The Democrats’ disconnect with dudes just keeps getting deeper.
While plenty has been made about why men turned away from the Democratic Party in droves last November, no one on the left seems to actually grasp why. Case in point: A report from The New York Times on Sunday about how the Dems are spending tens of millions of dollars… to study how guys talk and how to talk to them.
On Tuesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Batya Ungar-Sargon, author of Second Class, to discuss the new reporting and how the left’s demonization of masculinity has backfired.
The Report
In a report that is simultaneously amusing and bemusing, The New York Times took a deep dive into the mess the Democrats have created for themselves – particularly with men – in a piece titled “Six Months Later, Democrats Are Still Searching for the Path Forward” by Shane Goldmacher.
“The Democratic Party’s tarnished image could not come at a more inopportune moment,” Goldmacher wrote. “In this era of political polarization, the national party’s brand is more important and influential than ever, often driving the outcomes of even the most local of races.”
The Times noted that Democrat operatives and donors have been gathering at luxury hotels to – wait for it – brainstorm ideas for how to win back the working class and male voters they have lost. According to the Associated Press, more than half of young male voters (under 30) voted for Trump in 2024. That figure includes 60 percent of white male voters, one-third of black male voters, and half of young Latino men.
But the headline-making revelation was that the Democrats are sinking $20 million into a project called “Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan” (code-named “SAM” for short) to “study the syntax, language, and content that gains attention and virality in these spaces.”
The study is designed to examine young male voters and how the left can connect with them. One suggestion? Rolling out pro-Democrat ads in video games.
What Went Wrong
In another laughable tidbit, The Times reported some 250 focus group tests found swing voters would label the GOP “lions and sharks” while the Dems are “sloths” and “deer in headlights.” Those spirit animals dovetail, Megyn and Ungar-Sargon said, with how masculinity has been demonized by the left.
Megyn said the main takeaway from Goldmacher’s report is the Dems “don’t get why they’ve lost the working class” and men across the board. “Yes, they have a male issue, but it is separate and apart from their working class issue,” she explained. “Because rich men don’t like them. Poor men don’t like them. Middle class men don’t like them. Only the super high educated rich men are voting Democrat.”
At least part of that, Ungar-Sargon said, is because the left has lost the plot on what it means to be masculine. “You can’t have a functioning society without a healthy respect for masculinity,” she noted. “The normal… ideal for a man is to be a defender, and a protector… and strong in his family, and that none of that is violent or vile or disrespectful to women. This is actually something that women themselves want, and crave, and respect, and love.”
As she explained, there is a link between the gender and class divides the Democrat Party faces. “The idea that somehow that is evil or bad – this idea of toxic masculinity – is very tied to the economy that the Democrats built first with Bill Clinton and NAFTA shipping all of these jobs that require physicality and masculinity and brawn overseas; and then with President [Barack] Obama, who defunded vocational training; and then with Joe Biden, who opened the border and suddenly you have 5 million or 10 million illegals competing in construction work and devaluing the wages in those jobs,” Ungar-Sargon said.
“The language of ‘toxic masculinity’ was an alibi for the dispossession of the working class American male,” she continued. “It justified it. It allowed Democrats to say, ‘They don’t deserve good jobs because masculinity itself is poisonous.’ And of course, nothing could be further from the truth.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Ungar-Sargon by tuning in to episode 1,081 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.