Democrat Rep. Jake Auchincloss on Reaching Young Male Voters in the Democratic Party

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The MeidasTouch Podcast 17 min 3 speakers 8 chapters transcribed 9 hours ago
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Why are Gen Z men shifting away from the Democratic Party?

Ben Meiselas 0:00
I'm joined by Congress member Jake Auckincloss. When we had our last interview together a few weeks before the election, you and I were talking about Gen Z men, and we were raising the red flag that Gen Z men were not uh Democrats anymore. They're not view were not liberal. They were becoming Trump supporters, whether that's because of the podcast. podcast ecosystem that exists, starting as kind of gamers and then bringing them all the way up to become kind of Trumpers. But we tried calling it out. I I that's one of my big reflections The election I think demonstrated that what are your thoughts about that? Wha what what do we do to bring back, you know, men into the Democratic Party while also still not sacrificing core values of of being a party that respects people's rights and equality?
Jake Auchincloss 0:55
First, thanks for having me back on and for digging deeper into this topic. As you mentioned, you and I were discussing this a few weeks ago. The last poll I saw heading into the election had Democrats doing better with eighty-five year old men than with eighteen year old men. That is obviously not a Future forward, future-proofed strategy for building electoral power uh with half the electorate. So we need to introspect and we need to do better. I also want to put in a caveat that there's a lot of micro narratives out there right now. And by micro narrative, I mean looking at the data and then having the data uh Paint a story about which demographic, which geographic, which psychographic cost the election for Democrats?
Jake Auchincloss 1:40
Was it that uh young men didn't vote for us? Was it Hispanic men? Was it uh non-college educated people? Was it that college-educated women didn't vote enough, right? We've all seen this punditry. And I do want to recognize that while all of these micro-narratives can help. inform our model of reality, we do have to zoom out and look at the macro narrative, which is that, you know, bluntly, we got drubbed.

What do the latest polls reveal about Democratic support among young men versus older voters?

Jake Auchincloss 2:04
We got drubbed across the board in almost every place and in almost every cohort of voters. And indeed, it was not just limited to the United States, it was across the entire developed world. Every single party in governance post-COVID lost vote share for the first time since World War II. And the simple, and I think stark reason is that voters were very frustrated with inflation. So while we are talking about young men, and while that's an important issue, We have to talk about electorally. I think we got to keep our eye on the fact that cost of living is what uh deflated our vote share more than any other factor.
Ben Meiselas 2:39
Agree, but look, uh, I don't think it should have been a state secret that the origin of inflation begins with Donald Trump's catastrophic handling of COVID, supply chains being cut off because he didn't do an infrastructure or chips act, his lies about COVID, uh, the fact that when the reins were handed to Biden, I remember that Time magazine cover was With the mess that he inherited. Um, but there never seemed to be anything kind of communicated out there with any force about, you know, whether it was fireside chats or whatever. Like, here's where this is coming from, here's what happened. I mean, do you agree with me? Should that have happened? I mean, and I'm not sure the utility of the postmortem per se, but that was frustrating to me because I think Biden and
Ben Meiselas 3:29
Democrats help turn around a cataclysmic situation.
Jake Auchincloss 3:32
Hey, I got reams of Federal Reserve data about real wages 2014 versus 2019 going up, about productivity growth in the last six quarters, about new business starts in the Biden administration, about record low unemployment, about record high job creation. Uh The point of the matter is For two years, we saw near double-digit inflation in rents, in utility bills, and in the price of groceries. And it was demoralizing and deflating for average Americans. And I think what we have to do a better job of. Is not just explaining how it happened, you know, COVID disruptions and Russia's invasion of Ukraine causing spikes in food and fertilizer. А басо

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