To squeeze out a razor-thin victory in the 2024 election, President Donald Trump poached voters from groups long thought to be locks for the Democratic Party. One such bloc, targeted by Republicans during the campaign, was younger people, especially young men.
Losing men under 30 to Republicans, many Democrats have pushed the party to find its so-called “Joe Rogan of the left,” a misguided moniker that simultaneously oversimplifies and overcomplicates the right’s recent success with this young cohort.
One of the figures spearheading this effort to win back the youth vote is California Gov. Gavin Newsom. In March, the governor invited the late right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk onto his podcast, where Kirk laid out the GOP’s fairly straightforward plan to siphon votes from the younger generation.
“They are the most alcohol-addicted, most drug-addicted, most medicated generation in history, and the message that was largely being fed to a lot of young people was ‘Lower your expectations. You’re not going to have the same American dream that your parents would have.'” Kirk said of younger millennials and Gen Z. “We saw this as an opportunity, especially with young men.”
While there has been much attention on Republican campaign tactics — Trump’s appearances on podcasts with largely male audiences, for instance — this ploy to gain support among young people was not some overnight success limited to one election cycle.