Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds

JOEL KOTKIN: The Left’s war on men is backfiring disastrously: Young males are moving to the Right. But as birth rates collapse, this is a bigger problem than politics.

Sex is supposed to be fun, and productive, but when mixed with politics it can have some less fortunate societal impacts. This autumn, as the US presidential election moved to its denouement, both campaigns focused largely on their gender bases, hoping to win the chromosomal war.

Women almost elected the pathetic Kamala Harris, with 53 per cent of them giving her their votes according to the exit polls. Her biggest edge was among younger women, who supported her by 61 per cent, and black women, who backed her by 91 per cent. Some Democrats attacked white women after the election for “dooming Kamala”, particularly married suburban women, who turned out to care about things other than sexual politics.

But what really saved Donald Trump was his strong support among men. Trump’s focus on the “Manosphere” of fight fans, fitness buffs, male influencers, and people attracted to uber-males like Joe Rogan and Elon Musk paid off big time, with him winning the overwhelming majority of white as well as Hispanic working class men. He even notched up an astounding 21 per cent among male African Americans, more than twice his percentage with black women. Among white men under 30, he won by an astonishing 14 points.

Men clearly preferred the Trump model to that presented by Democratic men, who proudly boasted of being “less masculine” than their Republican counterparts, leading to comparisons with Bud Light’s disastrous flirtation with a transgender influencer. The low point, however, was the laughable attempt to manufacture he-men who “eat carburetors for breakfast” and vote for Harris, in a TV ad later revealed to have been created independently of her official campaign by Hollywood actors and writers.

Everything about her campaign was fake.

KAROL MARKOWICZ: The real Jewish vote: And why it matters.

For me, it’s: Did we put our own survival at the top of the issues pile? Did we see clearly who are friends are and who they are not? Did my people learn lessons? But also to show the outside world: look, we did.

I had anecdotes. Liberal Jewish friends who leaned in over dinners and whispered “I’m voting for him.” One after another made the confession. One couple in particular, lifelong friends of mine, shocked me into silence when they said they had voted Trump. They were committed Democrats (MSNBC watchers! Howard Stern listeners!) who had spent years arguing with me. I knew they didn’t trust Kamala Harris on Israel and I figured they would sit it out. They live in New York, they don’t have to vote. But they did. And they voted for him.

I felt the sea change when Lizzy Savetsky, a Jewish influencer, tipped to Trump. I generally don’t believe that endorsements matter that much. If Oprah and Taylor and Beyoncé couldn’t swing it, who could? But I took Lizzy’s seriously. She’s an important figure in the Jewish world, she’s beautiful and smart, focused on her family and very outspoken. I saw her as representative of a specific voting bloc that I saw emerging: women who are normally repelled by Trump but set that aside to do what’s best for the country. It wasn’t just that she was voting for Trump, it was that she was admitting to it on Sid Rosenberg’s extremely popular New York City morning radio show. Lizzy Savetsky being out with her Trump support, despite the fact that it would hurt her, and cost her followers, made me think something was moving. She wasn’t like Taylor and Beyonce, they took the easy position. She was like Travis Kelce and Jay-Z, neither of whom made endorsements. But Lizzy did.

Anecdotes aren’t data, yes, of course, but data can be bad too. It’s why people recoiled so hard from Ann Selzer’s flawed Iowa poll in the closing days of the presidential election. Her “gold standard” poll showed Trump losing Iowa to Kamala Harris by 3 points. It didn’t make sense. People on the ground in Iowa were dumbfounded. Trump would end up winning Iowa by 13. Her poll was data, not anecdotes, and it was wrong.

Yeah, anecdotes are, in fact data. All facts are data, if you know what to do with them.

OPEN THREAD: It’s all part of the process.

SHE’S J.K. ROWLING. HER CRITICS ARE CRAZY PEOPLE OF NO IMPORTANCE.

The brief historical interlude where crazy people of no importance could nonetheless get their way by yelling a lot appears to have closed.

ME, AS PART OF LAW & LIBERTY’S SYMPOSIUM ON NEW YORK TIMES V. SULLIVAN: Whither Sullivan?

“THE BEST PART IS NO PART:” I hope Elon applies this approach to the federal government, too.

LOL: I’m 16. On Nov. 5, the girls cried and the boys played Minecraft. “Eight years ago, I was too young to feel the full force of Hillary Clinton’s loss. Now at 16, I’ve had the wind knocked out of me. On that Wednesday, I was flush with anger — but it was diluted by an even stronger feeling: defeat. I saw it in the eyes of women in my subway car that morning. I saw it in the barista at the coffee shop on the corner, the female security guard at my school and in the face of my history teacher.”

Reading this, you’d never know that a majority of white women — and nearly half of women overall — voted for Trump. The boys had their priorities straight. The girls chose to be hysterical, as did their adult women role models.

OBVIOUSLY WE NEED A CODE OF JUDICIAL ETHICS FOR THESE THINGS:

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: A humiliated bride was “completely upstaged” at her own wedding after hungry guests snubbed the upscale vegan dinner menu — and ordered pizza for delivery instead.

Plus: “In the post’s comments, folks online did not side with the newlyweds — particularly for weaponizing the element of surprise. ‘Be honest, you didn’t tell anyone about the menu because you knew they wouldn’t like it/come if you did,’ one wrote.”