Posted on Wednesday, May 28, 2025
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by Shane Harris
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63 Comments
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In the latest sign that Democrats still have no idea why they lost the 2024 election, the party is planning to spend $20 million on an initiative called “Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan.” Spoiler: it’s every bit as ridiculous and cringeworthy as it sounds.
The New York Times was the first to report on the proposal, known as “SAM” for short. As they explain, SAM “promises investment to ‘study the syntax, language and content that gains attention and virality in [male] spaces.’ It recommends buying advertisements in video games, among other things.”
It’s easy to see why Democrats are panicking about their standing with men. Last November, Kamala Harris lost six points overall among male voters compared to Joe Biden’s performance in 2020. That shift was more pronounced among racial minorities – Trump performed seven points better with Black men and an astonishing 12 points better with Latino men.
Young men – and young minority men especially – moved toward Trump at an even greater clip, a worrying sign given that Democrats typically rely on winning a large majority of young voters. According to the Associated Press, Trump gained about 20 points with young Black and Latino men, and he won about 60 percent of White male voters under 30.
Meanwhile, Harris either remained stagnant or lost ground with women compared to Biden’s performance in 2020. She lost seven points with Latina women, four points with Asian American women, and one point with women overall. She remained stagnant with White women and Black women.
Translation? Trump’s victory last year was largely driven by men – and if Democrats don’t win back those voters soon, they’re going to have a hard time winning any elections moving forward.
Liberals deserve some credit for recognizing that they have a “men problem.” But they have thus far utterly failed to realize why increasing numbers of men – and young men in particular – aren’t buying what Democrats are selling. It has nothing to do with “syntax” and everything to do with the fact that the American Left has for decades now waged an all-out war on masculinity.
Liberals have recast traditional male virtues – strength, protectiveness, resilience, leadership – as sins against their new religion of progressive orthodoxy. Boys are told that wanting to lead or compete is “toxic,” that showing confidence or physical courage is a form of “patriarchal aggression,” and that desiring to provide for or protect their families is somehow oppressive to women. Even fatherhood has been devalued, with leftist pundits and activists insisting that “father figures” are interchangeable or unnecessary.
In the world of modern liberalism, masculinity isn’t something to be guided or elevated – it’s something to be dismantled. We see this in schools that punish boys for being too energetic, in universities that teach young men to apologize for their very existence, and in workplaces where showing ambition or assertiveness is treated as a moral failing if you’re male.
The Left has gone so far down this feminized rabbit hole that even simple male pastimes are now suspect.
Take, for instance, the liberal media’s bizarre narrative that working out is right-wing, extremist, and even racist. Back in 2022, Time Magazine published an article on the supposed “White Supremacist Origins of Exercise.” That same year, MSNBC worried about “the far-right’s obsession with fitness.”
By far the gem of this genre was a 2024 Zoe Williams opinion piece for The Guardian which declared, “Getting fit is great – but it could turn you into a rightwing jerk.” As Williams matter-of-factly informs us, “The more self-actualized you become, the higher you are on self-righteousness, blaming other people’s problems on their failure to be as healthy as you.”
The American Left has also gone after the simple act of enjoying a steak as a supposed act of right-wing extremism. The Atlantic declared earlier this year that “the rise of meat-eating is part of the larger wave of right-wing influence on American culture,” while The Nation informed us back in 2020 that red meat had become “the red pill for the alt right.”
But undoubtedly the most jaw-dropping headline came from Newsweek last September: “How Hot Girls Became the Right’s New Obsession.”
In sum, if we are to believe liberal media headlines from the past two years, lifting weights, eating meat, and being attracted to beautiful women are all now “right-wing” acts if you’re a man. It’s clear that the Left waged this crusade to scold and demoralize men into abandoning those activities, but it’s had the opposite effect. Men have been told for so long that the things they naturally want to do are right-wing that they’ve internalized it, and now that is being reflected at the ballot box.
It doesn’t help matters that Democrats have effectively exiled all the masculine energy from their party. The fact that Tim Walz and Pete Buttigieg are billed as “masculine” Democrats says it all about the party’s complete failure to understand what men look for in role models.
The American Left doesn’t have a messaging problem with men—it has a contempt problem. Until Democrats stop ridiculing the values, interests, and instincts that define healthy masculinity, they’ll keep losing the very voters they’re now spending millions to understand.
Shane Harris is the Editor in Chief of AMAC Newsline. You can follow him on X @shaneharris513.
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