Skepticism Greets Democrat Strategists’ Plan to Win Back Young Men

Democratic Party strategists are hoping to win back young men through a new $20 million effort called “Speaking With American Men.”

What’s being labeled a “Strategic Plan” is an attempt to “study the syntax, language, and content that gains attention and virality in these [online] spaces.” 

The plan recommends buying advertisements in video games and cautions Democrats to “shift from a moralizing tone.” The plan raised some eyebrows after excerpts of it were published by The New York Times, not least because the Democratic National Committee recently announced it might be holding another election in June that could result in the ouster of the youngest male member of the leadership team.

David Hogg was elected one of the DNC’s four vice chairs, but faced blowback after he refused to sign a neutrality policy that asked members to avoid activity that would “call into question their impartiality and evenhandedness,” instituted by DNC Chair Ken Martin. Instead, he said he would work to unseat some Democrat incumbent legislators. 

“People say they want change in the Democratic Party; but really, they want change so long as it doesn’t potentially endanger their position of power,” Hogg told The New York Times after announcing his intention to seek primary challengers for some Democrat incumbents. 

The DNC has said the vote in June to replace Hogg is unrelated to his comments, but Hogg has objected to redoing the election, saying that it “sends a horrible message to the public about our inability to run elections.”

The language released about the “Speaking With American Men” plan itself comes across as sterile and anthropological, like what one would see in an academic literature review. Even Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom has admitted his own son is a “huge fan” of conservative media influencer Charlie Kirk. 

Even before President Donald Trump’s decisive victory in November, political strategists were sounding the alarm about the Democratic Party’s attitude toward male voters in general, and young men in particular. Trump beat Harris among all men by 11 percentage points, 53% to 42%, in an October poll shortly before the election. To be fair to the former vice president, that pattern has emerged before. In the 2000 race, Republican George W. Bush also won men, coincidentally, by 11 points, also 53% to 42%. 

Democrat strategists may be more wary of the decades-long trajectory of the shift to the right of America’s young men. The party is likely to continue to struggle with men in general if young men remain much more politically conservative than the older men they will replace going forward. From 2016 to 2023, fully 12% of young men ages 18 to 29 ceased to identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party.

Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel decried the party’s brand more broadly as “weak and woke” in an interview published Monday by The Wall Street Journal. The onetime chief of staff to President Barack Obama, hinting of a possible 2028 White House bid of his own, also described the Democrat brand as “toxic.”

After the presidential election, the party’s approval rating sits at just 27%. That’s the lowest it has been since 1990, and it is being felt not just nationally, but also on an individual state basis. After the mass exodus of more conservative-minded voters from New Jersey to Florida and other states over the past five years, Kamala Harris managed to only win blue New Jersey with 52% of the vote. 

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