On Men and Democrats

I've been saying the same thing for a decade

I recently read my friend Stuart Stevens’ essay responding to Scott Galloway’s concerns about young men. Stuart’s argument is thoughtful, made in good faith, and fundamentally wrong.

His central point is that today’s young men are not living through the horrors endured by previous generations. They are, as he quips, “vaping in their mom’s basement” rather than dying with mustard gas in their lungs. On its face, that is undeniably true. American young men, for the most part, in 2026 are wealthier, healthier, safer, and more comfortable than the doughboys in 1918.

But it is also so far beside the point that it’s in a different zip code.

The men who choked on mustard gas in the trenches of France possessed something that many young men today struggle to find: an unquestioned identity. They knew who they were: American sons, workers, husbands, soldiers. Society may have demanded too much of them, but it rarely left them wondering what was expected of them.

Today’s young men often experience the opposite. They have unprecedented freedom, and suffer from a want of purpose. The question is not simply whether they can buy a house or earn a comfortable living; the deeper question is whether they know what it means to become a man. They are missing a masculine identity formerly provided by a factory, a coal mine, or a rifle platoon. Masculinity isn’t about dominance; it’s about earning an identity through responsibility.

Much of the conversation about young men has become trapped in economics: housing costs, student loan debt, the gig economy. Setting aside the central thesis of the Democratic Party’s platform (if we have an attractive enough economic policy we can advocate occasionally insane social policy), of course a twenty-five-year-old would like to own a home or start a family. But economics alone cannot explain the Democratic failure to win male voters, the “manosphere,” or the lunacy of incels and school shooters.

Young men did not flock to MAGA because they had carefully compared tax policy or monetary policy; it's way more visceral than that. They are responding to identity. Simply, their masculine identity. You don’t lose the Latino vote nationally because of student loans; you lose it because of the machismo gap.

Politics has always been about identity as much as policy. People vote for parties that make them feel seen, and when one side increasingly tells young men that external masculine traits are, at best, suspect and, at worst, dangerous, and the other tells them they are strong, needed, and capable, we get Donald Trump. Whether that message is always healthy or always true is (and it is neither, because MAGA masculinity is LARPING) beside the point, because it is a message about belonging.

None of this is an argument against the extraordinary gains women have made over the past half century. Those gains were long overdue. Opening professions, universities, boardrooms, and public life to half the population and their talents has made America stronger, wealthier, and more innovative. But every social advance has downstream effects, and we should be willing to discuss them honestly.

For generations, work provided many men with their primary identity. A job was not merely a paycheck. It answered the question, “Who are you?” A man could simply say, “I’m a carpenter,” “I’m a firefighter,” or “I’m a steelworker.” His occupation situated him within his family and his community. As economic and cultural changes have reshaped the labor market and traditional social institutions have weakened, that source of identity has become less certain. Driving Uber Eats does not make you feel like a man, and neither does working in an office park. They may pay your electric bill but they leave a vacuum.

I write this because long ago I lived it.

I did not become a Navy SEAL to avenge September 11. In fact, I checked into BUD/S in July of 2001, months before the attacks. I wanted to become a SEAL because I wanted an identity. I wanted to belong to something that demanded excellence, sacrifice, and courage. If I had possessed enough talent to become an Olympian on the track, I would have pursued that instead. The point was never simply the profession; it was the identity that came with striving toward an extraordinary standard.

Young men are searching for exactly that. They want to be special, and they cannot achieve it as easily through work any longer.

They are not necessarily looking for war, but they are looking for purpose and responsibility. They are looking for communities that expect something difficult of them and celebrate their achievement when they succeed. And this is why so many young men gravitate toward military service, combat sports, endurance athletics, firefighting, entrepreneurship, or demanding trades. These pursuits offer more than income. They offer an answer to the question, “Who am I?”

When we dismiss that yearning as nostalgia, privilege, or insecurity, we misunderstand it, and we leave a vacuum that others are eager to fill.

The Democratic Party’s much-discussed “brand problem” with young men will not be solved by a slightly different housing proposal or another tuition subsidy. Those policies are at best secondary. Until Democrats develop a compelling, affirmative vision of honorable masculinity, one that celebrates courage and ambition without apology, they will continue to lose young men.

The question facing America is not whether young men have central heating, smartphones, or better healthcare than their ancestors. Of course they do. The question is whether they know who they are.

History, including contemporary American history, suggests that when societies fail to answer that question constructively, someone else answers it for them.