National Service Won’t Get Democrats More Men

You may have heard that Vice President Kamala Harris is struggling to win over male voters, especially young male voters. Unsurprisingly, the expert class is lining up to advise Harris on how this could be changed.

Some of the advice makes me wonder if these experts have actually met any young men.

buy this column published by New York Times 21 October. Writer John Della Volpe, polling director at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, suggests Harris needs to “go big” by offering “a bold vision that appeals to (young men’s) desire for purpose and power” and reignite “the hope of new generations.” Okay, okay, so how to do this? Volpe writes that he continues to extol the virtues of mandatory national service by making “a sweeping national call to both military and civilian service” called the “Generation Z Charter to Rebuild and Renew America.”

Because if there’s one way to the hearts of young men, it’s… compulsory volunteer work? Hmmmm.

To show why this might work, Volpe links to: A. Top column New York attorney Steve Cohen wrote that in a poll he sponsored (and to which he did not link), 75 percent of young people support the idea of ​​military conscription. I found a basic summary of this survey on Cohen’s website. The survey was not conducted by a survey company but using online software called QuestionPro. It included nearly 1,000 participants, about half of whom were between the ages of 18 and 24, and only 33 percent were male. It was not stated how the participants were selected, whether they constituted a nationally representative sample, or how the survey was conducted.

Meanwhile 2017 Gallup Poll It found that 57 percent of respondents under 30 opposed the idea of ​​a mandatory one-year military service for young Americans, and only 39 percent supported it.

As for a “broad call” for military service, I don’t think we need polls to tell us how that would play out. Young people have no shortage of incentives to join the army, and they do not face many obstacles to doing so. The fact that they are not enlisting in larger numbers probably indicates that there is not a huge audience for political candidates who want to persuade them to do so.

Another suggestion that is constantly voiced, although much less comprehensive in scope, is this: Harris appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Rogan is very popular among young men and is also popular with supporters of former President Donald Trump. “In the year’s first wave of New York Times/Siena College battleground polls in May, the No. 1 predictor of whether someone would break with Joe Biden was whether the respondent was Middle Eastern or North African; the war in Gaza was the No. 2 predictor? The respondent’s podcaster, Joe “Does he have a very positive opinion of Rogan?” Nate Cohn noted inside New York Times few days ago.

resting The Joe Rogan Experience It obviously doesn’t make people Trump voters, and Rogan himself is at least somewhat politically heterodox, but the podcast host is popular with a certain kind of disgruntled Democrat. But the idea that Harris meeting with these people will win them back to the Democrats’ side is questionable.

Harris isn’t particularly good at unannounced interviews, and he’s certainly not one to ooze originality and charisma in an unfamiliar arena. It’s hard to imagine Rogan doing well on his podcast; It brings up some complaints about the mainstream left that Harris can’t answer, let alone being good enough to win people over. This probably isn’t an audience that wants to hear how Harris will lower her grocery bills.

Going on Rogan’s podcast would (probably) be a lot less disastrous than suggesting we draft young adults into compulsory civil service. Voters should want candidates who are willing to talk at length about their ideas and backgrounds, especially in forums that are not entirely friendly. More candidate interviews are a good thing, especially for a candidate who joins late in the game under unusual circumstances and initially avoids candid interviews.

But while it probably wouldn’t hurt, I don’t think it would do Harris much good either. And the idea that this seems like the figment of the imagination of people who can’t see the vulnerabilities of their preferred candidates.

There’s also what the campaign actually does to reach men: “advertising on sports betting and fantasy sports sites, video game sites like IGN, and college football, NBA, NFL and MLB playoff broadcasts.” Slate reports. I repeat, it’s not an idea that’s likely to happen. to hurt Harris, but posting the same old messages in different places doesn’t seem to impress many men either.

In reality, there probably isn’t much Harris can do at this point. Men have long leaned more conservative, and gender differences in candidate selection and partisan identification long predate that. More recent changes among young people have more to do with the general mood of the Democratic Party over the past decade than with specific actions or policies of Harris or vice presidential candidate Tim Waltz.

Democrats won’t be able to reverse this situation until the 2024 elections. This is an issue the party probably needs to think about more holistically than whether it needs more advertising during sports broadcasts.

Richard Reeves, President of the American Institute for Boys and Men said news week, “I don’t think this is a stampede to the right. I think it’s more of a movement away from the left.” If Reeves is right, the problem for Harris is that they have lost interest in her brand of Democratic politics and the progressive style that has come into fashion over the last decade. It probably won’t solve this problem by offering men the same products in different venues.