I remember when asked to address the concerns of young men who felt like they were being ignored and left behind, the Democratic response was something along the lines “vote on behalf of the women in your life”.

I don’t know if that sort of thing was the Democratic official response, but I’ve seen my share of completely unhelpful bullshit from online people that at least identify as leftist.

Telling men, especially white men that they should take a back seat and let others talk and doing anything else is “mansplaining”, that they need to “do the work”, and “check their privilege” and so on. Creating a hierarchy in the Oppression Olympics game, etc. And telling people that their pain is invalid. Taking joy in young men who are miserable in the dating game.

If someone is hurting, responding with a lecture about how awful they are because of their race and gender is supposed to do what? Is all that lecturing and scolding supposed to be winning hearts and minds and building a broader coalition? FFS.

We need a lot more happy warriors like Mamdani, AOC and Bernie. Okay, Bernie can be a bit gruff at times, but he’s not lecturing people on intersectionality and other extremely academic/online things. Those guys talk about how we are in this shit together as humans and you come away galvanized and motivated. They don’t give people homework assignments and dress them down in a finger-wagging struggle session.