Kamala Harris Wants to Redefine Masculinity—And Demolish Trump’s

Ilyse Hogue wrote for The Bulwark on the DNC and how the Harris campaign is redefining masculinity.

With the notable exception of Bill Clinton’s elections in 1992 and 1996, white men have consistently voted Republican since the 1960s, when civil rights, gay rights, and women’s rights movements began to shake up the long-established social pecking order. But recently, a new trend emerged: Democrats began hemorrhaging Latino men and African American men. Combined with the Gen-Zers highlighted by the Times, these constituencies represent not only large portions of the historic Democratic base, but ones that will define the trajectory of our politics for at least a generation to come. These men describe the Democratic party and progressive culture as hostile to traditional masculine values, immune to the concerns they feel about being a provider, and actually dismissive of the strength they were required to show growing up to survive.  

Chicago might prove to be the key to opening that GOP lock. From the first night’s invocation to the balloon drop after Harris’s speech, the Democratic convention featured a lineup that refused to accept the boy vs. girl frame that has come to define this year’s election. And they didn’t just seek to compete for male votes, but to reclaim masculinity itself as belonging to their party, too.