Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., argued in an interview published Sunday that Democrats need to ditch the jargon and communicate with young men who have fled their party in recent years.
As 2028 draws closer, Democrats are still trying to understand why so many voters, particularly young men of many racial backgrounds, voted for President Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
“Pod Save America” host and former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau noted in the interview that, “One surprising trend in the Trump era is that, according to election results, racial polarization has declined over the last decade largely because a small but not insignificant share of Black men, especially younger Black men, have stopped voting for Democrats.”
He noted further that some are directly voting for Trump, to the point that his support among Black voters has doubled between 2020 and 2024, and that, therefore, “Clearly, some of these young men are hearing something from Trump and the right that they are not hearing from us.”
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“It’s a great question,” Warnock said, nonetheless warning this issue should not be addressed at the expense of others.
“We have to resist the false dichotomy between standing up for women and standing and being a very clear voice against misogyny and sexism, which I talked about at length a couple of Sundays ago in my pulpit, and at the same time seeing the ways in which men and young men, in particular, young, Black men in unique ways and Latino men, are hurting and somebody’s got to speak to that,” he said.
“It’s a whole range of issues,” the pastor continued. “I think so many of our young people feel demoralized.”
He recalled his own rise from being one of 12 kids, having grown up in the projects, and rising to become a pastor and then senator in the United States. However, he argued that, if anything, it would be harder for such a meteoric rise to happen now than back during the 1980s when he grew up.
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After repeating his argument that one should be able to address sexism against women while also trying to create opportunities for young men, he suggested that one more surface-level part of the issue is purely communication.
“I think sometimes we get caught up in our jargon on the left, and people sometimes don’t know what the heck you’re talking about,” he warned. “I think speaking plain English — because more often than not, our policies would actually be more helpful. Right? But you got to speak plain English to folks.”
