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David's avatar

This is an interesting subject area and it is good to see Milan's take on it as a younger man.

On some of the campaigns I've worked on there was a sort of sense of shame because they had a disproportionately male base of supporters. It seems like a live questions for some Democrats if men have legitimate "men's issues" and if they should even try to make class-based appeals. Sometimes they seem to settle on a sort of bank-shot approach.

In many ways it feels like Democrats have policies that would benefit men but don't take/get the credit for them. Most people in prison or killed by police are men and Democrats are the ones pushing for reform there but it isn't often framed as a gender issue and it isn't clear that going so would help them.

I sort of found Matt's framing of "How to win men's votes without backing down on women's rights" a bit strange because it isn't really clear how, if you were willing, you could back down on women's rights to win men's votes.

When I spoke to voters there was a sense that Democrats sort of just didn't like men that much. I even heard similar feelings from mothers with young sons who said they felt that way.

Obviously feelings on the Dave Bautista video are quite subjective but I do wonder to what extent highlighting and discussing "masculinity" are useful for Democrats. It seems like it could just come off as more "policing" from people who talk about masculinity in terms of "toxic" or "fragile".

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