Democrats Cannot 'Win' Zoomer Men

Republicans Can Only Lose Them Like They Did Millennials Two Decades Ago

Bill Maher interviews DNC Vice Chair David Hogg, who recently ruffled feathers in the Democratic Party hierarchy for wanting to primary older members, and offered some controversial advice on why so many young men voted for Trump.

The Democratic National Committee has knives out for Vice Chair David Hogg. The 25-year-old survivor of the 2018 shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, rose to prominence as a gun control advocate after the shooting. He became so well known that now Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), before she was elected to Congress, recorded herself chasing Hogg on Capitol Hill, where the latter was lobbying members of Congress on the gun control issue.

Hogg, who has made connections within the party and won the support of Minnesota Gov. and 2024 vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, was elected vice chair in February. Since then, he has embarked on a campaign to recruit primary challenges against older Democratic lawmakers, irking some party insiders. He has more recently offered his own critique as to why Democrats are struggling with Gen Z men, who voted for Trump in the last election.

“What I think happened last election is younger men — they would rather vote for somebody who they don’t completely agree with, they don’t feel judged by, than somebody who they do agree with, that they feel like they have to walk on eggshells around constantly because they’re going to be judged or ostracized or excommunicated,” Hogg said in an appearance on “Real Time with Bill Maher” last week. “Young people should be able to focus on what young people should be focused on, which is how to get laid and how to go and have fun.”

The comments ignited a firestorm on both the left and right. Some progressives said his words focusing on “getting laid” read like an endorsement of rape culture, and that if young men were willing to vote for people they disagreed with just because they felt judged, it was a sign of weakness on their part. In contrast, right-wing influencers like Charlie Kirk said it missed the point entirely. He said young men agree with Republicans and want a more traditionally conservative world.

I have my own opinions on this and have offered them here before. Perhaps unpopularity, I think this is the natural progression of young men in politics. We’re just not accustomed to it because the trajectory of Millennial men was an aberration. Barack Obama and the Democratic Party under him won a reasonably large number among men under 25 in that era. The reason was unique to that time period: