Last week, Politico convened a panel of Democratic “experts” to talk about masculinity. The tedious panel of pollsters, strategists, scholars, filmmakers, and activists ruminated on Democrats’ lack of appeal to working class men, but their hyper-focus on race led them wildly astray. Collectively, it appears not one of them would know what a real man was even if one went up and bought them a drink.
First off, the blatant hypocrisy must be addressed. The seven person round table consisted of two female panelists and a female moderator. Imagine the liberal response if a panel of nearly half men met to discuss women’s issues? The feminist outrage would be deafening — a sure indicator of a patriarchal society run amok. Nevertheless, the real problem comes from the way they all view the stratification of masculinity by race. (RELATED: Corporate Media’s Feigned Concern For The Crisis Of Masculinity Obscures Much Darker Motives)
The panel met ostensibly for the purpose of “fixing” Democrats’ “man problem.” But in reality, it turned into both a circular hate session on conservative, white men, and a competition over who could come up with the most patronizing and emasculating method to appeal to non-white men.
THIS ONE THING is no less than HALF of what it means to be a MAN.@scrowder#warriorpoetway #masculinity pic.twitter.com/BpGru7SqJa
— Warrior Poet Society (@johnlovell275) July 17, 2023
At least, however, they finally admitted there is a problem brewing. A full embrace of feminist ideals about marriage, family, and society has “characterized Democrats as feminine” for many American men. They concede that roughly 70 percent percent of working class white men will inevitably vote Republican, but fear that increasing proportions of black and Latino voters will as well, as they did in the previous election. Yet Democrats are largely powerless to do anything to change the trajectory: they are trapped by their own base.
In 2012, President Barack Obama cobbled together a new, grand theory of electoral politics. His “coalition of the ascendant” would form an alliance between racial and sexual minorities, and liberal, college-educated white women desperate to be “allies” to the “marginalized.” They were, as the theory goes, united in solidarity under the boot of white, heterosexual, patriarchy. Together, they would form an unbeatable union to solidify Democratic rule for generations. It worked for a magnetic personality like Obama, but has proved increasingly difficult to replicate.
Desperate to sow their victimhood narrative, Democrats overlooked the fact that these groups have extremely disparate worldviews. Latino voters are quite conservative when it comes to lifestyle, morals, and values, while black voters, specifically religious ones, are averse to the Democrats’ spectrum of LGBTQ fanaticism But liberal white women are, well, liberal. The level of actual oppression in American society is just not substantial enough to form a durable alliance between them, particularly as Democrats get increasingly radical on social issues.
If Democrats embrace the socially conservative masculinity they have for years derided as toxic, they will alienate their woke base. Something has to give, but acknowledging reality is no longer in the Democratic party playbook.
To convince themselves that this coalition is stable and that their ideologically-driven theory of victory — which fortunes and careers have been built on — is correct, Democrats must resort to a race essentialism more akin to white supremacist thinking than anything American society has witnessed in several generations. Enter the Politico panel: for Democrats like these, white men and non-white men are not the same.
While they do not seem to have any real idea of what traditional masculinity is, they backfill it with contemptuous stereotypes of the “macho man.” Traditional masculinity of this type is, it seems, a series of “gun-toting, fist-pumping tropes” that appeal to “white male aggression,” which Republicans use to mobilize their voters.
Such machismo is, apparently, a distinctly white phenomenon. Their “precarious masculinity” has become “threatened” by the “ascendance of women and people of color.” This anxiety leads them to become a “weapon for the far right.” Masculinity of this type ultimately boils down to “feeling the need to storm the Capitol in a triangle hat.”
The alternative to this caricature, which they seem to believe appeals naturally to black and Latino voters, is the stereotype of the “good man.” The white male “fists-in-the-air conversations” are “very different kinds of conversations than I know we’re having in people-of-color communities,” one panelist said.
For blacks and Latinos, the real question comes from the “economic pressure” of a society that supposedly keeps them down — “Can we provide?” The social conservatism in these communities creates pressure for “men to provide and lead,” but Democrats are perceived as regulators who “give away what other people worked so hard to gain.”
Thus, the solution for courting black and Latino men is to help them reclaim their roles as providers — “fighting for more health care, by fighting for more earned leave, by fighting for better wages.” This is as nonsensical as it is patronizing. Democrats want to help men feel like providers by increasingly having the state play the role of husband and father. They will ensure men can provide by ensuring they don’t have to provide at all. (RELATED: The Left’s War On Masculinity Is Destroying Western Civilization)
The absurdity of this conversation shows that Democrats only care about holding together the coalition that will save their skins in the upcoming election. They do not care about any of the issues that “threaten” masculinity, real or imagined. If they did, they would realize that masculinity cannot be characterized by race, or reduced to a false dichotomy of macho and good.
Traditional masculinity is a happy medium between the two. A man’s natural macho aggression, assertiveness, and dominance is domesticated by a wife and children, and the necessity of providing for something higher than himself. All men are disposed to protect and provide — pretending otherwise will only ensure men of all races continue to flee the Democratic party.