It’s hardly news that Democrats have a Man Problem. What was once called “the Gender Gap” — ie, the GOP’s weakness with women voters — has become such a “Man Gap” for the Democrats that it’s one story after another lately about what the party can do to win them back.
I promise never to type the phrase “man gap” again. You’re welcome.
If memory serves, I first saw the press perform its brow-furrowing/hand-wringing mock-concern over the Gender Gap more than 40 years ago with Ronald Reagan’s supposed inability to attract “enough” women. Neither the hand-wringing nor the brow-furrowing stopped when Reagan won reelection with 60% of the vote.
“Gotta go after those suburban women” has been the media’s advice to the Right for seemingly ever.
Wine Moms, Walmart Moms, Single Ladies… the GOP’s inability to appeal to all these semi-niche groups was supposed to doom them. What happened instead is, the Democrats decided to literally drive away millions of men.
Democrats are the party of suburban women. And urban women. And especially wine-and-Xanax women. They’ve spent so long in their own estrogen-filled sensory deprivation chamber that they still think Tim Walz — aka Gov. Jazz Hands — was just the kind of manly man that Kamala Harris needed to win back the bros.
The problem with today’s Democrats, as Glenn Reynolds put it last week, is that the party is “built by and for bat**** crazy upper middle class white women,” and I’d add, enabled by grifters like Stacey Abrams, who hide their corruption behind a façade of racial grievance.
I linked to this story a couple of days ago on Instapundit, but it’s apropos to today’s discussion: “As Republicans Pass Tax Cuts, Democrats Propose ‘Disability Reproductive Equity Day.’” While Donald Trump is trying to get his 2017 tax cuts made permanent, Democrat women are yammering in Congress about ‘reproductive equity’ for disabled women who, by and large, cannot bear children.
What are reasonably sane men (and lovely Red Zone women like the VodkaWife™) supposed to do with a party like that?
If I’m being totally honest — and my small-l libertarian instincts hate to admit this — there’s a masculine appeal in the kind of massive projects that only Washington can marshal the resources to complete. They’re also the kind of massive projects that Democrats used to celebrate.
Hoover Dam? The Manhattan Project? The TVA? All FDR.
Apollo program? JFK.
Ike gets the credit for starting the Interstate Highway System, but LBJ expanded and completed it.
Even I can look back on those and smile — and Longtime Sharp VodkaPundit Readers™ know what a cynic I am about government projects.
At the local level, yesterday’s Democrats represented the interests of working-class men who did things like build the Hoover Dam, and to coin a phrase, Made America Great in the First Place. Or at least that’s how Dems portrayed themselves. The fact is, the party represented the unions, not the union guys — and planted the seeds of Detroit’s destruction. But that’s a discussion for another day.
So what happens when today’s Democrats try to wrap themselves in the legacy of yesterday’s builders?
This:
Critics rightly pointed out just as soon as Maddow’s ad dropped that today’s Democrats would never approve the construction of anything like Hoover Dam. In fact, the country’s most thoroughly feminized/progressive state, California, is busy tearing down its dams appease the Earth Mother Goddess.
I’d also point out that it’s likely just as fake as Walz’s ability to “code speak” to straight guys. Judging by some video artifacts, I’d bet next month’s car payment that Maddow is green-screened with a fan turned up to “Stoic Gale.”
Today’s female Democrats can’t even fake it convincingly, which is ironic when you look at today’s Democrat males.
So my advice to today’s Democrats is this: Stop worrying about the niche concerns and luxury beliefs of the Franzia & Xanax crowd before they take the whole country with them on a Chardonnay-fueled nervous breakdown.
But I only offer this advice because I know they won’t take it.
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