Journalist tells CNN Democrats' advantage with young men 'gone' as they fail to field 'cool guy' candidates
Journalist Peter Hamby warned that the Gen Z male vote is "unrecoverable" for Democrats at this point as Trump has worked to win them over.
Puck News journalist Peter Hamby said Thursday that Democrats' advantage with young men is "completely gone" as former President Trump is successfully appealing to Gen Z with his "macho brand."
CNN anchor Dana Bash hosted a segment focused on the gender gap, with men supporting Trump and women supporting Vice President Kamala Harris. She made special mention of a piece from Hamby, "The Swift Rogan election," noting this phenomenon.
"Can anyone name a Democrat who can go into the media spaces where Trump is popular-the Nelk Boys, Theo Von, Joe Rogan-and make the case for Harris? Bernie Sanders has done several of them, but it hasn’t moved the needle," Hamby wrote in a quote highlighted by Bash. "Walz himself could appear on ’New Heights’ with the Kelce brothers or ‘Pardon My Take’ to talk football… But again, I don’t see how that changes the Gen Z bro vote in a meaningful way at this point."
Hamby argued that Democratic candidates have previously been able to retain young voters across the board, but Harris' loss of young male voters compared to her predecessors speaks volumes.
Puck News journalist Peter Hamby spoke on a CNN segment about how former President Trump is successfully appealing to young men in a way the Democratic Party has failed to do in the past, especially in this election.
CNN'S DANA BASH ARGUES DNC APPEALS TO MEN WHO ARE NOT SO 'TESTOSTERONE-LADEN'
"The Gen Z men vote is kind of unrecoverable at this point," he said on CNN. "So ABC News/Washington Post had a poll last weekend that sorta tracks with some other data I’ve seen. Harris is winning young women by like 38 points, so that gender gap is massive. She’s only winning young men by 3 points over Trump. That drift from 2020 is very real. Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama twice, they could all count on young men, even if they were losing older men. That advantage is now completely gone."
As for why this is happening, he argued, "Some of it is culture, some of it is Trump‘s macho brand, a lot of it is the economy." He also noted that young men’s college enrollment is down and their involvement in the labor force lags behind, even compared to a few years ago.
"And then on top of that, you have the anti-wokeism, and the pronoun stuff, and the things that just appeal to young men- and then Donald Trump, he plays golf with Bryson DeChambeau, he goes on Theo Von, he talks about ZYNs," Hamby added.
Democrats, he argued, have failed to appeal to young men in the same way.
"And, you know, Democrats, I‘m sorry, like, they haven‘t had a cool guy candidate in a while," he said, adding that while Walz can appeal to men, a lot of them are the kind of male voters who wear "The Future is Female" shirts and are already going to vote Democrat.
Former President Trump during his recent appearance on Fox News Channel's "Gutfeld!" (Fox News Channel )
Bash noted that the Harris campaign hasn’t given up entirely on young men, playing a "White Dudes for Harris" commercial being used in a $10-million ad buy on digital platforms.
Washington Post national politics reporter Maeve Reston noted that the ad is centered on economic issues in a way that appeals to younger men. But, citing her own experience on the ground, she said, "It was really striking at her rallies, like, just looking out into that crowd and seeing how female it is."
Reston described it as being difficult at Harris rallies to find men to talk to "because there was a lot of those guys that are, like, in ‘The Future Is Female’ shirt that were brought there by their wives. But it wasn‘t the same thing as like any Obama campaign, for example, where you had sort of like the curious onlookers that were last in the room, kind of checking her out."
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"White men are not a monolith, to borrow a phrase," Hamby said. "A White suburban guy outside of Philly might care about crime, a reason Kamala Harris is struggling in Pennsylvania. She‘s doing worse among White college-educated men in the suburbs than Biden did in 2020."
Wisconsin, he argued, is another story, claiming White men there vote more like the type of man who wears a "The Future is Female" shirt. He said that White college-educated men in places like Madison tend to vote for Democrats at "North Korea-level margins."
"There are different kinds of voters in these different states," he added. "The race is very close and all these states are very different."
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