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Notes -
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/democrats-want-reach-young-male-voters-how-get-them-is-up-debate-2025-10-06/
Reports like these have been an almost weekly occurrence all year. To state the obvious that none of these articles include: The Democratic Party and liberals engage in bulverism and bulverism alienates people. But is the problem purely liberals alienating young men or are conservatives also successfully courting them?
Democrats are getting it wrong, mostly. It's not about policy or marketing (though the idea that they just need to hire more pro-Democratic TikTok influencers to shill for them reveals a deep and amusing disconnect). It's about the casual contempt they show for men.
For instance, AOC today, saying Miller is a short troll:
So, it's not quite that she's insulting him, which is fine. Trump does similar stuff all the time, although in a funnier way. The difference is the double standard. Say what you will about him, but Trump is equal opportunity: he'll nastily insult anyone he doesn't like. There are no sacred cows. But you will never see AOC calling a woman an obese smelly pig, or implying that a female opponent holds her positions because she needs a good dicking down. And, even if she did, Democratic and liberal antibodies would attack her in retaliation: awhile back when one Democrat called MTG a butch lesbian, there was a lot of pushback for transphobia.
It's not any one individual event, but a pervasive attitude that men and masculinity are worthy of contempt, while everyone else needs to be protected from being triggered. If you're trying to appeal to men, probably encouraging a norm of a free-for-all is better than one of an HR lady who polices everyone, but the worst of all places to be--and this is where Democrats find themselves--is saying that every identity needs to be protected, except for men, who are always fair game to identity-based attacks.
Ezra Klein has been making this point in his interviews recently although phrased more like "It doesn't matter what our policies are if people think we don't like them and I think we've been sending out the message that we don't like a lot of people". He seems to have been doing a lot of soul searching since the loss in 24.
As an unrelated aside, it's very interesting to see Klein and especially Yglesias struggle with '24. They both recognize there are real issues in the Democratic Party now, beyond bad marketing and the failure of the deplorable electorate not seeing its obvious superiority. But even they have to carefully avoid triggering those same antibodies I mentioned earlier. I think there's a reasonable chance Yglesias eventually steps on a mine and gets fully excommunicated.
That's already happened. If you go to his subreddit, it's full of people who do nothing but hate him, like Joe Rogan. I think Reddit is a pretty good barometer as to one's current bona fides in the Democrat party.
The backlash being faced by Klien, Derek, Yglesias and Buttigieg is baffling. Everything they've said has been polite, non-accusatory and measured. Yet, they're being treated like Nazis by left social-media.
I don't have a read on how radicalized the younger democrats are. But, looking at reddit, bluesky or the youtube ...... they're being dogpiled.
Out of the loop: What beef have dems with Buttigieg?
Too gay but also not gay enough.
That's not entirely a joke but I think the current issue is some post-Kirk comments that weren't entirely mealymouthed and immediately walked back. Could be wrong though.
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He was literally a Notre Dame-adjacent mayor. /s
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I'm not sure how this is baffling given the behavior of the "progressive left" over the past 15 years. Responding polite, non-accusatory, and measured constructive criticism for the purpose of self-improvement from their less extreme allies as if they were Nazis has been standard operating procedure for about that long.
The surprising thing to me now is that Klein actually decided to meaningfully criticize them, given how hard he was supporting them until very recently, even while some of his peers like Yglesias had already started doing so years ago. The stuff around Klein and Weiss recently are the only signals I've seen that indicates that the failures of the progressive left to actually support progress is actually facing meaningful backlash.
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It doesn't seem baffling to me. The message from Klein, Thompson and Dunkleman is that an entire branch of left-wing progressivism ( the side whose instinct to devolve responsibility and attack concentrations of power like corporations as opposed to the equally progressive tendency to make them partners in regulation and social engineering) didn't just fail, it won and then failed and is costing Democrats.
Their general argument is that systems in place that, for example, allow left-wing advocacy groups to sue and stop nearly all infrastructure or home building, are bad. Obviously some people like those systems and consider them a triumph of leftism (cynically: since they know how to use them better than the people who don't have houses or aren't educated enough to use environmental protection law to their advantage)
It's a clear broadside against an entire set of Democratic anti-monopoly, anti-government, pro-lawsuit activists.
Finally, all wordcels have is how many people value what they say. Klein is the Drake of the Democratic party: a whole bunch of people believe "They" made him successful because he's a capitalist bootlicker because it's easier than admitting that people simply prefer him. There seems to be a clear element of professional envy here. If the Zephyr Teachouts of the world were actually indigent, they'd have an incentive to listen to a criticism of their policies. But they aren't so it's all status games. It's just rappers jumping on a more successful rapper in the hopes of getting their name out/taking their place.
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It's honestly bizarre to me how much Klein is hated - people here and on the right loathe him, and anyone vaguely left or progressive loathes him, and all he's doing is sitting in the middle politely saying that Trump is bad and maybe Democrats would do better if they were less crazy and built more stuff.
I suppose he's positioned himself somewhere that picks a fight with both the loudest tribe on the right and the loudest tribe on the left.
I hate him for being a blue-tribe brahmin who believes in the progressive shibboleths: the left hates him for not being maximally accelerationist revolutionary Che Guevara. The magnitude of dislike is not equal.
When he goes 'trans issues are not tactically wise for politics, we should get into power and then implement them', I think, 'oh, he's a liar.' They go, 'oh, he's a HERETIC!'
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Is this the same Klein who supported (and probably still supports) the Californian YMY / affirmative consent law? Because yeah, it doesn't seem so bizarre to me.
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Journo List and this would be where I'd start to understand the reaction from Reds.
I am not convinced that right-wingers responding to Klein are today are thinking about, or even necessarily aware of, a Vox column he wrote eleven years ago. I agree that the position in that column is, at best, completely daft, but I also don't think that column is likely to be motivating outside a small, highly atypical tribe of politics-obsessed weirdos. My guess is that @crushedoranges is more correct - it's not this or that column from over a decade ago, it's the way that Klein in general, in his politics and more importantly in his whole affect, symbolises a type of holier-than-thou policy wonk who calmly explains why you're wrong about everything, why your values suck, and why it all needs to be bulldozed.
That would make it very hard for them to take him seriously when he says, "Seriously, we do need to moderate and focus on practical outcomes that will benefit every American". They already think he's a liar.
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