It’s Time for Democrats to Woo the Man Vote

If Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss was a shock, Kamala Harris’s defeat was a gut punch of near-fatal proportions, politically and emotionally. Donald Trump’s win eight years ago could quickly be written off as a blip. It wasn’t (just) that Hillary was a woman; it’s that she was Hillary, the argument-slash-rationalization went. As the former first lady, she didn’t really represent change for a public growing increasingly frustrated with dysfunctional Washington. She wasn’t “likable,” a slam more commonly wielded at women, but not only at women. And Trump’s brand, for many Americans, was exactly as he had marketed it, even if it wasn’t real: He was seen by just enough voters as a brilliant businessman and negotiator, a wealthy playboy who nonetheless spoke for the common man, and a political outsider who could shake up the Washington establishment.

And after all, Clinton was the first female major party nominee the country had considered. Surely, that would get American voters used to the idea of a female president and pave the way for the next woman to make it to the general election. And in 2024, Democrats had more ammo. Trump’s true colors had been exposed on the national and world stages and in the courtroom. His adolescent insults of the 2016 campaign had escalated as he made crude remarks about women in general and female candidates in particular. Women were literally dying, waiting for care, after a Supreme Court made up of one-third Trump appointees took away the guaranteed right to an abortion. Trump had the ignominious distinction of being the first convicted felon to become a major party nominee for president. Americans knew what Trump was about in 2024—and they voted for him anyway, and in larger numbers. So much for the Hillary-specific blip.

Distraught Democrats have been asking the predictable but necessary questions. What did we do wrong? Was it our message, or our messaging methods? Or—perhaps most dispiriting—did we do everything right, with a great candidate, but it doesn’t matter because Americans simply won’t put a woman in charge of the country?

The answer, political and sociological analysts agree, is that gender indeed mattered in the election, arguably enough to tip the scales to Trump. But it is so much more nuanced than the simple matter of Harris’s gender (though surely there were voters who could not, or would not, pull the lever for a female president). Much of it had to do with young men, a group experts say is adrift—lonely, faced with competing pressures to be tough and to share their emotions, and struggling with what it means to be a man in a world where gender roles are changing rapidly and the very notion of gender itself is being challenged. But as a longtime privileged group, men are typically not on the Democratic Party’s list of aggrieved voter groups looking for government to protect them from discrimination or other harm.

It’s the “Democrats’ blind spot,” said Aaron Smith, co-founder of the Young Men Research Initiative, echoing complaints from those within the party who say the Democrats were so focused on mobilizing women voters that they ignored men. Take a look at the Democratic National Committee’s website, Smith said. It has a section called “who we serve,” and it starts with the pledge, “Democrats are the party of inclusion. We know that diversity is not our problem—it is our promise. As Democrats, we respect differences of perspective and belief, and pledge to work together to move this country forward, even when we disagree … we do not merely seek common ground—we strive to reach higher ground.”