The Liberal Media's Young Men Obsession
Joshua Cinderella, host of Doom Scroll, sat down with Felix Beerman to discuss what he calls a "vicarious humiliation" listening to liberal pundits talk about young men for the past decade.
"Everyone sounds like an idiot when they talk about this," Beerman said, describing how liberal media outlets have oscillated between claiming young men are irredeemably stupid and then suddenly declaring them the only arbiters of culture that politics must appeal to.
The conversation emerged after exit polling showed young men aged 18-29 supported Zoron by a plus-40 margin in 2024, representing a massive shift toward the right.
The Real Story: Class Erosion
Beerman argues the media is missing the elephant in the room: the working class coalition has shifted dramatically toward the right.
"Young people are being proletarianized," Beerman explained. "We have an eroding middle class and their vote is actually just in the same kind of gradation shifting with working people."
He describes how voters who supported Trump in 2024 then voted for Zoron a year later, representing a backlash against the current administration. The explanation mirrors what happened in multiple Trump districts in Virginia—voters rewarding the opposition as a protest vote.
Why Zoron Won
The conversation turns to why Zoron succeeded where figures like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez failed. Beerman identifies several factors:
"He is probably the single best communicator in American left-of-center politics," Beerman said, noting Zoron's debate performances were "perfectly run campaigns."
More importantly, Zoron never condescenses to people. Unlike other candidates who engage in what Beerman calls "the Good Man project"—where figures like Hugo Schwitzer would lecture young men about how to improve their lives—Zoron simply presents his five main issues and lets voters rise to the occasion.
"They can hear you calling them idiots," Beerman noted. "They know they're being called dumb dumbs."
The candidate's affirmative defense during primary controversies, particularly around Israel, paid off in ways no recent American politician has achieved besides Rashida Tlet.
The Cost of Living Election
Both hosts discuss how economic dissatisfaction drives voting patterns across incumbent administrations worldwide. Four-point corrections based on inflation and dissatisfaction explain part of Zoron's enormous swing—but not all of it.
"There's been an enormous amount of media attention on this particular topic," Beerman observed, noting that young women also swung 11 points toward the right, while young men swung 15 points.
The real story is generational: as voters age and acquire property, family responsibilities, and stakes in society, their voting behavior shifts. But for young people currently being proletarianized, economic anxiety translates directly into political populism.
"Young people are being proletarianized. Their vote is actually just in the same kind of gradation shifting with working people."
Counterarguments
Critics might note that framing this entirely as an economic story minimizes cultural factors—particularly issues around gender, social progress, and identity politics that clearly motivated segments of voters. The article itself acknowledges young women also shifted right by 11 points, suggesting the class explanation doesn't fully account for gendered voting patterns.
Bottom Line
This conversation reveals why Democrats have lost their working-class coalition: economic anxiety is now driving political populism on both sides. Beerman's strongest insight is that liberal media has spent a decade obsessing over young men as a cultural phenomenon when the real story is simpler—class erosion affects everyone, and voters are responding to it. The vulnerability lies in whether economic framing adequately captures gender-specific shifts that also moved sharply right.