Like quite a number of people who follow this stuff, I was practically incredulous when we learned what the Democrats’ most recent investment into somehow cracking the bro code produced for them. POLITICO’s Elena Schneider was among those who broke said details yesterday:
It “reaffirms what young men already think, that Democrats don’t want to invest in you,” said Ilyse Hogue, who co-founded the Speaking with American Men project. The SAM project — which turned into a punchline for liberals and conservatives alike — is pitching itself to donors and officials as a hub for research, paid advertising and influencer outreach that’s focused on young men, a once-critical part of the Democratic coalition that they lost to President Donald Trump in 2024. “Democrats are seen as weak, whereas Republicans are seen as strong,” Hogue said. “Young men also spoke of being invisible to the Democratic coalition, and so you’ve got this weak problem and then you’ve got this, ‘I don’t think they care about me’ problem, and I think the combination is kind of a killer.”
Captain Obvious, you have rarely been so omnipresent in any news story.
There are many outlets that are reporting this news with more than a bit of a jaundiced slant–and it’s not necessarily linked to political leanings. As one might expect, the likes of FOX NEWS was quick to snark when the imminency of this release was first reported by the NEW YORK TIMES last week–but it’s more than intriguing to see who the platform’s Emma Colton quoted to make that point:
Democratic strategist Michael Ceraso told Fox News Digital on Tuesday that he does not take issue with Democrats investing in voter engagement strategies but added that he found it “hilarious” that “people in suits are hanging out at luxury hotels asking how they can talk to day-to-day Americans.”
“We’re having an issue with the messenger more than the message,” Ceraso said, arguing that voters support longstanding Democratic policies such as affordable housing, but that “Democrats just need to take a reality check” on how they convey their messaging to voters. “I just don’t understand how, after all these years and all these Democrats who’ve been in the game, how we continue to make those same choices,” he added. “Like Rahm Emmanuel, or all these sort of big names, they’re just like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to figure out how to win in, you know, rural North Carolina by hanging out in a New York hotel.
And THE DAILY SIGNAL’s Jacob Adams added a few more of the revelations in his preview article from May 27:
The plan recommends buying advertisements in video games and cautions Democrats to “shift from a moralizing tone.” The plan raised some eyebrows after excerpts of it were published by The New York Times, not least because the Democratic National Committee recently announced it might be holding another election in June that could result in the ouster of the youngest male member of the leadership team.
It is kinda funny that these radical suggestions were quite similar to many of the views already posited by David Hogg–an actual twenty-something male already on their payroll, who at the very least more than likely knows a few of these coveted gamers and how they react to video game advertising of any kind, let alone political, moralizing tone or not. The concept of tapping into in-house resources as a starting point and/or sounding board is usually what experienced and budget-conscious researchers would do as Step One before commissioning any RFP (request for proposal) from any outside vendor. From the looks of this motley crew desperate to cling to their authority, I’d be stunned if that actually happened.
But when one learns of who and what they got, and how much they spent, it’s enough to make even the most liberal-minded and blue-pilled person exasperated. POLITICO’s Schneider shared those details as well:
The SAM project — which turned into a punchline for liberals and conservatives alike — is pitching itself to donors and officials as a hub for research, paid advertising and influencer outreach that’s focused on young men, a once-critical part of the Democratic coalition that they lost to President Donald Trump in 2024. The group was founded by Hogue, the former president of NARAL; John Della Volpe, a pollster who specializes in Gen Z voters; and former Texas Rep. Colin Allred, who unsuccessfully ran for Senate last year.
So who the heck in John Della Volpe? Well, his CV on his employer’s website should answer that question and potentially raise a few more:
John Della Volpe is the Director of Polling at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics, where he has led research initiatives on American youth since 2000. His work focuses on understanding the attitudes, values, and behaviors of young Americans and their impact on politics and public life. A contributor to NBC, MSNBC, and The New York Times, John is the author of the critically acclaimed book Fight: How Gen Z is Channeling Their Fear and Passion to Save America (St. Martin’s Press, 2022).
You know Hah-vard elites don’t come cheap, right? Just how not cheap and what he delivered is perhaps the most galling revelation of all:
The group has a two-year, $20 million budget to study young men and how Democrats can reach them. The results of an initial round of research shared exclusively with POLITICO — including 30 focus groups and a national media consumption survey — found many young men believe that “neither party has our back,” as one Black man from Georgia said in a focus group. Participants described the Democratic Party as overly-scripted and cautious, while Republicans are seen as confident and unafraid to offend.
30 focus groups, and that’s your headline, huh? All I can say is–must be nice.
Look, I’ve conducted thousands of these groups and surveys over the years, and almost always I was held accountable to strict budgets and fiscal accountability. On the rare occasions where I was given more leeway, we at least attempted to learn a lot more, and actually used the opportunity to learn how other audience sectors were thinking about the same issues at the same time in order to provide context as to how outlying the opinions of our target demo may or may not have been. I’ve previously mused about those experiences, most recently describing when we somehow dragged Roger Ailes and his executives kicking and screaming into a corporate research project where we covered travel expenses for a host of their executives, including private planes.
I also shepherded a project where we were talked into hiring a big name consultant, one Sergio Zyman–the very same genius who brought the word “New Coke” as a course correction– to lend his name and his vendor choices, which dramatically raised our cost. That didn’t go so well, either.
The fact is, more than ever focus groups alone are an outdated and inconclusive way to try to get into the minds of anyone, let alone a demographic that doesn’t have the history with sitting around a table for a couple of hours to offer up “no right or wrong” answers while chowing down on a free meal. Once again, it took the likes of FOX NEWS’ Colton to point this out–but once again it is intriguing to see who employs the pundits she reached out to back up her point:
Democratic donors treating men like an endangered species on a remote island they need to study probably won’t rebuild trust,” MSNBC contributor Rotimi Adeoy posted to X in response to the Times’ report. “This kind of top-down, anthropological approach misses the point: people don’t want to be decoded, they want to be understood and met where they are.” The idea that you can “fix” the male voter problem that exists with Black, Latino, and white men by spending $20 million to study their syntax like they’re a foreign culture is exactly why there’s a disconnect,” Adeoy continued. “These voters aren’t a research subject. They’re citizens.”
Chief political analyst at the Liberal Patriot, Michael Baharaeen, posted to X, “This really says it all,” in response to a tweet quoting the article regarding how “Democratic donors and strategists have been gathering at luxury hotels to discuss how to win back working-class voters, commissioning new projects that can read like anthropological studies of people from faraway places.”
If they’re not even buying what the SAM brainturst is selling, can one honestly expect that a conflicted voter will?
What they might have chosen to do with such a liberal budget is perhaps utilize some unconventional ways to actually speak TO American Men, not merely AT them. Yet another MSNBC contributor, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, offered one possible way in a piece she dropped on Monday:
Democrats have spent $20 million on a program called “Speaking with American Men” (SAM) to help figure out which “spaces” they need to show up in to fare better with this demographic. A smart place to start would be the gym; the booming men’s fitness market is expected to more than double by 2029, growth driven by men under 25, who are joining gyms almost twice as fast as women. And as SAM co-director Ilyse Hogue and I wrote here last year, the right has done an excellent job parlaying young men’s healthy interest in exercise into an embrace of reactionary politics.
In research parlance, we call that an ethnography, which Scribbr defines as follows:
Ethnography is a type of qualitative research that involves immersing yourself in a particular community or organization to observe their behavior and interactions up close. The word “ethnography” also refers to the written report of the research that the ethnographer produces afterwards. Ethnography is a flexible research method that allows you to gain a deep understanding of a group’s shared culture, conventions, and social dynamics.
I used such an approach for a cable TV marketing committee to study how people who lived in virtual squalor would somehow devote the money and space for big-screen TVs and related audiovisual enhancements, practically creating an altar of worship amidst their cluttered existences, as a way to see with our own eyes the opportunties for HDTV and 4K as they were being evolved. We visited people in their homes and at their community centers to talk to them on their own turf with the quest of them opening up more honestly about why they’d watch hours upon hours of Steve Harvey FAMILY FEUD reruns to support why Game Show Network should be considered a must-carry.
One would like to believe that someone at the DNC might have least asked Della Volpe to consider such methodologies, especially with such a generous budget.
And especially in light of another story that THE NEW YORK TIMES dropped on their DAILY podcast as late as yesterday morning, said DNC might have considered at least counterbalancing their quest. Shane Goldmacher parsed data over 12 years from every county in the United States and revealed that the underlying reason that Republicans have moved the needle so drastically had more to do with class than demography–which also explains how even more significant shifts among Black and Latino young men have occurred. It’s worth a listen.
You go ahead and mock the results. I’m gonna preface that reaction with my questioning of the methodologies. I know what goes into the actual costs of running groups–assuming they’re even in-person at all. I know what it costs to commission a facility, recruit respondents, factor in potential no-shows and alternates, pay them, feed them, and cover any costs of travel, hotel and meals. Even when one factors in inflation since admittedly my experiences are now a few years in the rear view mirror, it’s nowhere near $20 million–or even a considerable fraction of it.
Look, Republicans are guilty of overspending on egotists as well. I’ve worked with the likes of Frank Luntz at gunpoint and I know what he costs. But to the grudging credit of the evil geniuses that employ him, they also invested in methodologies like Cambridge Analytica to find the target voters they needed to put their candidate in office the first time–forget what’s being asserted with Palantir moving forward. The grim truth is that those in charge over there are thinking broader and smarter than the ones on the supposedly “good” side of the aisle.
While you’re doing your media tour, Mr. Della Volpe, maybe you might want to share with the Americans who funded you–and the party that continues to hit me up for more money–exactly how much of your out-of-pocket costs have been for your “innovative” revelations, and how much has gone into your pocket because of your pedigree?
And that does include what you’re feeding your respondents to keep them engaged, Captain Obvious. Hot wings and Red Bull also work pretty well, I’m told–and I know they’re on the cheaper end of the menu.
Until next time…