Election 2024: The Post-Mortem, Part Three

The Democrats are already talking about a forensic study of last week's election returns to figure out how they blew it.  They thought they had everyone behind them based on the formation of pro-Harris social-media groups - Black Women For Harris, Latinos For Harris, White Women For Harris - White Dudes For Harris!   White Dudes For Harris, a social media group spearheaded by Jeff Bridges, one of the most esteemed and revered actors in Hollywood - more so than George Clooney.  What could possibly go wrong when you had white men for Kamala Harris?

How about the fact that that the white men for Harris could have held their in-person meetings in a broom closet?

Donald Trump did better with white males than with any other demographic, which should not have surprised anyone.  But he was able to improve marginally with black male voters and even more with male Hispanic voters.  Despite having a running mate who loves to go hunting, despite featuring Bruce Springsteen at her rallies, and despite appealing to so-called "girl dads" who wanted to protect their daughters from extremist MAGA policies, Harris was never going to win over a large number of male voters.  It wasn't just because too many men could not imagine a female President.  It's because her campaign had a soft-focus approach to people who voted more out of emotion than reason.  In other words, she ignored the large masculine side of the electorate - the "bro culture."  The Harris campaign's rallies had an effeminate air to them, featuring celebrity surrogates like Beyoncé Knowles and Oprah Winfrey in a love-fest atmosphere that sometimes bordered on rainbows and unicorns.  But none of this addressed the concerns of men - especially young men.  

The economist Scott Galloway has commented on this repeatedly on cable television, noting how young men are less likely to go to college and have disconnected with society at large, while their female peers have been succeeding in academics and the workplace at a much higher rate.  Young men have returned inward, spending more time online - not blogging, a constructive labor I engage in, but playing video games and communicating on right-wing chat boards.  The Harris campaign addressed the concerns of many Americans, but the young men who felt left out of society felt left out of the Harris narrative.  

In fact, Harris's entire approach to appealing to masculinity was all wrong.  Instead of hunting, like Tim Walz, many men today go for kickboxing.  Instead of Bruce Springsteen, they listen to Jason Aldean.  And not every man has a daughter.  Some not only don't have daughters, they also don't have sons.  Not only aren't many men married, a lot of men don't even have girlfriends.   

Of course, not all men are toxically masculine, but in America, a lot of men are.  A lot of American men like NFL football, listen to macho country music, and drive Ford pickup trucks. I like soccer, listen to jazz, and drive a Volkswagen Golf, but while all that would be fine in France, here that makes me a pussy.  In America, of course, being a pussy is tantamount to treason.  And if you don't listen to Joe Rogan (below), that goes double.

Kamala Harris did try to make some concessions to reach bros while not selling out.  She attempted to get booked on Rogan's podcast, where could have made her case, and she could have, and probably would have, talked to his listeners in a conversational tone rather than a lecturing or admonitory one.  (Not surprisingly, Rogan didn't book her, possibly out of fear that his listeners would think she was making sense.) But most of her efforts to reach such voters fell flat.  Trump was far more successful in reaching them, thanks to an ad his campaign ran on NFL games accusing the Biden-Harris administration of paying for transgender (another example of liberal PC language, as the proper word is "transsexual" - the word "gender" is a literary, not an anthropological, word) surgeries for prisoners - actually a Trump administration policy - and the Harris campaign did nothing to counteract that ad.

There might be a way for Democrats to appeal to men going forward, assuming the Democratic Party is allowed to exist under a second Trump term.  But getting Jeff Bridges and George Clooney to speak on their behalf isn't going to cut it.  Those actors represent a suave, sophisticated masculinity that is completely alien to today's male culture.  The fact that the Harris campaign even needed surrogates like Bridges, Clooney or Bruce Springsteen to appeal to men was actually an Achilles heel.  Because Donald Trump only needed one surrogate.

His name was Donald Trump.

Stay tuned for Part Four.