The Atlantic to Dems: Time to Close the Sports Gap

One of the few useful points from the DNC’s aborted “autopsy,” released two weeks ago by Ken Martin while renouncing it at the same time, focused on the Democrats’ problems with men. Specifically – or as specifically as the report managed to get – the analysis pointed to Democrats’ embrace of identity politics as particularly alienating to male voters, even those otherwise in minority demos:

Male voters require direct engagement. The gender gap can be narrowed. Deploy male messengers, address economic concerns, and don’t assume identity politics will hold male voters of color.

There’s a reason for that alienation, and it’s at the root of identity politics and its associated application in “intersectionality.” This concept and policies implemented through it impose biases against men in all applications, even men of minority communities. Culturally, its signals work even more against men and maleness, with the common charge of “toxic masculinity” at the basis of nearly all calculations when it comes to biological sex and policy decisions. Men have gradually awoken to that reality, and have shifted politically in a predictable reaction to it.

The reaction to this shift from the Left has been … amusing. Perhaps the biggest miscalculation on this point came when Kamala Harris chose Tim Walz as her running mate, assuming that his experience as a football coach and as a (supposed) sportsman would broaden the appeal of the ticket with male voters. Walz’ prancing on stage and his befuddled approach to practically everything else did not succeed in appealing to male voters, which the autopsy suggests came from a lack of messaging to middle-class economic issues. In reality, it came from the Democrats’ inability to connect authentically to ordinary male voters in any sense. 

The Atlantic thinks they have a solution to that – sports geeking. No, seriously:

Democratic politicians are decades into an authenticity problem. Fairly or not, voters—especially men—tend to perceive Democrats as unrelatable, scripted, and disconnected from the population they seek to govern. The solution seemingly favored by Democratic consultants is for anyone with presidential aspirations to appear on as many manosphere podcasts as possible or play footsie with edgy streamers. But appearing on this or that platform is not really what matters. Rather, the game is to get as much attention as possible, as frequently as possible, while seeming as relatable as possible. A cheat code exists to hit all three objectives: sports talk.

The contemporary sports-media landscape is designed to take ruthless advantage of the fact that nothing generates attention more reliably than controversy. Personalities such as Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless have made fortunes because they understand that sparking disagreement equals clicks and attention. Their debates may be contrived, inconsequential, and moronic. Their arguments may be made in bad faith. Yet they and other talking heads play on an endless loop on screens across the country. An entire genre of sports podcasts, meanwhile, seems to exist only to generate clips of the most outrageous opinions and post them to TikTok and YouTube.

As Democratic politicians scramble to seem in touch and ensure that their faces appear on our phones as much as possible, they are neglecting the free real estate offered by sports talk. A popular meme mocks men for being content to sit and name obscure athletes to one another for hours. It’s popular because it isn’t far from the truth. The politically disengaged male voters whom Democrats are so desperate to reach aren’t at bars arguing about Medicare funding. They are arguing about a roughing-the-passer penalty. Bettors on Polymarket give Stephen A. Smith higher odds of winning the 2028 Democratic presidential primary than Cory Booker, Raphael Warnock, and Ruben Gallego. Nothing gets attention like sports takes.

This may not be the best advice to give to a Democrat Party that hasn’t had authentic connections to masculinity in at least a generation, as Nathanial Frum concedes. Few situations will expose phoniness more quickly and completely than when a person attempts to discuss sports without any real connection to it. Sports fandom has significant depth and passion built into it, especially in the sports-talk industry, where even experts get shellacked for their arguments on arcane issues related to the particular sport or team involved. 

Sending Democrats out to the sports-talk circuit to discuss the finer parts of football, baseball, NASCAR, or MMA would be a recipe for disaster. It would become a Steve Buscemi moment from 30 Rock:

The problem for Democrats is not access to male voters; it’s a lack of authentic connection to male voters. That’s not accidental either, as Don Surber explains on Substack today. It’s a direct result of their attacks on traditional masculinity through their embrace of the Queer Movement, identity politics, and intersectionality, all of which are hostile to traditional male roles and engagement:

Adolf Platner. Six Genders Talarico. Tampon Tim. The first two are Democrat Senate candidates while Walz was the party’s vice presidential nominee in 2024. Democrats aimed these weirdos at collecting the XY vote. They have the combined testosterone of my 5-year-old grandson.

The more Democrats try to run candidates to lure American men into voting for them, the more Democrats desperate the become, the more they show how little they know about the U.S. Male.

Years of pandering to women—how many first woman presidents have they run?—and ridiculing men cost them dearly. The party barely stole the 2020 election because Trump received 5.8 million more male votes than Biden did. …

But go by what pols do not what polls say. Democrats are madly recruiting male candidates and the choices the party made reflect its bigotry and stereotypes of men.

James Talarico reflects what Democrats think masculinity should be. Graham Platner reflects what Democrats think Republicans see as masculine. The problem in both cases, and with Walz as well, is that Democrats have been so hostile to masculinity for so long that they have no connection to it at all. Sports talk would not help solve that problem; it might make it worse, and certainly would provide lots of laughs along the way.

The latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast is now up! Today’s show features:

•  Andrew Malcolm and I reunite after a couple of weeks off, and … nothing much has changed in the war with Iran. 
• We wonder whether Donald Trump has let an opportunity for victory slip away from him, and whether he’s losing the patience and goodwill of the electorate by allowing the IRGC to drag this out. We also game out what happened in Texas, and why Trump’s bold midterm strategy comes with a cost. 
• We finish up with Jill Biden’s book tour, and our Andy Rooney impersonations come out, too!

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!

Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.

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