How Democrats Can Win Back Young Men
MAGA influencers dominate online spaces where young men gather by providing someone to blame for their problems, while Democratic leaders rarely show up.
Hundreds — even thousands of young men line the crowd of a conservative rally in the summer of 2024. Most are wearing MAGA hats, everyone in some form of masculine-patriotic gear from head to toe. They’ve spent all afternoon standing in the large room at the conference center in the closest big city. As they get to watch their favorite influencers, the role models they’ve come to know through podcasts and an extreme online presence, and now they’re anticipating the grand finale — a speech from Donald Trump.
The night has been carefully choreographed to fill young men’s desperate thirst for purpose. They’re lost and these rallies — this movement — have become an identity they feel secure in. Ignored by a class of progressives they felt abandoned them and their problems. Instead, they turned to figures who cosplayed the masculinity they were raised to embrace — Andrew Tate, Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and others.
For Democrats, and frankly, society as a whole — this isn’t just about losing votes — it’s about ceding a generation of young men to forces that thrive on division, cruelty, and authoritarianism. In 2024, young men under 30 swung significantly toward Trump, with 56 percent backing him. Over the past decade, young men identifying with the Democratic Party have dropped from 42 percent to 32 percent from 2020 to 2024 (2024 exit polls / Pew / Brookings). Young men aren’t naturally drawn to hate or cruelty. They’re drawn to purpose, belonging, and strength. If Democrats don’t give them those things (which they haven’t), the far right has and will.
The Roots of the Problem
Critical to a young man’s emotional intelligence and ability to function as an adult is the father-son dynamic in childhood. Many boys, especially Millennials raised by Baby Boomer parents, were raised by fathers who equated strength with domination and control, and emotional suppression and silence with manhood and masculinity. The lessons drilled in from an early age: Don’t cry; don’t feel; don’t show weakness. The need to please your father coupled with the anger, shame, confusion, and lack of a safe space to express your feelings leads to deep rooted emotional damage.
Example: A father, worn down by work stress, coaches his son’s basketball team. The boy misses a few layups, and the father snaps: “If you’re gonna be lazy — I’ll teach you lazy.” He orders the boy to run suicide drills until he vomits. Instead of comfort, the father says, “Wipe your mouth and get back to practice.” In that moment, strength is taught as punishment, and love as conditional.
For many boys, mom becomes the emotional refuge — the one who listened, nurtured your wounds, and protected you from the source of the pain. Where fathers taught suppression, mothers offered sanctuary. While this nurtured their empathy, it also created an internal conflict: I feel, but society and other men told me that feeling equals weak. They grow up caught between two codes with no clear ways to integrate them. The feelings they possess, associated with femininity and the result of homophobic slurs and taunts from male counterparts. The masculinity they so deeply crave, perpetuated in negative examples like silence, stoicism, and brute strength in the face of adversity.
In the 21st century, there has been an identity vacuum created for young men and masculinity. There are no healthy rights of passage that society offers to positive masculinity. No coming-of-age journey or cultural script that blends strength and compassion. Old pillars such as union apprenticeships, churches, civic groups, and fraternities that once helped boys become men and gave them pride in contribution have been weakened or replaced. And for working-class young men, the problem is even starker: Many have been priced out of college entirely, shutting them out of fraternities and other campus-based communities that might have offered belonging, mentorship, and emotional connection.
The hollowing-out of purpose and community has had devastating consequences. Young men are especially vulnerable to despair with suicide rates nearly four times higher than those of young women. Too many grow up taught to suppress their pain, with no place to process it, and no one to turn to. Without positive outlets or support, their struggles fester in isolation.
With these third spaces missing from the lives of young men, MAGA and the online bro-sphere offer them a tribe — a place where young men feel they belong, fight for something, their masculinity is protected, and they are validated as protectors themselves. The right offers simplicity: Don’t think too hard — just fight, defend, and dominate. They weaponize this message from online platforms and digital culture with YouTube influencers, TikTok creators, memes, and gaming forums — all places where young men are primed for recruitment into grievance politics.
What Democrats Have Gotten Wrong
It’s difficult to engage and connect with working-class young men from elite institutions and positions where the messaging feels like shaming over engagement. Too much Democratic messaging has framed men as part of the problem while rarely speaking on their pain or inviting them to the table for solutions. Young men who were already raised to feel insecure about their masculinity are turned off by rhetoric that focuses primarily on the harm caused by men without space for healing.
There is a lack of connection in the way that solutions are being offered, as well. Democratic lawmakers often offer policies and plans, but no bold narrative that gives young men purpose or pride in what they are doing. MAGA and far-right influencers dominate online spaces where young men gather by providing someone to blame for their problems, while Democratic leaders rarely show up.
I Understand Why Young Men Turn To Trump
Editor’s note: While many are talking about why young men moved toward Trump in 2024, Lincoln Square is committed to providing a platform for young voices to speak for themselves.
The Way Forward
While Republican members of Congress and members of MAGA are chronically online and enmeshing themselves with influencers, Democrats need to be elevating male role models who can redefine strength. The DNC and elected officials need to promote male figures who show strength through service, empathy, and moral clarity — not domination. These should be people who can command respect without cruelty. They should show up in the spaces young men patronize and respect: sports, gaming, and pop culture.
Figures such as Jon Stewart offer Democrats a gleaming example of a respected male figure who offers moral clarity, humor, and the directness young people crave. Pete Buttigieg’s appearance on the “Flagrant” podcast with Andrew Schulz was a perfect example of promotion of strength through empathy in these spaces. We need Democrats and the DNC to fund campaigns and highlight veterans fighting for democracy, firefighters, teachers and professors, social workers — all men who are examples of how to mentor and protect.
Along with providing public facing mentors and role models, lawmakers need to introduce policyholders positions that provide purpose-driven jobs and service opportunities. Young men in this country want to build — not just receive. Democrats can propose creating a national service corps with careers in combating climate change, infrastructure rebuilding, and tech-for-public-benefit initiatives. The United States government provides tech companies with billions of dollars in subsidies, government contracts, and tax breaks. Democrats can demand the expansion of trade apprenticeship-to-hire programs with these companies — strengthening union jobs and community leadership programs.
Democratic leaders need to stop ceding TikTok, YouTube, and gaming spaces like Twitch to the right. They need to recruit influencers and strong visible role models who can blend humor, directness, emotional intelligence, and the truth. Far too long the party has allowed corporate stiffness and deference to the donor class to dictate their messaging over cultural fluency. It’s time to partner with progressive veterans, athletes, and creators who can authentically engage young men. In doing so, there is an opportunity to reframe allyship to the LGBTQ and other marginalized communities as strength, not penance — something that good strong men do, protect. By taking these stances, Democrats can build narratives that honor men who use their strength to lift others up: the coach who mentors at-risk kids, the dad who shows up, the veteran who defends democracy at home.
A Call for Courage
Democrats face a choice: Keep ceding young men to the right as we watch society continue to degrade — or build a movement that offers them belonging, purpose, and dignity.
If young men continue to be recruited by grievance and hate, our politics will darken further. If we meet them with vision, courage, and respect — we can show them they have a place in building a better America. By offering a future with dignity — and basic fundamentals such as a job, guaranteed healthcare, and an affordable place to live —Democrats can educate an entire future of young men on strength through compassion, emotional intelligence, and empathy.
Evan Fields is a veteran who writes the News from Underground Substack.
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I hope those who have influence in these areas will learn how to include young men who are searching for something other than what the right has to offer.
As a teen, I remember watching my two younger brothers sit & watch western movies; conflict resolution equaled force of some kind & it was always of interest the physical sort. This was the 1950s; we have not progressed much.
Evan, you had me throughout, save for two things that just kept poking out at me like weeds in an otherwise appealing garden bed. So for what it's worth they were: Andrew Tate as some sort of role model? What, so to be a man you must abuse and enslave females? And, sort of a watered down likewise, Fraternity houses? I mean, they haze boys with sometimes deadly results, foster drinking to excess, have been host to 'frat parties' in which their female peers were drugged, raped and occasionally more. In what way (seriously) would these experiences prepare them for mature manhood? I'd rather see them working on a cattle drive or in a community center or doing something like Americorps. Men need to be at the center of communities and families, so they don't end up as sick dominators and loners.