Wodek Szemberg: Has the Left lost its masculine energy?

Article here. Excerpt:

'James Carville, Bill Clinton’s famed pollster and political strategist, did not mince words last month when he, not for the first time, fired off a salvo at the ailing body of the Democratic Party. In an interview with Jonathan Capehart of The Washington Post, Carville offered an indictment of “NPR-sounding” “female preachiness”: “We know what’s best for you, don’t eat hamburgers, don’t watch football, don’t drink beer. Guess where our young male number is going? In the toilet, alright? Because Democratic messaging, I’m sorry, is too feminine, it just is.”

Not even a reminder from Capehart to be mindful that we are living in the 21st century made any impression on the Ragin’ Cajun, whose Southern drawl makes speaking and understanding postmodernese too difficult. In national elections, only binary sex matters.

Now that Kamala Harris has been elevated to the position of Democratic Party standard-bearer, the problem with “female preachiness” can only become magnified.

The economist Tyler Cowen recently summarized the issue of gender divergence on his blog thusly: “The ongoing feminization of society has driven more and more men, including black and Latino men, into the Republican camp. The Democratic Party became too much the party of unmarried women.” (I presume that in the unmarried he includes women who are no longer married.)

Not surprisingly, a significant share of a generation of men who grew up surrounded by the discourse about the importance of gender equality do not feel that it is inclusive of them. This would be a most useful reason for feminists, who cannot conceive of female advances that are anything but good for everyone involved, to reconsider the universal applicability of the “happy wife, happy life” truism. Instead, they should take seriously the idea of how young men, especially, are shaped by their lived experience, and not only focus on women’s purity of intent.'