Men are voters too.
And many of them feel that they do not hear much from Democrats that sounds like it’s speaking to them in a helpful, positive way. Democrats are rightly proud of the progress for women that they have championed and so, perhaps because they (incorrectly) suspect that speaking directly to men and their concerns risks backsliding on that, seem reluctant to engage on these grounds.
That’s a problem though. First, it’s wrong on the merits. Men are facing a lot of challenges right now. As Richard Reeves, among others, has pointed out, too many boys are falling behind in school, too many men are falling behind in the labor market, and too many dads are becoming dislocated from their children. What’s more, talking to men and talking about men’s issues *does not* jeopardize women’s progress.
Second, failing to speak directly to men’s issues also means that Democrats miss an opportunity to win a larger share of their votes. Democrats are getting blown out among male voters. Depending on how one estimates turnout differences between the sexes and which exit polls one looks at, Harris lost the male vote to Trump by somewhere in the neighborhood of 17-18 million votes. At every education level, across every race, and in every age group, Democrats perform less well among male voters than they do among female voters. If we’re going to rebuild this party to be more nationally competitive, that’s an excellent place to start.
The good news is that we can fix this. We can be a party that is for men and boys just as much as it is for women and girls. It’s not a zero-sum thing.
The high cost of living is far from the only challenge men face, but it is an especially important one. And the major theme of this newsletter --bringing the cost of living down through supply-oriented Abundance Agenda politics-- is a central component of the response to that because it buttresses men’s ability to carry out two roles that are foundational to our identities: being Providers and being Builders. For the good of the country, Democrats need to embrace policies that facilitate men’s success in each of those roles.
Men as Providers
Housing Costs
Research shows that when men and women both experience higher inflation, men take it harder. We do that because higher costs undermine our ability to provide, and that matters to us a lot. The place where this bites hardest is, not surprisingly, in housing.
High housing costs badly hurt men in crucial years. They force many young men to continue living with their parents because they cannot afford a place of their own. This impedes stable relationship formation, life satisfaction, and healthy early adulthood because, to put it bluntly, it is a lot harder to bring a girl home when you don’t have your own place. The overwhelming majority of young men would rather have a girlfriend and an apartment of their own than being alone in their parent’s basement.
More generally, there is important signaling going on here. How exactly are you supposed to signal that you can provide for a family if you can’t even provide for yourself? This is especially a problem for young men in their early and mid 20s because, generally speaking, those are not high-earning years. You’re early in your career and, unless you’re from legacy money, you don’t have much capital or savings to leverage. You are ‘asset-light’ to use a recently coined term of art. You don’t have much spare room in your budget, especially if you’re working class. Every bit of extra housing costs makes launching that independent, successful adult life that much harder. The over-regulation that chokes housing development does not just hurt men as consumers, it reduces employment opportunities in construction, a sector that is overwhelmingly male.
In later years, when you want to buy a house for your family, high housing costs make that feel impossible. It is, by turns, enraging and despair-inducing. I know. I can speak from experience on this. For a number of years now, my wife and I have wanted to buy a house, but housing costs are so insane where we live that we have not been able to afford to do that, even on pretty good salaries. One of my primary roles as a husband and father is to buy my family a house and I can’t do that, and yes, that does make me very angry with the environmentalism, the growth-indifference, and blue state over-regulation that I hold responsible for that.
I am not alone. There are millions of men in America in the same situation trying their best to do right by their families but can’t afford to because selfish NIMBYs blocked new housing development. There are policy reforms that we know how to do on this. We can allow more mixed use zoning, eliminating parking mandates, embrace 5-over-1s, and shrink minimum lot sizes to facilitate more construction of starter homes, and more. This is not secret knowledge. We just have to have the political will to do it.
Childcare
Housing is where cost-of-living problems start, but it is far from the only area where unhelpful policies are making it harder to afford to raise a family. Being a father is amongst the most meaningful things in many men’s lives. It certainly is in mine. Lots of men want to raise children but do not believe that they can afford to because of the extraordinarily high costs of childcare.
There is at least some good news on this front. Just this week, a bipartisan group led by Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Katie Britt (R-AL) in the Senate and Salud Carbajal (D-CA-24) and Mike Lawler (R-NY-17) in the House introduced two strong bills on the childcare: the Child Care Availability and Affordability Act and the Child Care Workforce Act. The former would increase the tax credit for employer-provided childcare from 25% to 50% of qualified childcare expenditures, increase the maximum credit amount from $150,000 to $500,000, allow for jointly owned childcare facilities, and provide other benefits to small businesses. It also makes the Dependent Care Assistance Program more robust and increases the Household and Dependent Care Credit. The latter would create a competitive grant program for states to supplement childcare workers’ wages. Given the extent to which turnover is a major challenge in childcare, this is a smart approach. The bill also has a provision that says that 90% of funding must go to childcare worker wages and no more than 10% can go to administrative costs. Another smart move. These are excellent supply-side bills that Congress should pass immediately.
Still, as good and encouraging as these bills are, we have a long way to go on this front. We’ve discussed other potential reforms here, and we’ll have more posts about childcare in this newsletter in the future.
Trump’s Tariffs Make it Harder for Men to Provide for Their Families
Meanwhile, President Trump is not being so helpful to men when it comes to cost of living. As the National Association of Homebuilders pointed out in a recent open letter, his new tariffs on Canadian lumber are going to make it more expensive to build new housing, and that translates into higher rents and higher purchase prices. Trump’s tariffs are also going to cause havoc in the auto supply chain (and that’s going to raise car prices) as well as raise the cost of importing Canadian oil which makes it more expensive to fill up your tank.
Groceries are another big expense. It is no secret that men like meat. Well, Canada is a major exporter of beef, pork, and seafood to the United States, so Trump’s tariffs on Canada are going to make all of those more expensive at the grocery store.
The tariffs on Mexico are going to make many products like avocados more expensive too. Hopefully, you weren’t wanting to make guacamole for March Madness. If you’re a dad of a small child, better hope your kid magically stops loving berries, because imported berries get extra taxes too now. And you thought you spent a lot on berries before!
This is but the tip of the iceberg. There isn’t a single aisle at Home Depot that doesn’t have a number of products that are going to have extra taxes on them now. This President is a rich guy who doesn’t care about how much things cost. He talks tough but his policies are making everything that men need to buy more expensive. And that matters to men as providers. My dad worked in a steel facility; his favorite store was Wal-Mart because, even though he didn’t make much money, Wal-Mart was cheap enough that his son could always get a toy. That mattered to him. There’s become this unholy alliance on the far-left and far-right that wants to denounce consumerism because it’s supposedly all just trinkets, but when men buy things for their families, it’s about a lot more than just the goods themselves.
Trump’s tariffs are also driving up the costs of key inputs that go into manufacturing. 45% of all imports into the United States (and about 66% of imports from Canada) are intermediate goods that go into the making other products. In fact, a new economic research paper analyzes the impact of universal and China-specific tariff increases; they find that “across-the-board tariffs do not protect manufacturing jobs because the cost of imported intermediate goods increases, raising costs in manufacturing production.” So Trump’s tariffs don’t only hurt men’s provider role as consumers, it hurts their provider roles as workers too. For American workers who make things out of metal, Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico make their inputs more expensive.
Men as Builders
Men want to live up the legacies of those who came before them. To borrow Edward R. Murrow’s line, “if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, [we’ll] remember that we are not descended from fearful men.” We Americans (men and women) are the heirs of Washington, Hamilton, and Jefferson, of Carnegie, Edison, and the Wright Brothers. We are the descendants of a people who conquered a continent and of men who stormed the beaches of Normandy. There is honor and duty in continuing this great construction project we call the United States of America.
But it is not just about living up to the measure of the past. It’s about building a brighter future and a legacy of our own to bequeath to those who come after us. This cost-of-living project we’re doing here is part of the broader Abundance Agenda. That agenda, in its most profound sense, is about building an America that overflows with prosperity and opportunity, that unleashes human potential, and that boldly charts new territory in science, industry, and technology.
That means not just building more traditional nuclear plants, it means leaning into fusion and small-modular nuclear power. It means enthusiastically developing next-generation geothermal energy. It means being at the leading edge of AI, quantum computing, robotics, and machine learning. It means curing cancer and going to Mars. It means creating miraculous vaccines, autonomous vehicles, geoengineering technologies that haven’t even been imagined yet, and so much more. Things sometimes feel frustrating, and our President is not helping with any of this. But we Americans are still capable of building the greatest civilization the world has ever seen. Our best days remain ahead of us.
Men need stories as much as they need bread; this is the story of America today, of America tomorrow, of men’s place in it, that I would have the Democratic Party tell.
American Men and American Women Succeed Together
None of this is a threat to women’s progress. When men can afford housing, that makes them better boyfriends and husbands. When men have good jobs, that makes them more productive members of society. Housing and jobs aren’t just good for them materially; it gives them self-esteem and allows them to be the best, healthiest, most fulfilled versions of themselves they can be, to the benefit of not just themselves but also to those around them. When we embrace being A Society That Builds, we give men a healthy thing to strive for, to contribute to, and to be a part of.
These are the ideas and messages that Democrats need to lean into too. Everyone knows that Democrats are the party that’s for women and girls. That’s great! This is how we also be the party that’s for men and boys.
-GW
The problem with this argument is that the issues Dems speak to women about are unambiguously women's issues, and when you propose talking about issues like housing and childcare (come on) as men's issues specifically, you unavoidably imply that these challenges are easier for women. What's the actual proposal you're making? Ads about how men shouldn't feel bad about not being able to be providers in the face of these challenges?