Former Obama speechwriter David Litt has been making the media rounds for his new book, It’s Only Drowning, which he has touted as the “Hillbilly Elegy for People Who Hate JD Vance.” His media tour follows other admissions from the Left that the Democratic Party has lost touch with much of the country, and particularly young men. Democrats recently launched a $20 million project to “study young men and how Democrats can reach them,” which has been accompanied by lame attempts to cater to young men.
Litt’s book chronicles his emotional journey through an early-onset midlife crisis and existential dread of COVID, which he overcomes with therapy and taking up surfing. Surfing helps him have a hobby other than “reading the news and worrying” and allows him to practice facing his fears.
But surfing also positions him to develop a friendship with his vaguely conservative (but non-voting) brother-in-law, Matt, who is not a D.C. cosmopolitan but rather an electrician who runs his own company. Litt describes their differences: “He drove a Dodge Ram; I drove a Subaru. He lifted weights to death metal; I jogged to Lizzo. He was a Joe Rogan superfan; I was a Stephen Sondheim aficionado.” By no means a man’s man, Litt struggles to find common ground with Matt, but they bond through their surfing experiences.
The book itself is not particularly noteworthy, although much of it is humorous and even self-aware enough to not be an oppressive read. However, whereas Vance’s book sympathetically explained how Trump’s populism appealed to Middle America, Litt’s book, as one reviewer noted, “comes across as elitist, its ideas outdated amid the current moment.”
More interesting than the book itself are Litt’s conclusions about politics and the Democratic Party — because he’s drawing all the wrong ones. Still rearing from its second loss to Trump, the Left is wandering further into the wilderness.
Despite his self-described lack of manly vitality, Litt believes that his surfing experiences led him to discover the key to the “manosphere” (by which he just seems to mean younger men who are generally conservative, and not necessarily alt-right egg-slonkers). When he was asked by Vanity Fair for his “insights” applicable to wider politics, he responded that “at the heart of the manosphere is the idea that you’re self-sufficient. And that no one’s telling you what to do.” Maybe the surfing community is closer to the hippie side, but Litt has utterly missed the mark on what motivates most young men. He characterizes them as if the “manosphere” is a collection of Ayn Rand–era libertarians, rather than understanding them as reacting to a political and cultural landscape decades in decline.
Maybe Litt should have taken better notes from Hillbilly Elegy: the reason working-class men don’t support further Middle Eastern regime-change wars (the example he uses) is not because that involves “someone telling you what to do,” but because coastal elites have been preoccupied with wars on the other side of the world while neglecting their own country as it deteriorated. As an Obama speechwriter, Litt and those like him played an active role in this decline.
Another part of the problem with Litt’s analysis is that believes he’s comprehended the lives of Middle Americans by joining what is in reality an incredibly unique and niche community. What’s more, Litt is hardly living the life of your average surfer dude; he takes surfing trips to Spain, France, Hawaii, and an artificial wave pool in Waco, Texas. Good for him that he’s had these great experiences, but the fact that he believes surfers in foreign countries and at expensive wave parks are representative of the MAGA base at large highlights how out of touch D.C. types truly are.
However, Litt’s biggest takeaway from writing his memoir is that “Democrats Need More Hobbies” if they’re going to win elections. He concludes that “the great divide between [him and the voters who reelected Trump] is that I constantly think about politics and they do not.” Citing a poll on how much voters paid attention to news about the election, Litt says that Harris was favored by a majority of those who “paid a great deal of attention to politics,” whereas Trump won among those answering “none at all.” Litt’s takeaway: Democrats need to have hobbies to pander to those uninformed masses of Trump supporters. “The way we can do it is by demonstrating we have interests and lives outside of politics. Candidates talking about things they do for fun outside of work might be more important than ever,” he wrote.
Again, Litt spotlights a poignant reality but displays a bewildering blindness to its implications. Yes, Trump appeals to those who don’t constantly live in the world of politics. But the reason most people don’t constantly follow politics is not because they have a bunch of hobbies, but because they have real lives and real struggles. Normal people do have hobbies, but they also have families (with kids), bills to pay, and God to worship.
Rather than focusing on hobbies as the means to understand conservatives, those on the left could start by leading more meaningful lives. For example, Litt (though married) has intentionally avoided having children, just like many in coastal elite circles. During the COVID lockdowns, Litt gave an interview during which he was asked his favorite quarantine activity. His response: “Luxuriating in the fact that we have no young children.” The fact that so many of America’s ruling class choose to remain childless certainly contributes to the country’s divisions.
In contrast, Litt’s solution is for Democrats to be more trivial. But as he points out, Democrats are already trying “desperately” to make politics fun and “appear relatable,” and they’re failing spectacularly. Joy was the theme of the last Democratic National Convention, and Harris could not stop trying to make “joy cometh in the morning” catch on. But Democrats’ politics are obviously not fun. Litt’s advice is that Democratic candidates need to show off more non-political hobbies, participate in more episodes of entertainment podcasts like Call Her Daddy, and “double down on … traditional celebrities such as Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, who both endorsed Harris in 2024.” If only Luke Skywalker and the Avengers had assembled to endorse Harris, she would have won!
The reality is that Democrats have consistently brought their hobbies and frivolities into politics, and it’s largely been insufferably cringeworthy. Harris tried to appear normal last fall by acting as if she had an obsession with Doritos and collard greens. In 2016, Hillary Clinton claimed that she always carried hot sauce in her purse, in imitation of a Beyonce lyric. When questioned whether she was just pandering to black people, Clinton countered, “Okay. Is it working?”
The great irony of the Left’s attempts to force fun into politics is that Trump (and Vance as well) excels at being fun with effortless ease. And no one would say that Trump’s golfing hobby is the reason he appeals to so many Americans. Trump is genuinely a generational comedic talent. He doesn’t need to force it.
In a viral moment, Vance recently recounted a story where Trump pressed a big red button in the Oval Office during an intense phone call, “and he looks at me and goes, ‘Nuclear.’” A few minutes later, a staffer brings a can of Diet Coke. The story is humorous, but it also shows that Trump’s wit is authentic, even when the cameras aren’t present. The story reveals one other key point: Trump is so engaging not because he brings hobbies into politics, but because he’s able to have fun while dealing with serious things.
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