Politics

The Return of the Democratic Manly Man

The party has a new campaign strategy: masculinity.

First published in The Atlantic on July 12, 2026.

by Russell Berman, The Atlantic

July 23, 2026 | reading time: 13 Min.

Brian Poindexter had just finished wolfing down a Reuben sandwich in a deli outside Cleveland when he delivered a message that, coming from a Democratic House candidate in the year 2026, sounded almost provocative. “There’s nothing wrong with being masculine,” Poindexter told me. It’s okay, he said, to be “a manly man.”