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Democrats are rightfully panicked that even with the millions of illegals they are registering to vote, they won’t be able to cheat their way to victory in November. Most concerning of all to them is (Vice?) President Kamala Harris’ inability to draw male voters, so her campaign has desperately begun trying to win over a voting bloc the Left neither respects nor understands. This has resulted in cringe-inducing levels of pandering, including a new pro-Kamala political ad targeting men that is being widely acknowledged as “the cringiest political ad ever.”
Democrats adamantly insist that men are reluctant to vote for Kamala because they are locked into a longstanding, patriarchal, sexist mindset. This is the same excuse Hillary Clinton fell back on in her 2016 loss to Trump. “Yes, I do think [misogyny] played a role,” she told reporters after the election, adding that it is “very much a part of the landscape politically, socially and economically.”
[Fact check: false. Misogyny is not “very much a part of the landscape politically, socially and economically.” Hillary couldn’t become President not because she’s a woman but because she’s an unlikeable, power-mad radical and kleptocrat who reeks of contempt for America and its citizens.]
So ever since the Democrat national convention back in August, the Left has been making a coordinated push to sell Doug “Second Gentleman” Emhoff and Harris’ running mate Tim Walz as models of a more evolved, “21st century masculinity” (as viewed through a feminist lens). What characterizes this new-and-improved manliness is a deferential willingness to step aside and let a woman take the reins of power. That’s it – that’s the only use the feminized Left has for men: to get out of the way because hey, “The Future is Female.”
This hyping of a new masculinity is, needless to say, insulting and condescending to men. Actress Jennifer Garner, for example, recently gushed unconvincingly to supporters at a Harris/Walz rally, “God, is there anything sexier than a man who is like, men for Kamala? Woohoo!” Recognizing that Democrats are hemorrhaging black men who are defecting to the Donald Trump camp, (former?) President Barack Obama even shamed fellow “brothers” in Pittsburgh on Thursday with an avuncular lecture that real men vote for a woman.
But no Democrat male outreach has been quite so pathetic a failure as a new political ad that is stunning in its awkwardness and cluelessness about its intended audience.
The 90-second video — from a progressive activist organization called Vote Save America and directed by Jimmy Kimmel Live! alumnus Jacob Reed — features a handful of men in various “manly” settings like a home gym, a ranch, and the back of a pickup truck. All of it feels stiffly staged by an ad film crew that wouldn’t know manly if it spanked their chapped behinds during a Pride Parade.
“I’m a man,” each of the men asserts directly to the camera.
“Man enough to cook my steak rare,” declares a man who clearly has never sat on a pickup truck tailgate before.
“Man enough to deadlift 500 and braid the shit out of my daughter’s hair,” says another man sitting on a workout bench.
“You think I’m afraid to rebuild a carburetor? I eat carburetors for breakfast,” a man in a cowboy hat blusters oddly. Maybe that’s what accounts for his obesity.
“I’ll tell you another thing I’m sure as shit not afraid of: women,” says a skinny guy whose cursing and unbuttoned plaid shirt are intended to signify manliness. The other men echo this brave sentiment.
“They want to control their bodies? I say, go for it,” says a bearded old geezer standing next to a motorcycle.
“They want to use IVF to start a family? I’m not afraid of families,” says Unbuttoned Plaid Shirt Man, which is odd because the Democrat Party has intentionally wreaked catastrophic damage to the nuclear family.
“Woman wants to be president?” he says as awkwardly posed Tailgate Guy adds with a lisp, “Well, I hope she has the guts to look me right in the eye and accept my full-throated endorsement.”
They then all declare that they are man enough to support women, just as they are man enough to “be emotional” and cry at movies such as Love, Actually and Good Will Hunting.
Unbuttoned Plaid Shirt Man complains that he is “sick of so-called men domineering, belittling and controlling women, just so they can feel more powerful.”
The ad wraps up with the paid actors declaring that they love women who support their families and take charge. Tailgate Guy proclaims, “I’m man enough to help them win.”
The ad justifiably drew almost universal mockery on social media, and yet director Reed believes it will resonate with male voters. Even his defense of the ad was cringeworthy; he wrote on his Substack:
With the rise of role models like Tim Walz and Doug Emhoff on the national stage, I think the left is finally finding its footing on how to talk about masculinity — I think we’re overdue for a redefinition of what it means to be a man in America and I hope this campaign can start to shape that conversation. Because even though it’s more sketch comedy than political ad, what these men are saying is true — except being afraid of bears. A bear will straight-up kill you.
Sexism is not the reason Kamala can’t attract male voters. Even Republican men, whom the Left sneer at as misogynist troglodytes, would have no problem voting for the right woman for POTUS, but men won’t vote for Kamala quite simply because she is epically incompetent and unpresidential, among other weaknesses. Politics aside, she is just not a leader.
The Left has spent half a century or more emasculating Western civilization because traditional masculinity is the first and last line of defense against a totalitarian state. They have demonized manhood as “toxic” and raged that we are to blame for a “rape culture.” They have actively infiltrated and dismantled boys’ and men’s organizations like the Boys Scouts of America in order to eradicate male spaces. And now they unilaterally declare they have invented a new, more progressive masculinity as embodied by beta males like Emhoff and Walz and Tailgate Guy, and they expect us to vote them into permanent, one-party power with the lightweight diversity hire Kamala Harris at the helm.
This may be a winning strategy for pampered Hollywood wusses like Mark Ruffalo or John Legend, but for the vast majority of independent-minded, hard-working, “gender-normative” fathers and husbands across America who embody an unforced true masculinity, it’s a non-starter.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior