The results of those surveys are fairly straightforward: they have found that many young men “believe that ‘neither party has our back,’ as one Black man from Georgia said in a focus group.” Participants also described Democrats as “overly-scripted and cautious, while Republicans are seen as confident and unafraid to offend.”
“Democrats are seen as weak, whereas Republicans are seen as strong,” Ilyse Hogue, a co-founder of SAM, told Politico. “Young men also spoke of being invisible to the Democratic coalition, and so you’ve got this weak problem and then you’ve got this, ‘I don’t think they care about me’ problem, and I think the combination is kind of a killer.” Hogue further noted that SAM has a plan to reach its lost demographic by expanding its presence into the online platforms where men typically congregate:
Hogue said part of SAM’s mission “super charg[ing] social listening” and progressive influencers on Discord, Twitch and other platforms in their fundraising proposal. They’re urging Democratic candidates to use non-traditional digital advertising, especially on YouTube, in-game digital ads and sports and gaming podcasts.
Yet whether Hogue has adeptly identified the problem or not, his effort seems doomed to failure. Indeed, the effort, itself, is the problem. By studying men as if they were an alien life force instead of 50 percent of the population, the Democrats have already proven themselves to be completely and utterly lame and, appropriately, unmanly. Do real men waste large sums of money learning how to talk to other men? I never recall seeing John Wayne do that.
It took the Democratic Party roughly a decade to dig itself into this hole, and it will likely take another decade for them to crawl out. Indeed, since 2016, the party has largely swung left on social issues—a process that has meant distancing itself from “traditional” men and catering to the interests of women and minorities. During roughly the same period, a reactionary feminist politics—spurred partially by Trump himself—came to power that openly sought to demonize men. This politics accused American males of a variety of social ills, from manspreading to mansplaining to “patriarchy,” “rape culture,” “toxic masculinity,” “fragility,” inceldom, and a host of other issues. The Democrats, which have traditionally been attached at the hip to the women’s movement, were dragged into this morass by association. The results have been predictable. Polls have consistently shown a gendered political divide, with young women trending increasingly left, while young men have drifted rightward. An NBC poll earlier this year showed a “staggering” gap between Gen-Z men and women, with the alignments stratified along party lines.
Democratic strategists have focused on the tech platforms they can use to reach young men. This is an important part of the puzzle but ultimately not the most important one. The technology is not nearly as important as what Democrats say once they get on those platforms. Gavin Newsom recently launched his own podcast, a bold move that hasn’t really paid off because his messaging has been all over the place. Other Democratic figures, including Bernie Sanders (and, interestingly enough, the disgraced Anthony Weiner) have sought to insert themselves into the long-form podcast circuit where young men digitally live.
Conservatives, meanwhile, have proven themselves incredibly adept at weaponizing media to their advantage. Trump was able to capitalize on young men’s disaffection with the Democrats during the 2024 election cycle by tapping into the media ecosystem where those voters lived: the so-called “manosphere” circuit of male-oriented podcasts like Joe Rogan, Theo Von, and Flagrant.
But again, the medium is less important than the message. Trump’s oratory style is cartoonishly masculine—sorta like a mix between Huey Long and Tony Montana. For many men, however, it works. There’s a reason that Scarface is a classic “guy” movie: its protagonist is just one big runaway libido, all “balls”—a man who does what he wants, when he wants, all consequences be damned. Similarly, Trump’s political style is arguably all balls and no brain. He seems to speak and act from his gut in a way that feels unvarnished and assertive, even if the content of what he says and does is often idiotic and mayhem-inducing.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that Democrats could save themselves $20 million by just spending a weekend watching action movies from the 1980s. In fact, Die Hard is guaranteed to teach the average bespectacled Democratic pollster more about average male psychology than a dozen “focus groups.” Why? Because it came about during a time when red-blooded American masculinity was still a dominant part of the culture. John McClane is a cowboy in a wild west of concrete and steel. He curses, he smokes, and he wastes his enemies with a submachine and a smirk. I’m not suggesting that Tim Waltz should dispatch his enemies with a Beretta, merely pointing out that if he talked about doing it (like Trump did) it might not be the worst thing in the world.
