The reasons Democrats endorsed Graham Platner are the reasons they are losing male voters. There was a central casting character to Platner’s candidacy; a transparent attempt to check boxes to win votes. In the end, his failed candidacy reveals even more about the choosers than the chosen.
Democrats’ DEI mindset sets them on the road to political perdition, because it does not treat people as people. Rather, it treats them as categories, boxes to be checked. It therefore dehumanizes.
In Democrats’ rough DEI renditions, everyone is reduced to a caricature.
When people become aware of this, they are naturally repelled by it. No one wants to be treated as less than an individual. No one certainly wants to be treated as a walking quota: acceptable only because they personify a winning Bingo card. (RELATED: The New York Times Is Late to the Masculinity Crisis)
Men were among the first to come to the realization that Democrats are dismissing everyone as people and relating only to them as categories because men, according to the Democrats, are often not even a category. They are a problem. A party that espouses “toxic masculinity” as an actual condition is hardly welcoming to those it so defines. (RELATED: The Real Divide Isn’t Red v. Blue — It’s Male v. Female)
Exit polling from the last presidential election shows the results of Democrats’ dismissive treatment of men. Kamala Harris won women 53-45 percent; however, she lost men 43-55 percent. Democrats’ “gender gap” with men was wider than Republicans’ with women.
Platner was an exercise in DEI’s approach to box checking … The problem was … that as they were checking boxes, they forgot to check the person.
Only as Democrats have realized their political liability from dismissing men (spending $20 million to study the subject) have they sought to address their “problem” with men. However, it’s worth noting that they are not admitting they are wrong in classifying men as a problem; they are merely seeking to address the fallout from their prejudice and find acceptable specimens who conform to it. Enter Graham Platner. (RELATED: What Graham Platner’s Tattoo Really Reveals)
Platner was an exercise in DEI’s approach to box checking. Male, check. White, check. Heterosexual, check. Veteran, check. Outdoorsy, check. Small businessman, check. You can just see the Democrat machine running through the categories that they believe would appeal to men. The problem was — and is with the DEI mindset — that as they were checking boxes, they forgot to check the person. (RELATED: How Long Will Democrats Keep Defending Platner?)
Platner was a disaster from the beginning. It was obvious to any who cared to look objectively. The problem for Democrats was that they were looking subjectively; they were focused solely on the problem that they have created for themselves with men and how to fix it. So, in search of a forest, they collected trees. That the trees they assembled in no way matched any real forest was indiscernible to them. So, they came up with a topiary garden instead: things so absurdly shaped that they resembled nothing natural but only Democrats’ own predilections as to what trees should look like. (RELATED: Travis Kelce Is the Blueprint Democrats Have Been Missing)
The image of men that Democrats have concocted for themselves is a caricature. By following their template, that is exactly what they came up with in Platner. He was in no way what they imagined. However, they could not tell, because their image was flawed from the start; they then compounded their problem by following their flawed DEI mindset to correct it.
The failure that Platner embodies for Democrats is the problem that Democrats have created for themselves.
Yes, it resulted in a deeply flawed candidate. But it first started with an even more deeply flawed view of men that renders them a caricature. A caricature that men see all too clearly; they turn away from it, and they turn away from those who drew it.
Yet serious as both flaws are, Dems’ failure runs deeper than either Platner or their view of men. It originates from their entire approach. Men are merely Democrats’ worst caricature because Dems intentionally draw them to be the worst. However, they are hardly Democrats’ only cartoon rendering.
In Democrats’ rough DEI renditions, everyone is reduced to a caricature.
And if you disagree with the rendition, you are the one at fault. Be the black person who doesn’t conform to Democrats’ progressive stereotype. Be the woman who doesn’t want to compete against men in sports. Be the Hispanic who doesn’t want to be lumped in with those who came here illegally and commit crimes. Be the Jew who doesn’t condemn Israel.
In short, simply dare to be yourself — someone who is an individual and wants your concerns and needs addressed as such, not those of some stereotypical group to which you have been assigned — and you are the problem.
Democrats’ choice of Graham Platner was bad. The process by which Democrats made it was worse. And Democrats’ mindset that drove their process for picking Platner is worst of all.
Platner is merely the most egregious example of Democrats’ most egregious slander of a group. But he is not the only one. The more individuals look at themselves in comparison to the caricatures Democrats want them to be, and what they want them to care about, the more individuals across Democrats’ DEI spectrum will step away from a political approach that reduces them to less than real people — and treats them as such.
The more they do, the more they will recognize that Democrats have become the AI of American politics: An assemblage of algorithms that composes artificial people and addresses them with artificial compassion that is neither composed by, nor aimed at, real people at all.
READ MORE from J.T. Young:
Debunking the American Left’s Favorite Lie
AI: Technology the Left Love to Hate
Meet the Post-Biden Democrats: Biden’s Democrats
J.T. Young is the author of the recent book, Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left, from RealClear Publishing. Follow him on Substack.
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