Common knowledge is that Gen Z is a hive of leftist voters but, like most generalizations, this isn't exactly true. As awash with leftism as the voting youth is, there's a solid chunk that is conservative or at least more right-leaning than not, and you'll find that well among Gen Z males.
I reported on this interesting trend last year when a study found that high school seniors were largely divided on their political beliefs through gender. Girls tended to lean Democrat while boys saw a radical spike to conservative.
(READ: The Report That Gen Z Are All Democrats Is Greatly Exaggerated)
Now, with November approaching faster than Democrats would like, they're only now discovering that Biden's popularity with the male youth, including black and Latino men, is dangerously low. Democrat strategist James Carville seemed particularly shocked.
“I’ve been very vocal about this,” Carville said on his podcast. “It’s horrifying, our numbers among younger voters, particularly younger blacks and younger Latinos and whatever, younger people of color. Particularly males. We’re not shedding them, they’re leaving in droves.”
Carville's belief is that they aren't explaining how their future is in danger if they vote for Trump.
"I don’t think they’re going to buy that,” he said. “Try if you want to, but I don’t think we’re going to appeal to the better angels of their natures. Because of complicated economic forces, they don’t feel like their future is secure in the United States. And it may not be.”
I'm no expert strategist but it seems to me that the expert strategists in the room don't understand why young men are drifting away. Hint: It's only partially about economics.
Carville said, "They're leaving in droves." That's not necessarily the case. In truth, the Democrat Party is pushing them out.
As I explained at the time, young men are going conservative because the Democrats have been treating men like literal garbage.
@thebrandonmorse The simple reason boys and young men are trending #conservative #boys #men #masculinity ♬ original sound - TheBrandonMorse
What I said in the article at the time remains the same. The Democrats have become a very gynocentric party that wants to appeal to women on a shallow level that lends to a sense of self-victimization. This usually means finger-wagging at men, belittling them, and blaming them for everything bad that ever happens while convincing women they're not accountable for anything.
As such, men go elsewhere:
The Democrat Party, which invests heavily in modern feminist ideals, has reiterated its disdain for men and masculinity repeatedly. In an age where boys are being inundated by the leftist narrative that they’re awful just for being boys, they’re naturally going to migrate to places and people who don’t look at them as defective.
As such, boys are listening to people like Joe Rogan, Tim Pool, Ben Shapiro, and more. Boys have effectively migrated out of the bubble the Democrats attempted to set for them and as such, messaging from other sources is reaching them more easily. You can even see this happening in the entertainment sector where the “toxic masculinity” of Japanese manga and anime has now outstripped the American industry by leaps and bounds.
It's entirely unlikely that the Democrats are going to win men back without a massive cultural shift within the left, and as men continue to be painted as people who should be second-class citizens by celebrities, feminist groups, and politicians, the bleed will only increase.
This will ultimately be disastrous for Democrats, especially as Gen Z gets older and becomes more economically aware as Carville suggested.
It also doesn't help that statistically, wives tend to vote the same way their husbands do. This will only further encourage the left to drive a wedge between men and women, furthering the divide and driving more and more men further to the right.
If the left truly wants men to come back it would have to stop painting masculinity as a problem, but it can't do that because "masculinity bad" is the main talking point of feminist groups and echoed by LGBT groups as well.
My prediction is that at some point the left will begin reacting by generating the narrative that masculinity is so toxic that it causes men to embrace "far right" positions like...secure borders, safe streets, lower taxes, and free speech. Their bubbled belief system will cause them to believe that this will somehow convince more people to join the left not to be labeled as a right-wing extremist, but if there's one emotion that overpowers the fear of shame it's the pleasure of spite.
And men have a lot of reasons to feel spite for the Democrat Party.
