Common Sense: The Mommy Party, the Daddy Party, and the Growing Gender Gap in Politics

Every day, we see further indication the Democratic Party is increasingly the female party and the Republicans increasingly the male party. It is not just gender however. The driving factor in all of this is marital and educational status. To be fair, this has been going on for quite a while.

More than 30 years ago, Chris Matthews labeled the distinction on a partisan basis as voters seeing the Democrats as the Mommy Party and Republicans as the Daddy Party. He called it dividing up the political chores. Republicans “protect us with a strong national defense and worry about our business affairs.” Democrats “look after our health, nutrition, and welfare.” He went on to say “The paradigm for this snug arrangement is in the traditional family, Daddy locks the doors at night and brings home the bacon. Mommy worries when the kids are sick and makes sure each gets treated fairly.”

As far back as 2010, Larry Rosin penned a piece “Increasingly, it is the Daddy Party versus the Mommy Party.” In that mid-term election, Moms had voted 52-42 (rounded off) Democrat; Dads had voted Republican 57-40. That is a 25-point differential, from plus eight to minus 17. Not anything has slowed down this trend.

In the spring of 2024, James Carville ventured into risky political territory talking about the Democratic Party and women. “A suspicion of mine is there are too many preachy females…Don’t drink beer; don’t watch football; don’t eat hamburgers, this is not good for you. The message is too feminine. Everything you are doing is destroying the planet. You’ve got to eat your peas.”

How did Democratic women react to that sentiment? One of their pollsters, Anna Greenburg responded by essentially telling Carville to get over it. “Like it or not, the Democratic Party is 60 percent women.”

To drive home the point that Democrats at that moment in the cycle were not worried about this trend, New York Magazine writer Rebecca Trister commented “What is fascinating to me is the Republican’s inability to hide their loathing of women.” Call me a Stone Age Republican male, but that does seem a little smug, condescending, and a strange way to appeal to male voters to get them to change their voting behavior.

On Election Day, President Trump won the married men’s vote 60-38. He did even better among men without a college degree, winning them by 34 points. Unmarried women went to Harris by 21 points. Trump narrowly carried the married women’s vote. Those are pretty strong numbers, to say the least.

Recent data continue to confirm this reality. By a whopping 41 percent margin, President Trump is approved of by white men with no college degree. Among white married men with a college degree, the margin is a single point for him. Unmarried white women without a college degree give him a plus eight. Unmarried white women with a college degree? Trump is in the negative by 38 points! There is such a thing as AWFL (affluent white female liberal), if not the “childless cat women” that Vice President Vance mentioned in the last election.

On March 23^rdof this year, Intelligencer published an article by Sarah Jones. Its title is “Masculinity Will Not Save Men.” Her analysis starts with “The return of Trump and the growth of misogyny are problems for women, for the economy, and democracy itself.” She goes on to say “Some liberals would rather appease violent masculinity than defeat it.”

Once more, the message is men need to be more in touch with their feminine side. Has anyone ever found the voice to advance the thought that maybe, just maybe, it is time for women to get more in touch with their masculine side? Or, is even considering the possibility of a canceling event?

According to the data, it would appear, men, especially those without a college degree, are a bit weary of being told to fall in line, vote Democrat, and support the policies that will eliminate toxic masculinity. They clearly rejected the idea that they are the problem by virtue of their gender.

Common Sense: The path to get more males to vote Democratic does not start with telling them to be more feminine. They might even consider inviting in a bit more masculinity to appeal to males. Surely, continued demeaning of men and Republicans in general, does not seem to be a winning argument.

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