Politics — 2026 Midterms

When a Texas Republican and a Pennsylvania Democrat are reading from the same script about your party’s collapse with male voters, maybe it’s time to listen.

There’s a version of this conversation that’s easy to dismiss. Ted Cruz on Sean Hannity’s show, firing off zingers about AOC and “soy latte” Democrats — it’s a familiar cable news ritual, and plenty of people will scroll right past it. That would be a mistake, because buried inside the performative outrage is a political argument that the data actually supports: Democrats are bleeding young men, they know why, and with midterms approaching, they still haven’t figured out how to stop it.

The setup for Cruz’s segment was a clip of Sen. John Fetterman — not exactly a conservative ally — saying the quiet part out loud. The Democratic Party, Fetterman argued, made young men feel like they were “part of the problem,” and that’s precisely why there’s been such a dramatic migration away from the party. “We forgot that we are in the business of addition, not subtraction,” he said.

“We forgot that we are in the business of addition, not subtraction.” — Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA)

Cruz, predictably, took that ball and ran with it. His version was less measured — invoking “transgender witches,” dismissing AOC’s bartending background, and delivering lines that were clearly written for the clip reel. But strip away the theater, and his core point isn’t wrong: if the only thing a political party tells young men is that masculinity is inherently toxic, those young men are going to find somewhere else to park their vote. They did, in 2024. And they may do it again.

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