Awful take. Any analysis of American politics today needs to start with the fact that a majority of the country is stupid. We used to keep the stupids in check because they have low voter turnout and they used to be split between the parties. Trump’s innovation is that he got enough of the stupids to vote Republican that they achieved critical mass and ejected the old party establishment. Now we have to deal with stupids running the country 50% of the time in equilibrium.
Democrats remaining elitist doesn’t solve that. They need to peel off enough of the stupids so that they don’t control the Republican Party anymore, but not enough that they take over the Democrats. Then we can have perpetually ~25% stupid governance instead of wildly swinging between 0% and 100% every four years.
I put some thoughts in the Note (https://substack.com/profile/145849904-ari-shtein/note/c-122524030?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2eu2i8) but I'll also say here: I don't think it's possible to peel off many stupids without becoming profoundly stupid yourself. In some sense, this is what happened to the Republican Party. Remember, they didn't go willingly into Trumpism—but starting with Bush, and then escalating when McCain picked Palin, the Republicans increasingly tried to play to Buchananite morons. And then in 2015-16, the establishment lost control, and the morons gave Trump a mandate.
Why do I think this can happen, even when there aren't enough morons to win the election on their own? Because the primary format rewards extremism and morons (or at least the morons I'm worried about) are extremists. The general elections are much more median-voter-y, but in a one-party, multi-candidate contest, if you can swing and politically-engage a bloc of 15-20% of the country, you're absolutely golden.
This take is 75% correct - human capital polarization degrades the quality of decisions because all the idiots get sorted into a party that will be in power ~50% of the time.
But human capital polarization also degrades the quality of decisions in the high human capital party because it contributes to groupthink, which causes even smart people to believe dumb things.
As Robert Michels argued, “He who says organization, says oligarchy.” (The Iron Law of Oligarchy.) Defenders of democracy never explicitly argue for oligarchy but that’s what democracy is (elected oligarchy); and for savvy defenders, it’s a feature, not a bug, which allows each party to push various agendas on an unsuspecting (or indifferent) public. When the voters actually want to have a say (populism), we might joke that those who oppose populism are really saying “Oligarchy dies in darkness”—except that populism doesn’t stop oligarchy either.
Hanania argues that democracy is basically a referendum on which party does better on the economy but the problem with that is that there is often a lag until bad (or good) policy kicks in and the voters might accidentally punish the wrong party (assuming we can attribute the most errors to one party). That’s when you have to trot out the Churchill quote on democracy as the least bad system.
We’ve probably always had unlimited desires to the extent that people allowed their desires to run just a little ahead of what they were able to conceive (e.g., three square a day instead of intermittent starvation, etc.). But if your point is that these desires uncork unrealistic expectations from politicians, then I agree.
Young men vote for chaos when they don't believe that there's a future for them in the present order. Yes, young men have a certain martial urge, but they also have an urge to try to build things. The former can be sublimated into the latter given the opportunity. Today's young man believes the building he lives in is moldy and rotten and no one will let him try to fix it, so why not reach for the gasoline and matches?
Also, it's not as if most the Dems remaining demographics actually like the Dem leadership. They're just more scared of the GOP.
That said, of course the current Dem effort to woo young men is idiotic. Another focus grouped, data driven, heavily workshopped PR campaign isn't going to work. It's doubling down on a good part of the very reason that young men hate Dems in the first place.
Yeah, this is the sane version of my nonsense. Declining social mobility and elite overproduction have given young men worse instincts. I think Abundance can help fix this, though, in a way that might eventually win them back to pro-growth, pro-sanity politics.
It can help a bit, but it something that the GOP can just outbid the Dems on. Abundance would help around the edges, but the problem is cultural and to a lesser extent about foreign/military policy. The fact that they're about to throw David Hogg out of the party is demonstrative. The Dems aren't going to shift on this until they lose a few more times. It may actually end them as a major party entirely, can't be sure yet.
Not just abundance. How about pushing back hard against hatred against white males or males in general? Hanania argues that whites don’t have a “secret sauce” for success (although I think he undermined his argument a bit when he linked success to “democracy” and not innovation) but we might be able to argue that males do.
How did we reach a point where whites and males are regarded as toxic in their *own damn country*?—a country that is the greatest symbol of achievement (after the UK) in the world? The answer is not just “elite overproduction”. Why were elite heads filled with such woke nonsense in the first place?
Elite overproduction naturally leads to elite purity games which fill elite heads with elite nonsense. (If you have so many well-credentialed people, you need some new way to pick who's getting into the Cathedral or Village or whatever your preferred pundit's metaphor.)
> after the UK
Point immediately undermined, you should be ashamed.
> males have a secret sauce
This might be true under the best of circumstances for the best of males, but has little to do with the observation that the median young male, especially nowadays, is much more likely to be a chaos voter than anyone else. I like innovation too, but the men smart and thoughtful enough to do it aren't the kinds of men who switched from Bernie to Trump.
Although elite overproduction might need its own explanation, I’m not sure I see why it must inevitably lead to Wokeism. That seems like post hoc; ergo propter hoc. Also, woke ideas didn’t spring from the thin air—there were plenty of proto-woke ideas circulating before the surge in college-educated elites. E.g., the New Left of the 60s was influenced by thinkers who were influenced by Marx, etc. Were these proto-woke ideas also due to elite overproduction?
Re: UK: How did I undermine my point? (I am fully prepared to be ashamed.)
The simplest argument for this was accidentally made by Nate Silver. He broke down a recent postmortem by some dem polling firm and found new (predominantly young) voters gave Trump 800k more votes on net. Really not that significant, roughly the same number of people swung from Biden to third party. Dems aren’t hiring consultants to “understand the spaces” of Jill Stein voters!
The key demos consist of people who already voted for biden. On, net, Trump gained 3 million votes from biden voters staying home, and another 2.7 million people from swing voting (again on net, there’s actually millions of Trump-Harris swing voters!)
Interesting article but I think it's more nuanced. For one if Democrats took your advice and let go of identity politics they probably would get an increase in the young male vote. Also pro growth Abundance type stuff tends to play better with men than women so probably true for that as well.
I could definitely see this being the case! But I just don't want "it might help win young men" to become an accepted sort of justification, because then we might end up doing the sorts of things that will *really* win over young men...
The party is making panicking noises because the assumed voters of women and minorities are not terribly enthused about voting for the alleged 'centrism' of Biden/Harris/Walz. If they were confident in being able to dig up Pete Buttigieg for another run, there would be no need to try canvassing with Bernie Sanders and AOC first, to try and get the young men back in line.
Sorry, is there doubt about Buttigieg being ready & willing in 2028? I thought he was for sure in, and it was just idiots panicking that he wasn't Rogan-y enough to win young men.
Also, I'm gonna contest the minorities not being enthused: as much as Bernie had outsized support from men, he had even more outsized support from whites (probably for income-confounded luxury belief reasons). Minority voters really liked Biden; minority *men* disliked Harris (but only because men suck), and the rest of the coalition hates Trumpism enough to fall in line. I seriously doubt there are enough diehard DEI-ideologues left to be a real threat.
I'm sure Pete himself is willing, but there's no telling if the party apparatchiks have decided if it is His Turn yet.
"Minority voters really liked Biden; minority *men* disliked Harris (but only because men suck), and the rest of the coalition hates Trumpism enough to fall in line. I seriously doubt there are enough diehard DEI-ideologues left to be a real threat."
Correct, Bernie is a white vote grabber. That's why they sent him out with AOC. Although one supposes that there are better people available than AOC for winning the votes of minority men. Relying on the coalition of hating Trump to win didn't work two times out of three.
Personally I don't think they need to specifically target or reach out to young men. They just need to stop talking like a bunch of people with Masters' Degrees in Discourse Studies from West Coast universities, and talk like normal people instead. If they do that they will pull a lot of voters back, including more than enough young men. Enjoyed this take though!
I agree that there's some ways dems could try and/or succeed in increasing the male vote that would be bad both on the merits and in terms of broader politics. However since I think there's other ways that woud not be bad and might work (of course not 100% sure anything will work why I am saying probably) I think dems should still try winning over young men. It just should be balanced with other considerations like not turning off other constituencies or not having bad politics on the merits.
Just when the Democrats seem to be starting to grapple with past errors and that shitting on men is bad politics, bad for society and immoral, in comes another stale take….shitting on men. 🤦♂️
The Democratic Party just can’t seem to do any soul searching as its supporters just insist on pulling it backwards to things that keep losing elections. After the first Trump election it was thought they’d find their way back; nope, went even more progressive. After Biden won, it was thought he’d keep the far left crazy wing of the party in check; nope, out of touch trans ideology and Hamas support reached new highs. After Trump won again, surely now they know how serious it is that they reflect and realise that shitting on half the country is a bad idea, right? Right?! Tbd…..
What’s the point in highlighting how young men went from Bernie to Trump, only to make the case that Democrats don’t need young men to win anyway? (Also, most demographics moved toward Trump in last election, not just that unimportant one).
> insist on pulling it backwards to things that keep losing elections
Right, I think that's what the Piker-ist "we need young men" crowd are doing. I, on the other hand, think we should move forward with regulation-slashing, pro-growth industrial policy. Trump won because the economy was in poor shape after COVID. If we can build things and create jobs and become wealthier, we can win! Easy as that.
> What’s the point in highlighting how young men went from Bernie to Trump
To demonstrate who young men really are: revolutionaries, radicals, altogether a very nasty bloc.
> most demographics moved toward Trump in last election, not just that unimportant one
Agreed. This is why I think that even if young men have their own weird set of priorities, it's not that important for Democrats to reckon with. Trump won because of general economic immiseration. Quit the immiserating, and you win! Young men are, indeed, "unimportant."
It can be edgy, and still stale if it’s been done a lot. So much that it pushes that demographic toward politicians that should have no business winning their vote.
When you say “build things”, who do you think will be doing that building? Is it the 45-69 year old female demographic? Sorry, that was too sarcastic. You get the point.
Even if young men are unimportant, you don’t think shitting on that demographic (or at the very least) not catering to it, will make other demographics look at you askance? I’m personally seeing a lot of mothers of young men be revolted by how their boys are treated by society and media, etc. They’re a voting block too. You can’t visibly deride a large chunk of society and expect the rest to always go along. Deplorables, anyone?! That’s all.
Let your party go through its soul searching, grieving process so that it can hopefully settle on your Abundance politics the “right” way.
Ok, ah, to be clear, I don't think Pete Buttigieg should go on Fox and say "fuck young men, they're the worst ever." And I think we should hire young men to do construction jobs, of course. (Which, incidentally, could win many of them back.)
It's just that I don't think we should be spending millions of dollars to specifically woo young men. I'm doing the derision in order to convince people not to care and because it's fun—I don't think anyone with a real audience needs to be doing it, or that we should run on an explicitly anti-young-men platform, or anything.
Ok fair enough. And I get you’re being edgy; I don’t mean to be the old grandpa or uncle taking all the fun away.
It’s clearly because I think you’re smart and a good writer that I worry, since you will have a large audience in due time. I appreciate that you’re mindful of the distinction of you saying these things vs Pete. I just think a lot of ‘you-s’ combined together have a lot more influence than you’re giving credence to and you do give license to readers who may run with these ideas further than you feel comfortable.
fascinating women feel empowered to make these considerations absent the component of violence. The real test is maintaining a feminized managerial society that lords over stronger and more violent beings. The old social contract was ‘I protect, you obey’. It seems like women haven’t given much thought to what that means going forward
Democrats need to do better with young men because they need more than to simply win the presidency, they need a governing majority if they are going to be able to turn the country away from the path towards competitive authoritarianism. If Democrats cannot make significant progress in solving the nations problems within a 4 year time span, they will continue to lose the presidency to people like Trump. And those Republican presidents will keep aggressively expanding the power of the presidency until it the office is an elected dictator. That institutional arrangement will suit the Chamber of Commerce just fine, but would effectively foreclose the ability of the government to raise taxes, expand social programs, or enhance the capability of the government to provide public goods because the president would be forced to rely on the oligarchs to maintain their own power to such an extent that they would have to keep them happy as a class.
It seems like you're saying we need to fight populism with populism, which I think is very wrong. Any attempt to maintain the status quo is better than capitulation to neverending revolutionary / counter-revolutionary chaos.
The status quo is Republicans winning the White House 50% of the time and using the power of the presidency to turn the US into Hungary. And then Democrats will win the presidency 50% of the time (for a while) and consolidate the expanded powers of the presidency because the only way to advance the party’s agenda is through executive orders because Democrats cannot win a legislative majority. Refusing to embrace populism is a positive embrace of the presidency as an elected dictator. The status quo is that the US is going to cease to be a liberal democracy.
Although I frequently feel this way, your age really shows with this one; I can't imagine any man over the age of 30 writing this. Men don't vote for chaos, any more than women caused the fall of the Roman empire. There is a masculine urge towards heroism/achievement/etc, but I don't think this is that relevant a lens toward understanding voting patterns because its impact is fairly indirect. Just because a lens can explain something doesn't mean it's productive or will highlight the right pain points, and this applies to a lot of the points you make here.
Ah, you're saying you've noticed a repeated pattern where my youth and maleness lead to impulsive and unthoughtful behavior?..
The idea that this would play no role in young men's voting habits is patently insane! I'm saying that prioritizing the young male vote has consequences—you have to specifically change your policy toward things that young men like. If the polling is good for young men liking a slightly wonky Abundance Agenda, that's awesome, but our pursuit of Abundance shouldn't hinge on it. Because my sense is that the things young men like—yes, politically—are often not-so-overlapped with the things that are good.
Nah, not at all, because you're exactly right, that would be a sign of agreement. I hate to say "you'll understand when you're older" but I do think this, because I used to see the world as you do, and I don't think I could've changed my own mind. Some ideas just take time to develop; it's nothing to do with hormones, or even gender, really. I'll try to put my intuition to words anyway, but I'll be pleasantly surprised if you get anything out of it.
The basic issue is one of framing. This is a problem of narrative and vibey shit, it's definitionally not about logic. The usual signal for this is snarky responses or people pointing out your identity instead of addressing your points. You may think this doesn't matter, but it usually indicates some discord in how you and others frame things.
You've chosen a lens that is incredibly harsh on more than half of the world for... What appears to be no reason at all. This is of benefit to no one, and I don't think you've made any kind of case at all for your choice of priorities, and I suspect the logical implications for how you or I should be living our lives most ethically within your own framework will be brutal and untenable. This feels like someone who's absorbed the unreasonable moral code of others and taken it to a logical conclusion, without having had time to step back and reconsider their moral framework. You get to choose your lens, take advantage of it.
The way I would try to phrase it is something along the lines of: I'm not convinced that deciding that y-chromosomes are dysgenic is any more, or less, repugnant a conclusion than that some additional murders are worth having dudes around for. This style of issue is pervasive in this piece (and of course the dysgenic Y one lol), often in more subtle ways, and addressing them all separately would be nearly impossible.
Forgot to say: when I say "haven't made any case at all" I don't mean you haven't thought about it or even that you haven't argued it. What I mean is that the *choice of caring about underlying principles over repercussions of said principles has not been adequately justified.* It's too ground-up, if that makes sense. This was totally unclear, sorry about that.
This just doubles down on the Democratic Party’s strategy of divide and conquer - appeal to, and represent, the “right” identity groups, demonize and defenestrate the “wrong” groups. Vote for us and we’ll give you a share of the loot, cross us and you’ll be the one who gets looted.
Contrary to popular belief, the Constitution’s “general welfare” clause wasn’t a blank check for creating a modern welfare state. It was a statement that the federal government’s role was to benefit all the country’s citizens and not just special interests or favored demographic groups. Obviously, we’ve fallen far short of that ideal, but that’s no reason to throw it out. And it’s certainly no reason to openly mock the principle by writing off entire segments of the population as inherently flawed and unworthy.
Young people are not a particularly valuable voting bloc in general. But Democrats do need men not only as voters but also as first-class participants in the party.
Awful take. Any analysis of American politics today needs to start with the fact that a majority of the country is stupid. We used to keep the stupids in check because they have low voter turnout and they used to be split between the parties. Trump’s innovation is that he got enough of the stupids to vote Republican that they achieved critical mass and ejected the old party establishment. Now we have to deal with stupids running the country 50% of the time in equilibrium.
Democrats remaining elitist doesn’t solve that. They need to peel off enough of the stupids so that they don’t control the Republican Party anymore, but not enough that they take over the Democrats. Then we can have perpetually ~25% stupid governance instead of wildly swinging between 0% and 100% every four years.
I put some thoughts in the Note (https://substack.com/profile/145849904-ari-shtein/note/c-122524030?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2eu2i8) but I'll also say here: I don't think it's possible to peel off many stupids without becoming profoundly stupid yourself. In some sense, this is what happened to the Republican Party. Remember, they didn't go willingly into Trumpism—but starting with Bush, and then escalating when McCain picked Palin, the Republicans increasingly tried to play to Buchananite morons. And then in 2015-16, the establishment lost control, and the morons gave Trump a mandate.
Why do I think this can happen, even when there aren't enough morons to win the election on their own? Because the primary format rewards extremism and morons (or at least the morons I'm worried about) are extremists. The general elections are much more median-voter-y, but in a one-party, multi-candidate contest, if you can swing and politically-engage a bloc of 15-20% of the country, you're absolutely golden.
This take is 75% correct - human capital polarization degrades the quality of decisions because all the idiots get sorted into a party that will be in power ~50% of the time.
But human capital polarization also degrades the quality of decisions in the high human capital party because it contributes to groupthink, which causes even smart people to believe dumb things.
Yeah this is terrible. If the point of governing is to help people, why wouldn’t we want to help young men? Here’s my proposal on what Dem could do to win young men, or what Republicans could do to keep them forever. https://open.substack.com/pub/getbettersoon/p/what-we-should-do-to-help-men?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
As Robert Michels argued, “He who says organization, says oligarchy.” (The Iron Law of Oligarchy.) Defenders of democracy never explicitly argue for oligarchy but that’s what democracy is (elected oligarchy); and for savvy defenders, it’s a feature, not a bug, which allows each party to push various agendas on an unsuspecting (or indifferent) public. When the voters actually want to have a say (populism), we might joke that those who oppose populism are really saying “Oligarchy dies in darkness”—except that populism doesn’t stop oligarchy either.
Hanania argues that democracy is basically a referendum on which party does better on the economy but the problem with that is that there is often a lag until bad (or good) policy kicks in and the voters might accidentally punish the wrong party (assuming we can attribute the most errors to one party). That’s when you have to trot out the Churchill quote on democracy as the least bad system.
We’ve probably always had unlimited desires to the extent that people allowed their desires to run just a little ahead of what they were able to conceive (e.g., three square a day instead of intermittent starvation, etc.). But if your point is that these desires uncork unrealistic expectations from politicians, then I agree.
Young men vote for chaos when they don't believe that there's a future for them in the present order. Yes, young men have a certain martial urge, but they also have an urge to try to build things. The former can be sublimated into the latter given the opportunity. Today's young man believes the building he lives in is moldy and rotten and no one will let him try to fix it, so why not reach for the gasoline and matches?
Also, it's not as if most the Dems remaining demographics actually like the Dem leadership. They're just more scared of the GOP.
That said, of course the current Dem effort to woo young men is idiotic. Another focus grouped, data driven, heavily workshopped PR campaign isn't going to work. It's doubling down on a good part of the very reason that young men hate Dems in the first place.
Yeah, this is the sane version of my nonsense. Declining social mobility and elite overproduction have given young men worse instincts. I think Abundance can help fix this, though, in a way that might eventually win them back to pro-growth, pro-sanity politics.
It can help a bit, but it something that the GOP can just outbid the Dems on. Abundance would help around the edges, but the problem is cultural and to a lesser extent about foreign/military policy. The fact that they're about to throw David Hogg out of the party is demonstrative. The Dems aren't going to shift on this until they lose a few more times. It may actually end them as a major party entirely, can't be sure yet.
Not just abundance. How about pushing back hard against hatred against white males or males in general? Hanania argues that whites don’t have a “secret sauce” for success (although I think he undermined his argument a bit when he linked success to “democracy” and not innovation) but we might be able to argue that males do.
How did we reach a point where whites and males are regarded as toxic in their *own damn country*?—a country that is the greatest symbol of achievement (after the UK) in the world? The answer is not just “elite overproduction”. Why were elite heads filled with such woke nonsense in the first place?
Elite overproduction naturally leads to elite purity games which fill elite heads with elite nonsense. (If you have so many well-credentialed people, you need some new way to pick who's getting into the Cathedral or Village or whatever your preferred pundit's metaphor.)
> after the UK
Point immediately undermined, you should be ashamed.
> males have a secret sauce
This might be true under the best of circumstances for the best of males, but has little to do with the observation that the median young male, especially nowadays, is much more likely to be a chaos voter than anyone else. I like innovation too, but the men smart and thoughtful enough to do it aren't the kinds of men who switched from Bernie to Trump.
Although elite overproduction might need its own explanation, I’m not sure I see why it must inevitably lead to Wokeism. That seems like post hoc; ergo propter hoc. Also, woke ideas didn’t spring from the thin air—there were plenty of proto-woke ideas circulating before the surge in college-educated elites. E.g., the New Left of the 60s was influenced by thinkers who were influenced by Marx, etc. Were these proto-woke ideas also due to elite overproduction?
Re: UK: How did I undermine my point? (I am fully prepared to be ashamed.)
The simplest argument for this was accidentally made by Nate Silver. He broke down a recent postmortem by some dem polling firm and found new (predominantly young) voters gave Trump 800k more votes on net. Really not that significant, roughly the same number of people swung from Biden to third party. Dems aren’t hiring consultants to “understand the spaces” of Jill Stein voters!
The key demos consist of people who already voted for biden. On, net, Trump gained 3 million votes from biden voters staying home, and another 2.7 million people from swing voting (again on net, there’s actually millions of Trump-Harris swing voters!)
True
Interesting article but I think it's more nuanced. For one if Democrats took your advice and let go of identity politics they probably would get an increase in the young male vote. Also pro growth Abundance type stuff tends to play better with men than women so probably true for that as well.
I could definitely see this being the case! But I just don't want "it might help win young men" to become an accepted sort of justification, because then we might end up doing the sorts of things that will *really* win over young men...
The party is making panicking noises because the assumed voters of women and minorities are not terribly enthused about voting for the alleged 'centrism' of Biden/Harris/Walz. If they were confident in being able to dig up Pete Buttigieg for another run, there would be no need to try canvassing with Bernie Sanders and AOC first, to try and get the young men back in line.
Sorry, is there doubt about Buttigieg being ready & willing in 2028? I thought he was for sure in, and it was just idiots panicking that he wasn't Rogan-y enough to win young men.
Also, I'm gonna contest the minorities not being enthused: as much as Bernie had outsized support from men, he had even more outsized support from whites (probably for income-confounded luxury belief reasons). Minority voters really liked Biden; minority *men* disliked Harris (but only because men suck), and the rest of the coalition hates Trumpism enough to fall in line. I seriously doubt there are enough diehard DEI-ideologues left to be a real threat.
(Of course, Yascha Mounk thinks The Resistance Is Gonna Be Woke [https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-resistance-is-gonna-be-woke], which has me worried. And even so, I'd rather be woke than socialist, if it becomes palatable to the median voter again by '28.)
I'm sure Pete himself is willing, but there's no telling if the party apparatchiks have decided if it is His Turn yet.
"Minority voters really liked Biden; minority *men* disliked Harris (but only because men suck), and the rest of the coalition hates Trumpism enough to fall in line. I seriously doubt there are enough diehard DEI-ideologues left to be a real threat."
Correct, Bernie is a white vote grabber. That's why they sent him out with AOC. Although one supposes that there are better people available than AOC for winning the votes of minority men. Relying on the coalition of hating Trump to win didn't work two times out of three.
The "DEI-ideologues", better named as the Obama wing, are far from dead, and are currently nipping the whole Abundance agenda in the bud, as Benthams Bulldog documents: https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-unfuck-america-tour-is-why-the
Personally I don't think they need to specifically target or reach out to young men. They just need to stop talking like a bunch of people with Masters' Degrees in Discourse Studies from West Coast universities, and talk like normal people instead. If they do that they will pull a lot of voters back, including more than enough young men. Enjoyed this take though!
Soldiers do their own laundry!
Damn! Foiled...
I agree that there's some ways dems could try and/or succeed in increasing the male vote that would be bad both on the merits and in terms of broader politics. However since I think there's other ways that woud not be bad and might work (of course not 100% sure anything will work why I am saying probably) I think dems should still try winning over young men. It just should be balanced with other considerations like not turning off other constituencies or not having bad politics on the merits.
Just when the Democrats seem to be starting to grapple with past errors and that shitting on men is bad politics, bad for society and immoral, in comes another stale take….shitting on men. 🤦♂️
The Democratic Party just can’t seem to do any soul searching as its supporters just insist on pulling it backwards to things that keep losing elections. After the first Trump election it was thought they’d find their way back; nope, went even more progressive. After Biden won, it was thought he’d keep the far left crazy wing of the party in check; nope, out of touch trans ideology and Hamas support reached new highs. After Trump won again, surely now they know how serious it is that they reflect and realise that shitting on half the country is a bad idea, right? Right?! Tbd…..
What’s the point in highlighting how young men went from Bernie to Trump, only to make the case that Democrats don’t need young men to win anyway? (Also, most demographics moved toward Trump in last election, not just that unimportant one).
> stale take
Hurtful. I shit on men for cool and edgy reasons: https://mistakesweremade.substack.com/p/the-y-chromosome-is-dysgenic
> insist on pulling it backwards to things that keep losing elections
Right, I think that's what the Piker-ist "we need young men" crowd are doing. I, on the other hand, think we should move forward with regulation-slashing, pro-growth industrial policy. Trump won because the economy was in poor shape after COVID. If we can build things and create jobs and become wealthier, we can win! Easy as that.
> What’s the point in highlighting how young men went from Bernie to Trump
To demonstrate who young men really are: revolutionaries, radicals, altogether a very nasty bloc.
> most demographics moved toward Trump in last election, not just that unimportant one
Agreed. This is why I think that even if young men have their own weird set of priorities, it's not that important for Democrats to reckon with. Trump won because of general economic immiseration. Quit the immiserating, and you win! Young men are, indeed, "unimportant."
It can be edgy, and still stale if it’s been done a lot. So much that it pushes that demographic toward politicians that should have no business winning their vote.
When you say “build things”, who do you think will be doing that building? Is it the 45-69 year old female demographic? Sorry, that was too sarcastic. You get the point.
Even if young men are unimportant, you don’t think shitting on that demographic (or at the very least) not catering to it, will make other demographics look at you askance? I’m personally seeing a lot of mothers of young men be revolted by how their boys are treated by society and media, etc. They’re a voting block too. You can’t visibly deride a large chunk of society and expect the rest to always go along. Deplorables, anyone?! That’s all.
Let your party go through its soul searching, grieving process so that it can hopefully settle on your Abundance politics the “right” way.
Ok, ah, to be clear, I don't think Pete Buttigieg should go on Fox and say "fuck young men, they're the worst ever." And I think we should hire young men to do construction jobs, of course. (Which, incidentally, could win many of them back.)
It's just that I don't think we should be spending millions of dollars to specifically woo young men. I'm doing the derision in order to convince people not to care and because it's fun—I don't think anyone with a real audience needs to be doing it, or that we should run on an explicitly anti-young-men platform, or anything.
Ok fair enough. And I get you’re being edgy; I don’t mean to be the old grandpa or uncle taking all the fun away.
It’s clearly because I think you’re smart and a good writer that I worry, since you will have a large audience in due time. I appreciate that you’re mindful of the distinction of you saying these things vs Pete. I just think a lot of ‘you-s’ combined together have a lot more influence than you’re giving credence to and you do give license to readers who may run with these ideas further than you feel comfortable.
But I’ll stop now.
fascinating women feel empowered to make these considerations absent the component of violence. The real test is maintaining a feminized managerial society that lords over stronger and more violent beings. The old social contract was ‘I protect, you obey’. It seems like women haven’t given much thought to what that means going forward
Is this a joke? You realize, especially with the violent crime stats, you’re talking about black men right? Are you this racist?
I think it’s just satire.nobody can take this shit seriously 😀🤪
Democrats need to do better with young men because they need more than to simply win the presidency, they need a governing majority if they are going to be able to turn the country away from the path towards competitive authoritarianism. If Democrats cannot make significant progress in solving the nations problems within a 4 year time span, they will continue to lose the presidency to people like Trump. And those Republican presidents will keep aggressively expanding the power of the presidency until it the office is an elected dictator. That institutional arrangement will suit the Chamber of Commerce just fine, but would effectively foreclose the ability of the government to raise taxes, expand social programs, or enhance the capability of the government to provide public goods because the president would be forced to rely on the oligarchs to maintain their own power to such an extent that they would have to keep them happy as a class.
It seems like you're saying we need to fight populism with populism, which I think is very wrong. Any attempt to maintain the status quo is better than capitulation to neverending revolutionary / counter-revolutionary chaos.
The status quo is Republicans winning the White House 50% of the time and using the power of the presidency to turn the US into Hungary. And then Democrats will win the presidency 50% of the time (for a while) and consolidate the expanded powers of the presidency because the only way to advance the party’s agenda is through executive orders because Democrats cannot win a legislative majority. Refusing to embrace populism is a positive embrace of the presidency as an elected dictator. The status quo is that the US is going to cease to be a liberal democracy.
'If the Democrats mostly abandon the young male vote but make it up among older and more educated women, they’ll certainly come out on top'
'they’ll need to discard their insane, puritanical identitarian politics of the last decade'
Pick one.
Although I frequently feel this way, your age really shows with this one; I can't imagine any man over the age of 30 writing this. Men don't vote for chaos, any more than women caused the fall of the Roman empire. There is a masculine urge towards heroism/achievement/etc, but I don't think this is that relevant a lens toward understanding voting patterns because its impact is fairly indirect. Just because a lens can explain something doesn't mean it's productive or will highlight the right pain points, and this applies to a lot of the points you make here.
Ah, you're saying you've noticed a repeated pattern where my youth and maleness lead to impulsive and unthoughtful behavior?..
The idea that this would play no role in young men's voting habits is patently insane! I'm saying that prioritizing the young male vote has consequences—you have to specifically change your policy toward things that young men like. If the polling is good for young men liking a slightly wonky Abundance Agenda, that's awesome, but our pursuit of Abundance shouldn't hinge on it. Because my sense is that the things young men like—yes, politically—are often not-so-overlapped with the things that are good.
Nah, not at all, because you're exactly right, that would be a sign of agreement. I hate to say "you'll understand when you're older" but I do think this, because I used to see the world as you do, and I don't think I could've changed my own mind. Some ideas just take time to develop; it's nothing to do with hormones, or even gender, really. I'll try to put my intuition to words anyway, but I'll be pleasantly surprised if you get anything out of it.
The basic issue is one of framing. This is a problem of narrative and vibey shit, it's definitionally not about logic. The usual signal for this is snarky responses or people pointing out your identity instead of addressing your points. You may think this doesn't matter, but it usually indicates some discord in how you and others frame things.
You've chosen a lens that is incredibly harsh on more than half of the world for... What appears to be no reason at all. This is of benefit to no one, and I don't think you've made any kind of case at all for your choice of priorities, and I suspect the logical implications for how you or I should be living our lives most ethically within your own framework will be brutal and untenable. This feels like someone who's absorbed the unreasonable moral code of others and taken it to a logical conclusion, without having had time to step back and reconsider their moral framework. You get to choose your lens, take advantage of it.
The way I would try to phrase it is something along the lines of: I'm not convinced that deciding that y-chromosomes are dysgenic is any more, or less, repugnant a conclusion than that some additional murders are worth having dudes around for. This style of issue is pervasive in this piece (and of course the dysgenic Y one lol), often in more subtle ways, and addressing them all separately would be nearly impossible.
Forgot to say: when I say "haven't made any case at all" I don't mean you haven't thought about it or even that you haven't argued it. What I mean is that the *choice of caring about underlying principles over repercussions of said principles has not been adequately justified.* It's too ground-up, if that makes sense. This was totally unclear, sorry about that.
This just doubles down on the Democratic Party’s strategy of divide and conquer - appeal to, and represent, the “right” identity groups, demonize and defenestrate the “wrong” groups. Vote for us and we’ll give you a share of the loot, cross us and you’ll be the one who gets looted.
Contrary to popular belief, the Constitution’s “general welfare” clause wasn’t a blank check for creating a modern welfare state. It was a statement that the federal government’s role was to benefit all the country’s citizens and not just special interests or favored demographic groups. Obviously, we’ve fallen far short of that ideal, but that’s no reason to throw it out. And it’s certainly no reason to openly mock the principle by writing off entire segments of the population as inherently flawed and unworthy.
Young people are not a particularly valuable voting bloc in general. But Democrats do need men not only as voters but also as first-class participants in the party.