Democrats are still scratching their heads over why young men keep slipping through their fingers. After years of trading in empty promises and socialist fantasies, it stunned the Left in 2024 when young men broke ranks and cast their votes for Donald Trump. Satellites could probably pick up the wailing from Washington.

Who could possibly be surprised that young men are turning away from a party that openly sneers at masculinity, constantly lectures about so-called “male privilege,” and blames every societal issue on “the patriarchy”?

Instead, gaggles of overpaid consultants huddled in generic hotel conference rooms to solve the Gen Z male riddle as if it were a malfunctioning piece of software. Remember when Democrats launched a $20 million effort just to figure out how to talk to men?

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Despite the hefty price tag, their messaging keeps missing the mark because it’s rooted in the same elite, progressive ideology that alienated working-class men in the first place. Instead of addressing real concerns like economic opportunity, national security, or cultural respect, Democrats are throwing money at consultants and focus groups while ignoring the actual values and frustrations of male voters. The more they spend trying to rebrand themselves, the more obvious it becomes that they don’t understand or even particularly like the men they claim to be trying to reach.

And yet the left still doesn’t understand what’s happening.

The Washington Post certainly doesn’t. After acknowledging that Republicans won young men in the last election and that young Latino and black men in particular swung hard toward Trump, the paper still struggled to grasp the why.

“What happened?” it asks.

Young men in swing states say the Democratic Party abandoned them, leaving them feeling helpless in providing for their families as prices rose and jobs evaporated. They felt no sympathy from the left, who they say brushed away their legitimate economic woes by citing their male privilege. They acknowledge historical patriarchy but assert that doesn’t make them invincible in a job market where graduate unemployment is concentrated among men.

Those are the latest findings in focus groups conducted by the centrist pro-Democratic group Third Way and HIT Strategies with men ages 18 to 29 from swing states including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The men were lower-propensity voters — more likely to turn out in a presidential year than a midterm — and voted for Joe Biden in 2020 but switched to Trump last year.

And here’s the key part:

Men feeling left behind elicits eye rolls in many corners of the Democratic Party. The gender pay gap persists, with women making 85 percent of what men earned in 2024, despite greater female participation in the workforce than in past decades. The numerous calls from party leaders to appeal to the “manosphere” and appear less “woke” also elicit concerns that that means throwing marginalized groups under the bus on issues like trans or women’s rights.

Let’s drop the polite fiction: The Democratic Party doesn’t respect young men or take their concerns seriously. Men, Democrats say, have privilege. If you want to win back men, you don’t do it by rolling your eyes at the issues that concern them or by peddling the debunked gender-pay-gap narrative.

Here’s the cold, hard truth. You cannot run a political party as a cult for the fringe and expect the mainstream, especially young men who still believe in hard work and fundamental truth, to stomach your nonsense forever. When Democrats choose to cater to purple-haired activists with preferred pronouns, bureaucratic meddlers, and billionaire tech lords, they make it crystal clear who counts and who doesn’t.

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