Screengrab from Falling Down.
As you are certainly aware, the midterm elections happened yesterday and it was an actual blue wave. As I noted before the election, it's pretty rare for a party in power to not take major losses during the midterms, and this time the Republicans lost both the Senate and the House.
Thousands of words have already been written about this and why it happened. The general conclusion, also backed by President Trump and Vice President Vance themselves is that this was due to the Iran War. It's hard to argue that is wrong, President Trump would not be the first GOP president to lose in the midterms due to an unpopular war of choice in the Middle East, the whole situation reminds me of George Bush.
However, the war itself isn't really enough to explain why things got so bad for Republicans to the point where they lost even in deep red states like Iowa and Texas. More tuned in people know that it was the gas prices that the war caused rather than the war itself that did the damage. Though some felt the Iran conflict was a betrayal, Trump ran on a "no new wars" platform and went back on it, it was the fuel prices that absolutely did the damage.
But again, that doesn't tell the whole story. Paying $1 a gallon more for gas isn't a great explanation for the level of anger for the Republicans we saw on Tuesday. The problem is that folks are not doing well in this economy, and it's young men, especially White men that are doing worst of all.
Indeed, I understand this pretty well. I am, after all, a 43 year old man with a college degree working a job that didn't require one. I'm unmarried, have no kids and can't even afford a home, despite saving for it for years. A few weeks ago I was unhappy with something that happened at my job but I realized very quickly that I would just have to deal with it because I didn't think there is any chance of me getting a new job.
And you know what? There are a lot of men younger than me that would kill for the level of success I have. I have a job, I don't really worry about money too much, I've actually kissed a girl or two. So many young men now just don't have any of those things and have no hope of getting those things. And, at least in my case, I can say that I had opportunities do get all the things I wanted, I just made mistakes and choices. Can young men say the same thing?
Just like D Fens up there, for young men, you can do everything right now and still fail miserably. I have heard so many stories of young men sending out hundreds of resumes and never getting an interview, let alone a job. Hunting for a job now is just as humiliating at going on the dating apps, and has the same likelihood of success. In both cases, you are no longer competing with just the folks in you town for a job/girlfriend, you are doing it with basically everyone in the country, and now, frequently, everyone on earth.
The two AI's, Artificial Intelligence and Actually Indians, are making this problem even worse. Both are eliminating the chances of young men getting a high paying job in the IT field and others. Indeed, tech workers are one of the worst groups for this given how many jobs have been eliminated or taken by H1B visas that what was a hot career for smart young men is now a deadly trap.
And young men, White men especially but not limited to them, are demonized basically everywhere. Men are the reason why everything bad happens, according to the media. They are blamed for women making bad decisions and can even be thrown in prison for it. #MeToo really did a number on young men, being blamed for the actions of a small minority of men, and having totally normal behavior demonized as practically rape.
Indeed, this is a major reason why I think young men turned on the Republicans this year. Nowhere was the flip to the Democrats more dramatic than Zoomer men. Young men flipped more than any other group. And when you think about it it's very obvious why they did.
The Republicans did not do much since taking power in 2025 to solve any of these issues. Deportations did help, but the numbers weren't big enough to affect anything other than the margins. Trump ended some of the discrimination against White males in colleges. And there were other small things, like ending fake CDL mills.
But much worse than that, it seemed that nobody in the Trump Administration or Republican Party even realized a problem. When Trump was informed that almost all of the jobs created over the summer went to women and not men, Trump made a joke about how women liked him. He didn't seem to understand that the economy wasn't working for men.
Much worse were the folks like Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Ashely Hinson that were putting out ads and making statements saying that young men were lazy and were leeching off the government and playing video games in their parents basement. This kind of thing might have played well for baby boomers, but it infuriated young men, and even folks like me. It's little wonder that Hinson lost on Tuesday.
It's also little wonder why young men turned on the GOP if that was the strategy. Instead of offering a vision that would improve the lives of young men, the party was instead was insulting the same voters. Trump himself got distracted with the Iran war and things only he really cared about, like renaming everything or the White House Ballroom.
Of course it doesn't make a lot of sense for young men to punish the Republicans by voting for the Democrats. The Democrats also bear a lot of responsibility for how things are for young men. And I would say that the Democrats entire platform has been hating young men, White men especially. It's why I expect this won't be a permanent situation, just a midterms one-off, White men aren't going to stay with the "we hate White men" party.
But I will say that in the past when large groups of young men can no longer get the things in life they want and need, like jobs and wives, things tend to get bad. In the past, the situation led to men either overthrowing their leadership or making war on their neighbors so they could take what they need. Such things are a lot less easy to do now, so an alternative must be found.
And I think this Tuesday was that alternative. Young men know that the Democrats hate them, but is there really much of a difference between being hated and ignored? If the Republicans won't even attempt to listen to them on these economic issues, why even try? Young men sent a message to the GOP on Tuesday and that message was "fix things or we burn the whole country down." And that should have been obvious what was happening because so many folks were saying before the election, pretty explicitly. And it wasn't just accelerationists like Nicholas Fuentes saying it, it was normal young men that had given up hope on thing getting better.
Was that message received? I don't know. I know that I personally heard the message loud and clear. I had discounted how angry young men were. I obviously thought that the economy didn't matter too much because the boomers were happy, and I think that's how the Republicans felt too. I dismissed the folks saying they were staying home or even voting for Democrats as malcontents, groypers and shills making perfect the enemy of good. But I was absolutely wrong.
But for the Republicans? I don't know. Both Trump and Vance seem to understand that they screwed up in Iran but do they get it was the economic effects of the war and not the war itself? I am not sure. Once again though, I feel the loss of Charlie Kirk. Kirk had the apparently unique ability on the GOP side to actually listen to young people and translate that to President Trump. Is there someone in the current administration that can do the same?
This isn't the only reason the Republicans got beaten on Tuesday. There were other valid reasons that angered other parts of the 2024 coalition. The anti-war types were angry about the Iran war, the MAHA folks were angry that they didn't get much attention, the immigration folks were mad that more folks weren't deported and so on. And I could write an entire article about candidate quality, and indeed, I did write a whole article about how Vivek Ramaswamy was terrible.
And it's absolutely not just young men that are suffering from this economy too. Yes, the stock market is doing well and inflation has been slowed, but unless you are a boomer with a large stock portfolio, who cares? I'm 43 and even I am feeling ignored on economic issues by the Republicans. Indeed, boomers were the only generation that broke for Republicans in this election, so it's clearly not just young men affected by a K-shaped economy that is being held up by AI.
Clearly a lot needs to be cleaned up if the Republicans want to have a chance at the White House in 2028. There is the thought they could do nothing, as I have little doubt that the Democrats will screw everything up, as they always do. But it would be a lot better for the Republicans if they focus on the young men that have been abandoned by everyone. I think if Republicans figure out that young men are a key to winning elections, they will do so and if they don't, they will be stuck in the same pattern where they get wiped out by, and wipe out in turn, the Democratic party.
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