The numbers are staggering. In absolute terms, the Democrats lost one to two million men from 2020-2024. Moreover, among new Republican Party registrants during that period, 55-60 percent are male. This amounts to 1.3-1.4 million of the GOP’s 2.4 million new registrants. (This, not to mention the men registering as Independents.)
But is the issue that the masculine sex has left the Left? Or is it that the Left has left masculinity?
Or is it both?
One more question: Are the disenchanted men ever going to return to the Democrats?
Writing at The Hill, commentator John Mac Ghlionn seems doubtful they will. The reason?
The “party that has spent years pathologizing masculinity,” he writes, “can’t expect gratitude from the men it has spent so long diagnosing.”
Can’t Fake It (Not Yet, Anyway)
What’s more, notes Mac Ghlionn, the “party’s latest efforts to woo men are almost painful to watch.” He continues:
The Democratic National Committee [DNC] has poured money into influencer partnerships, podcast cameos and clumsy “masculinity” campaigns filmed in gyms. Spokespersons drone on about “kitchen-table issues,” as if men are sitting there waiting to be emotionally validated between spoonfuls of reheated stew.
None of it works because it isn’t real.
That is the point, and it gets at one reason many young men voted for President Donald Trump. They might not have agreed with all of his positions and impolitic pronouncements. But many have expressed that Trump seems real. The president is also a man’s man, an alpha, exuding confidence and strength. What’s more, some other high-profile masculine men, even once-Democratic-leaning ones, have been supporting Trump. Examples are famed podcaster Joe Rogan and Elon Musk, two figures influential with young fellows.
In contrast, what do the Democrats offer? They put forward glib, baby-faced boys such as Harry Sisson and Dean Withers. They made the effete, unsmiling David Hogg co-chairman of the DNC earlier this year. (His tenure didn’t last long.) They’re doing everything but singing soprano.
It wasn’t always like this. “Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy all spoke the language of strength, duty and sacrifice,” Mac Ghlionn points out. This, however, gets at a deeper issue.
Many generations ago, America was closer to Truth and more ideologically unified. The parties tended to agree on fundamental matters. To wit: the nature of proper marriage and sexuality, the importance of Americanism and toxicity of socialism, and the sanctity of human life. They also both considered what constitutes masculinity and femininity to be axiomatic. Now they can’t agree on whether children can switch sexes or not.
Those Warred-against Boys Are All Grown Up — and Haven’t Forgotten
Then there’s the pathologizing of masculinity. It was more than a generation ago (2000) that Christina Hoff Sommers published her book The War Against Boys. And now many of those embattled boys, currently men, are recognizing who has been warring against them. Why, as Newsweek pointed out in July, even many “traditional liberal men” are leaving the Democrats.
Just yesterday, in fact, I cited a female writer who warned of “The Great Feminization.” “Woke” culture is really just toxically feminine culture, was her point.
And it hasn’t escaped many men that the Democrats have long been Great Feminization Central.
As Mac Ghlionn writes, to the Democrats, masculinity long ago
became something to manage rather than to honor. The sermon grew stale: You are privileged, you are problematic, you are not welcome here anymore.
That message has exhausted its power. The modern Democratic man — the one trending on social media, fluent in the language of “lived experience” — feels less like a leader and more like a life coach. Pete Buttigieg speaks with the soothing detachment of a corporate wellness coach. Cory Booker dispenses compassion like a man who’s been trapped on the seminar circuit too long. Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s ill-fated running mate in 2024, was less a spark than a screensaver — steady, silent and impossible to remember once gone.
Just consider, too, so many Democrat-embraced positions/measures. For example, unlike liberals, real men do not
- ask for “safe spaces” and “comfort animals”;
- want criminals treated with kid gloves;
- find guns scary and want them outlawed;
- think “transgenderism” is healthful;
- fancy competition harmful and “participation trophies” helpful; or
- suppose that everything masculine — eating beef, driving “muscular” vehicles, etc. — is “bad for the planet.”
The Party of High-T?
And what of the GOP? As Mac Ghlionn also writes:
Meanwhile, Republicans — loud but unmistakably alive — speak in the tone of reality. President Trump, War Secretary Pete Hegseth and White House adviser Stephen Miller may be coarse, but they speak with purpose. They treat the male instinct not as a disease but as a drive. They talk about work, pride, duty and protection — things men recognize because they live them. They make politics sound like it has purpose again.
By the way, I would say it’s inaccurate calling Hegseth and Miller “coarse.” Rather, they are blunt. Considering this coarseness is part of feminization, as males, from boyhood onward, are the more straightforward sex. Real men aren’t instinctively feline; they say what they mean and mean what they say.
The Great Unveiling
Also note what has enabled young men and others today to discern who’s who and what’s what: the new media. Decades ago, the legacy media could package candidates, keep them packaged, and shape narratives. Yet podcasts and other new media today can unpack these candidates; they can rip their masks off.
For example, young men could watch Trump speaking to famed podcaster Joe Rogan for almost three hours. Or they can now view him on YouTube, playing golf with his granddaughter Kai. They get to see how real he is.
In contrast, figures such as Kamala Harris’ plasticity is also revealed. No, these internet events are not exactly like meeting these people in person. But it takes you at least halfway there relative to legacy media presentations.
As for the Democrats, they “say they want to reconnect with men,” concludes Mac Ghlionn. “Yet every strategy they devise sounds like it was written by someone who’s never met one. They’ve turned politics into therapy and wonder why men don’t show up for the session.”
Actually, though, these political operatives have met men — feminized ones. That is the relevant factor, too. “Men” will return to the Democrats if the Left can breed more David Hoggs and fewer Joe Rogans. And that’s just a matter of making society corrupt enough. Kill the virtues that make a man a man, and weak, spoiled little boys are all that remain.
