Controversial opinion: Democrats can win men back

I’m not going to start with my favorite part of the recent New Liberal Podcast with

Richard V Reeves

(author of Of Boys and Men and founder of the American Institute for Boys and Men).

I’m going to start with the part that kinda shocked me. Reeves told

Jeremiah Johnson

(podcast host and author of the very funny and astute Infinite Scroll newsletter) that he was reliably informed that Democratic Party leadership deliberately chose to give up on men and focus entirely on getting women to the polls in the last election.

Reeves said this was a mistake. Going forward, Democrats should put much more effort toward winning men back.

I think Reeves was right in his conclusion, but extremely wrong in his reasoning. I also think that the way in which Reeves is wrong explains a lot about why Democrats lost, and keep losing, men.

Reeves said Democrats ignore (and sometimes actively shit on) half the population because Democrats believe US men have become irredeemably anti-feminist and reactionary.

Reeves says this is wrong. If anything, men and boys are actually more supportive of feminism than in decades past.

You can find evidence for and against claims that US men are more or less feminist, more or less reactionary, have their heads more or less firmly shoved up their asses, etc. than in decades past.

For our purposes, however, as if often the case, none of that matters.

What matters, for the purposes of electing Democrats, is what male swing voters believe.

And there is ample evidence that bottom-half men are becoming less feminist and more reactionary.

There’s a reason both think tanks and elected officials are openly debating the merits of forcing women to stay in abusive marriages. I truly wish I had any real-world connection to the levels of privilege a person has to be on to fail to notice a male-led reactionary backlash against women’s recent advancements toward full personhood.

What Reeves, and most people, fail to adequately appreciate, in my opinion, is the extent to which the right has successfully pivoted away from “Black and brown people are the reason you’re a temporarily embarrassed millionaire” to “you’re a maker, but women, feminism, and wokeness are forcing you to live the life of a taker.”

The right is actively funding an entire media ecosystem that is actively and effectively making bottom-half men more reactionary. And the GOP is actively reaping the rewards of that effort by effectively appealing to who these men have become as a result.

One thing that sucks about us losing is that what Democrats, liberals, progressives, and anti-authoritarians have to offer bottom-half men is far superior.

On the same day I listened to the podcast I read a post by Ossiana on how white nationalism isn’t that great a deal for men either:

If you’re male, you can’t show emotions, you always have to protect, and your only value is the paycheck you offer and the kids you help your wife shit out. If you can’t attract a spouse, don’t look like a typical “Chad,” or don’t want a wife, white nationalist culture says you’re defective.

If you’re a man, you kind of should play the field, but you can’t do that outside of marriage — even though you’re supposed to get married as young as possible. You can’t explore sexuality with your wife, because that somehow sullies her, but you should know exactly what to do without using porn.

Even if you meet the criteria as a man, you’re never left to just be you. You constantly have to keep chasing a more and more masculine ideal — and it is never enough. Both men and women born into this system are products. They’re only valued by the money they make, how good they look, and the offspring they have.

Don’t have kids or a spouse? Well, you’re a failure in the eyes of a white nationalist. So, you have to bend others to your will. It’s all about climbing the ladder of value in society while you push others down to secure your own position.

The entire system of conservatism is meant to grind both men and women to their breaking points, all while blaming others as “the competition.”

This obviously rhymes with recent writing on how masculinity hurts most men on-net while benefiting a select few.

Yet we keep losing men because we refuse to see what’s in front of us.

Both parties are choosing gender war (and culture warring more broadly) because the same billionaires own them. Every viable policy option for addressing slowing economic growth, declining innovation, and declining economic mobility threatens the oligarchy.

Being a Nazi in 2025 isn’t more than it was cracked up to be — at least for the vast majority of people, including men and boys — than it was the first time.

The left simply refuses to engage with bottom-half men in any way they can understand on what is actually on offer. The right’s ideas about gender are very stupid. The GOP’s policies to “help men” won’t work.

But Democrats won’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell the US in 2025 without a left-wing effort to ideologically engage with bottom-half men that is in any way comparable to what the right has.

In the meantime, I would love to see Democrats stop shooting ourselves in the foot.

“What America definitely needs right now is a credible opposition — someone to offer a promise of good governance, classic American values, and institutional stability as an alternative to Trumpian chaos,” Noah Smith recently wrote.

The GOP just handed the power of the purse to an illegal immigrant who did a Nazi salute in public. Stop arguing over whether nonbinary people count toward gender quotas, beginning meetings with land acknowledgements, and electing far-left candidates to positions of leadership. (All of this the DNC did in their most recent elections.)

As I wrote before, I’m not going to be the one who explains why market concentration is a bigger, more real problem than the “femeninization of the workplace” to men who don’t read.

I will, however, leave you with a few messaging suggestions to help the Democrats win back bottom-half men and boys:

“We also want your dad to get sober.”

“We think masturbation is healthy and normal.”

“Women: Probably also just people.”