Originally Authored at TheFederalist.com
If Kamala Harris ends up losing this presidential election, which is looking increasingly likely, it will be because the majority of American men are turned off by her.
And it isn’t for lack of trying. The Harris campaign has desperately courted men in a multitude of ways. They assembled White Dudes for Harris, headed by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttitgieg. They released a slick commercial of men bragging about their masculinity and their endorsement of Kamala Harris. Harris selected assistant football coach and former National Guard soldier Gov. Tim Walz to be her running mate, mainly to signal her solidarity with straight white men from the Rust Belt. She owns a Glock, looks tough in her commercials about border security, and is married to a man who embodies a new kind of masculinity.
Harris’ friends in Hollywood have also done their part to bring in some more of their fellows to the Democrat Party. Ben Stiller and Andy Cohen gave testimonies as girl dads about the country’s great need for a Harris presidency, rapper Eminem just spoke at one of her rallies, and pro-wrestler and action star Dave Bautista flexed his muscles and support for Harris by mocking Trump as a sissy.
So what’s the hold up? Is there something wrong with the messaging?
Most conservative critics would say that yes, there is something very wrong with the messaging. It’s empty, obnoxious, and absolutely cringe-inducing. Like everything else the left does, it’s based on the idea that simply boosting media representation and repeating a few public affirmations for a certain demographic will win a group’s support. Just like seeing a woman swing a lightsaber and kick butt will supposedly win over female audiences, seeing famous men praising Kamala Harris on TV will supposedly win over male voters. It turns out that neither is true.
Of course, rather than learn from this criticism, many of the left already have an explanation for why men are not voting for Harris: sexism and racism. As Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and a host of other leftist voices have declared, American men are too misogynistic and bigoted to vote for a woman of color. In their view, Donald Trump’s dark magic (or “bro whispering”) has turned the great majority of American men into nasty incels who hate women and vote Republican. They are beyond hope and need to be replaced.
That said, even if Democrats learned from their mistakes, changed their messaging, and even came up with some policy proposals to help American men, they would still struggle. This is because the problem of appealing to men has less to do with messaging and policy and more to do with the actual women who constitute the Democrat Party.
Put differently, it’s not Harris’s campaign ads that are repelling men; it’s her female supporters.
This means we need to consider the typical leftist woman and what she values. These days, she is most likely unmarried, childless, nonreligious, loves abortion, and seeks regular affirmation from her tribe and political party. This is why Democrats go to great lengths to make women feel included, empowered, and comfortable, mainly through generating good vibes.
While effective in the short term, this pandering has consequences in the long term. Because the typical Democrat woman is constantly coddled by leftist institutions and indoctrinated with a radical feminist agenda, she is not the best person to bring men over to her way of thinking (or more accurately, feeling). She is not feminine, kind, fun, interesting, industrious, or logical — such qualities are simply lies propounded by the patriarchy. More often, she is unattractive, resentful, lazy, irrational, boring, and/or entitled.
Even if men might agree with certain leftist ideas and policies, most of them will have a hard time engaging with leftist women as such. In general, these are ones who reject marriage, children, and conventional beauty standards and don’t like men who aren’t over six feet tall, with a six-pack, and a salary over six figures. They want to compete with men, not complement them. And they seek submission from their lovers, not mutual sacrifice.
One doesn’t have to be a drooling devotee of Andrew Tate to be put off by all this. It’s perfectly normal and natural to value a woman’s beauty and virtue, and be the man they want to build a life with. At the moment, this dynamic seems to be more common in the conservative movement.
History is a helpful guide in this regard. As sociologist and historian Rodney Stark explains in The Rise of Christianity, the early Christian Church also experienced an imbalance of men and women in its membership. In those days, the Roman Empire was extremely oppressive towards women, pushing many of them to convert to Christianity and finally be recognized as human beings with dignity and value.
Because women soon outnumbered men in most parishes and because the Christian Church was still small, Christian leaders encouraged laywomen to marry pagan men, evangelize them, and make sure their children would grow up Christian. When given a choice between marrying a Christian woman or a pagan one, a growing number Roman men evidently preferred the former, leading to Christianity becoming the dominant religion in the empire by the fourth century AD. As for their messaging (i.e. the Gospel), it remained miraculously consistent.
What made Christian women more attractive to Roman men was likely the same as what makes American conservative woman more attractive to American men today. They believed in a way of life that amplified their goodness and femininity. By contrast, the pagan women offered the same worldly goods that modern progressive women offer and even had a similar commitment to abortion — which, because of the popularity of sex-selective abortions and the crude medical technology of the time, devastated the female population in the Roman Empire.
Due to the unfortunate fact that Democrats and leftists have largely ditched Christianity (as Harris herself told Christian activists: “You’re at the wrong rally”), it falls to Republicans and conservatives to learn this crucial lesson: If you want men to join your movement, welcome and cultivate good women in your ranks. And as a corollary, if you want to welcome and cultivate good women, offer a worldview that is humanizing and dignifying.
The more the conservative movement does this, the more they will succeed at attracting both men and women and thus transcend the current sexual polarization that’s warping Western political culture.