How Democrats Can Stop Alienating Young Men: Some Unsolicited Advice

Newsweek

06-06-2025

Last November, Donald Trump soundly defeated Kamala Harris among young men 18 to 29 years old, racking up about 56% of their votes according to the Associated Press. That represents a huge decline from 2008, the climax of the Barack Obama coalition, when the Democratic candidate won 62% of the young male vote against GOP challenger John McCain.
Clearly, Democrats have a young man problem—and they've vowed to do something about it. Accordingly, the party is spending $20 million on a special multiyear effort called "Speaking With American Men: A Strategic Plan." The project, The New York Times recently reported, will "study the syntax, language, and content that gains attention and virality in these spaces."
Yes, really. Hold your laughter.
It's true that leading Democratic figures could use some help on the "syntax" and "language" fronts. They might begin to right the ship, on that score, by ditching the infamous gobbledygook "gaffes" of Joe Biden and the "unburdened by what has been" word salads of Harris. But the rubber will meet the road for Democrats when it comes to the critical, elusive third category of concern for their new young male outreach effort: content.
To paraphrase a venerable saying, one can put lipstick on a pig, but the pig, at the end of the day, is still a pig. And something big has to change for the Democrats. Nor is their problem limited to young men; the party's overall favorability ratings, in recent months, have hit record lows in public polling.
Here, Democrats, is some (entirely) unsolicited advice on steps you might consider taking to become less catastrophically unpopular with young men—and many other Americans too.
On the issue of sexuality and the human person, you might consider beginning your vaunted young male outreach efforts by deigning to properly define what exactly a "man" is—and, by extension, what a "woman" is as well. Indeed, your party's most recent Supreme Court nominee publicly struggled to crack this case. It is probably best, before attempting to devise pro-young-man public policy ideas, to familiarize yourselves with your target audience. The definition of "man" as it has existed since the Garden of Eden is a pretty good place to start.
A 2021 Marist poll has found that more Americans find the Democratic Party to be a bigger threat to democracy than the Republican Party. Here, a donkey, the animal mascot of the Democratic Party, can...
A 2021 Marist poll has found that more Americans find the Democratic Party to be a bigger threat to democracy than the Republican Party. Here, a donkey, the animal mascot of the Democratic Party, can be seen. More
Leigh Vogel/Getty
After successfully defining "man" and "woman," you might consider not indulging recurring grievances levied against so-called toxic masculinity. It is generally a good idea, in political outreach, to not hold in dripping disdain the demographic group you are trying to reach. Sure, men have been killing each other since Cain slew Abel, but many of them have also been doing some pretty good things for humanity since around that same time period. One key to publicly rejecting misandry will be ditching support for "diversity, equity, and inclusion" initiatives, which, along with also now being illegal, invariably take a pretty dim view of the heterogametic sex.
On the issue of immigration, you might consider not opening up America's borders to, well, pretty much the whole world—but especially young males in search of economic opportunity in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Democrats might not have gotten this impression from the Harvard faculty lounge, but over half of Americans these days live paycheck to paycheck. Far too many young men struggle to provide for their families; indeed, many delay marriage in the first place because of finances. Flooding the zone with more wage competition may please the wokerati, but it won't help you regain credibility with American breadwinners.
On the issue of environmentalism, you might consider not so conspicuously sacrificing American energy on the altar of climate alarmism. The young male voter simply wants a fair shot to make a decent living and provide safety and security for his family. The ham-handed restriction of hydrocarbon extraction does more than anything else to spike the price of every good or service. You might think that Trump's tariffs are a threat to price stability, but you'd be wrong—at least so far. The real threat to the fiscal well-being of the median American comes from the price of energy, from which all other prices flow. Maybe, just maybe, don't sacrifice all that on the altar of "Mother Earth"?
The good news for Democrats is that there is a lot of potential upside from their efforts to reach young men. The bad news for Democrats is the same: There's so much to gain precisely because of how unpopular they currently are with that cohort.
Josh Hammer is Newsweek senior editor-at-large, host of "The Josh Hammer Show," senior counsel for the Article III Project, a research fellow with the Edmund Burke Foundation, and author of the new book, Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West (Radius Book Group). Subscribe to "The Josh Hammer Report," a Newsweek newsletter. X: @josh_hammer.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.