After Donald Trump’s stunning victory in the 2024 election, Democrats had to stop and ask what went wrong. One conclusion from the commentary class was that progressives had a serious man problem, and for once they were right. Democrats had made contempt for men, especially young white men, central to their message, and that came with a cost. Any white man who remained on the left had to accept that he was either uniquely guilty or expected to participate in his own dispossession. The party even launched a $20 million effort to discover why men were abandoning it, only to arrive at the familiar conclusion that men were simply bad and deserved what they got. This should have created a golden opportunity for the GOP to secure the loyalty of young men for a generation. Instead, conservatives are setting that opportunity on fire.

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