Masculinity Is on the Ballot
August 17, 2024
Amid all the joy and positivity and the big, beautiful polling surges for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, the word has gone out: This election isn’t going to be a referendum on inflation, immigration or foreign policy anymore. It’s going to be a referendum on masculinity in America.
The choice is clear. On one side, there’s the enlightened maleness embodied by Harris’s vice-presidential pick and her husband, Doug Emhoff. These are the good progressive dads, Rebecca Traister of New York magazine writes, the “nice men of the left” who do guy things like coach football but also manifest liberal and feminist virtues — like being “happily deferential” and “unapologetically supportive of women’s rights” and “committed to partnership” in marriage and politics alike. Walz especially is being held up all over as a paragon of liberal dadhood: “A regular guy,” Mona Charen of The Bulwark writes, “at a time when the country needs reminding that being a regular guy is actually pretty great.”
