When Both Parties Try to Out-Macho Each Other

A couple of weeks ago, Democrats posted a photo of James Talarico, the U.S. Senate candidate in Texas, captioned “November, here we come.” Talarico, strangely alone at a picnic table, is wearing a lone-star flag button-down, and he has four baskets piled with fried foods in front of him and, most significant, a turkey leg thicker than his forearm jammed in his mouth. Presumably, this image is a response to Republicans calling Talarico all manner of terms that effectively mean “unmanly”: low-T, transgender, secretly a woman, gay, man-child, and—God forbid—vegan. Democrats could dismiss this line of attack as childish and homophobic. But they are not. Instead, Talarico’s campaign staff are widely circulating the turkey-leg image to send the message that their man is not merely a man, but a caveman.The MAGA movement has fully embraced masculinism, which The Atlantic’s staff writer Helen Lewis defines in her cover story this month as “a movement to fight back against the advances of feminism and reassert the primacy of men.” Democrats have a more complicated relationship with machismo. After the last presidential election, when Donald Trump made inroads with even young men of color, some Democrats began wondering whether their party did indeed have a man problem. This campaign season, one Democratic candidate who seems to be addressing that concern is Graham Platner, an oyster-farming combat veteran.After he won his primary in Maine this week, Platner became key to the party’s chances of taking over the Senate. But Platner’s brand of masculinity does not come without its issues. In a report last week in The New York Times, several women who were romantically involved with Platner described “toxic” relationships; one described him as rough. Platner’s campaign strongly disputed any claims of physical intimidation or altercation.This week on Radio Atlantic, Lewis discusses how masculinism is playin