As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to win back the Oval Office, his electoral gains among men have become a priority. These gains — particularly among young people and Latino men — suggest dissatisfaction with how Democrats have addressed economic and societal changes affecting men.
In the 2024 presidential election, much of the focus has been on the female vote, as Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned to become the first female president and many high-profile women have supported his campaign.
However, it turned out that many men had significant motivations to vote.
“A lot of men were tired of being told they’re terrible and there’s nothing they can do, and that, I think, is the huge mistake Democrats made,” said Kat Timpf on the show “Gutfeld!” from Fox News.
How the Trump campaign appealed to the issues men face
Richard Reeves, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of “Of Boys and Men,” sees this frustration as part of broader trends among men.
“They came to believe that the progressive agenda for women found it necessary to reject or even denigrate men — and they were done with that,” Reeves said. He also highlighted a worrying trend among young men, citing a survey that found two-thirds of them said they feel like no one knows them very well and 15 percent have no close friends.
Reeves also touched on the deeper issues men face, including stagnant wages and disproportionate death rates from suicide and overdose.
“The refusal of anyone on the center-left to have a direct conversation about men’s mental health, about men’s jobs, about men’s wages has created a gigantic void in our culture and in our politics,” added Reeves.
Republicans, according to Reeves, have filled that void. Through male-dominated social media platforms, sometimes referred to as “The Manosphere,” including the podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience,” conservative figures have successfully reached men, particularly through sports and popular culture.
“We have been faced — especially in the last three and a half years — with a complete dismemberment of what it means to be a man,” Tyrus, a conservative commentator, said in an interview with Trump — a sentiment with which Trump agreed .
Trump’s appeal to men stands in stark contrast to the left’s more progressive stance on gender. Conservative commentator Michael Knowles said, “Trump appealed to men because he appealed to men. He actually campaigned to try to win their votes. »
Knowles believes the left’s approach has gone too far in ignoring men’s issues.
Faiz Shakir, chief policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, acknowledged that Republicans have done a better job on gender relations, even as he noted that the Biden administration’s focus on jobs and infrastructure in factories was beneficial for men. He suspects Trump will eventually take credit for these accomplishments.
The growing divide between left and right over how men are viewed in society remains a crucial issue as the next election approaches.
Reeves warns against relying on conventional wisdom, saying that “if there’s a problem, there has to be a bad guy.” He says we can blame neither feminism nor the women’s movement for the challenges men face.
“It’s certainly not women’s fault… But the problem sometimes on the other side, on the progressive left side, has been to say that, by definition, men can’t have problems because women men are the problem.”