Matt Fleming: Democrats do have a man problem, and it’s their fault

Vice President Kamala Harris has a problem with men, but it’s not based on sexism.

Polls are showing a massive gender gap and Democrats are scrambling to fix the problem, but they have so far not acknowledged their years-long attempt to promote beta males.

More on beta males shortly.

At a recent campaign stop, former President Barack Obama, the country’s lecturer in chief, blamed the issue on sexism in an attempt to guilt-trip wavering voters to support Harris.

“Part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that,” Obama said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Though I have no doubt there are some men who don’t want to see a woman president, I think in Harris’ case it’s more likely that she is talking right past many men.

It’s like when Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren blamed sexism for her presidential campaign flaming out in 2020. As I argued then, and is still true today, it was Warren who was the problem, not the men of America.

Men will vote for a woman. There is an abundance of election results to show that. But men, like women, are not going to vote for just any woman. If that were the case, I’d put the whole thing back on Obama and ask why he wasn’t supporting Republican Nikki Haley a few months ago. If he were to answer me, he’d probably say Haley doesn’t speak to his issues.

Exactly.

There are likely many factors causing the gender gap, like Harris’ underwhelming performances, or the waning effectiveness of Democrats’ tired strategy to be simply the alternative to former President Donald Trump, or any number of policies. But one thing that stands out is Democrats’ constant attempts to make masculinity a bad thing.

Masculinity gone awry causes all of the ills of society, after all. For example, Gov. Gavin Newsom blamed mass shootings on misogyny and toxic masculinity.

And yet, few see the connection between these very hot takes and the gender gap. In 2023, Politico conducted a roundtable discussion with prominent Democratic consultants and academics to discuss “Democrats Have a Man Problem. These Experts Have Ideas for Fixing It.”

But instead of examining their attitudes towards masculinity, they just serve heaping helpings of beta males.

For example, Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, is usually held up as the model of modern masculinity (though that’s been recently undercut by allegations of him beating an ex-girlfriend and news that he impregnated the nanny, ending his first marriage).

A few weeks ago, former MSNBC host Jen Psaki told Emhoff he “reshaped the perception of masculinity.” To whom did he reshape it, exactly? No one knows.

But what we do know is that Emhoff recently told a story where his spin class was the setting. I have nothing against spin class and think it’s awesome that Emhoff is taking care of himself, but I’ve never heard a man tell a story where the setting was spin class. It’s just not relatable.

But it wasn’t so much that he didn’t know how to load the gun, it was that this was a (failed) staged event based simply to appeal to men, as if men were on the fence until they saw Walz in an orange vest and unloaded shotgun. The only thing that could have made this cornier would have been if he was eating a chili dog outside the Tastee Freez.

Don’t get me wrong, liking football, knowing how to load a gun, being comfortable all the time and working out outside the spin class do not define manliness. But don’t try to tell me that when it comes to masculinity my options are either Emhoff or becoming a mass shooter.

The Democrats’ man problem is of their own making. America would be better off if they simply accepted that instead of pretending the country is a hotbed of sexism.

Matt Fleming is a Southern California News Group columnist.