My October 20 commentary was headed “Why GOP is gaining male voters … and it may be the winning vote.” I concluded that article with “It may be that this under-reported unappreciated underground masculinity movement will have its effect in the 2024 election. Stay tuned.” (End of “I told you so.”)
Even though it was a long time in the making, it was inevitable. The male population has coalesced into a political force. It crosses all demographics – White, Black, Hispanic Asian and Arab. It played a significant role in the surprisingly strong vote for President Trump.
As was another election cycle dubbed “The Year of the Woman”, 2024 can fairly be called “The Year of the Man.” The gender gap can no longer be associated only with the voting disparity among women. With the past myopic focus on women, the growing gender gap among men went relatively unnoticed.
Trump made unprecedented gains among minority male voters. He won a clear majority of White men. Trump produced the strongest Republican showing among Hispanic and Black voters since the mid-1900s – and most of that was attributed to the votes of Hispanic and Black men.
In 2020, Trump received 12 percent of Black males. This year he doubled it to 24 percent. In 2020, he got 38 percent of Latino men. This year he received 46 percent.
If the 2024 presidential election is a realignment, as many observers suggest, it will be male voters – especially minority male voters – who will be leading the way.
It should not have come as a surprise to Democrat strategists and politicians – although it did. Male voters trending to the GOP has been occurring over several years. Because Democrats did not see it coming, they maintained their woman-oriented focus.
Democrats have ignored men and made women’s issues the ONLY gender focus in their platform. They cast males as the villains of women’s rights, desires and well-being. They saw men as misogynists, chauvinist pigs – traits attributable to genetic predestination. The radical feminist influences of the Democratic Party summed it up with the political pejorative, “toxic male.”
It is important to understand that the woman-centric political strategy was part of the progressive cultural elitism that characterizes the bicoastal Democratic Party. Ironically, in the aftermath of the huge Trump/GOP victory, many leading Democrats are pointing to elitism as the underlying cause of the Party’s defeat. To the future detriment of the Party, however, most Democrat analysts blame the loss on male sexism and racism –again making men the villains.
In deflecting blame from the real issue, Democrats are often cannibalizing their own. America’s most prominent race-baiter, Al Sharpton, argues that many Black men are anti-woman. A left-wing Hispanic journalist appearing on MSNBC said the same about Latino men.
If we look at the male vote in terms of youth – the under-30 crowd – Democrats won them by 15 points in 2020, but the GOP carried them by 13 points in 2024, a 28-point swing.
The focus on women and women’s issues to the exclusion of male interests has been so lopsided in political dialogue and policy that on the Democrat’s own website the list of the people they claim to serve – women, gays, transgenders, etc. – does not include men.
Despite having a woman at the head of the ticket … the focus on women’s issues …. and the attacks on Trump as a misogynist … Democrats LOST ground with women. They carried the women’s vote in 2020 by 32 points. That dropped to 18 points in 2024.
Strangely, in the aftermath of the election, the progressive elite are falling back on the same old “bad male” strategy to explain their defeat.
Jill Filipovic, a Brooklyn-based writer — who has spent her life in the radical left ecosystem (born and raised in Seattle and degrees from New York University) writes on her X account, “So much of this election was gutting, but at the top of my list is the reminder that many Americans see women as disposable.” I think it is more arguable that for generations, it is men who have been treated as disposable – and not as a mere circumstance but as a good thing.
Filipovic also penned an opinion piece for the New York Times. She attributes Harris’ loss to Trump to courting, “‘barstool conservative men who might not be particularly religious or anti-abortion but seem to enjoy Mr. Trump’s sexism and vulgarity.” (There she goes again …. alluding to the imaginary brutish toxic males.)
Speaking of abortion … the disregard for the male is also evident. Though the developing human being is the creation of a woman AND a man, the new life is considered the exclusive property of the woman – with the male partner having no rights or respected interests over the future of his offspring. (That is until it comes to providing financial support for those developing human beings who make it to birth. Suddenly the man matters. But I digress.)
It appears that the macho American man has had enough of the progressive gender mythology – enough of being viewed as some sort of political caveman that is a blight on society and a threat to womanhood.
New York University professor Scott Galloway described the coalescing of the male vote around Trump and the GOP as the “testosterone effect” – and that it was the response of the “aspirational male” to the “toxic male”.
The male influence on the 2024 election has already found its way into the culture. Saturday Night Live introduced the “hot jacked Trump”—a muscle bound gym rat Trump (pictured above).
Since it appears that those who have propagated the “toxic male” theology are neither enlightened nor cowed by the election results, the realignment will prevail to the detriment of the Democratic Party.
It is beyond comprehension as to why Democrats and the radical feminists are so surprised to have gotten political pushback from a demographic group that they have been disregarding, at best, or demonizing, at worst, for decades. After all … male lives matter.
So, there ‘tis.
Postscript: It has often been said that we men should get in touch with our feminine side. I tried that. The result was that every time I thought about sex, I got a headache.