How White Guys Are Mobilizing Other White Guys To Elect Kamala Harris

If the idea of a bunch of liberal white guys talking about a “positive, multiracial, feminist democracy narrative” strikes you as unbearably cringey, white guys like Chris Crass would encourage you to consider the alternative.

As a “progressive white guy,” Crass often feels “really sad about what white guy political expression looks like” in the age of Donald Trump and the hard-core masculine right. “When you think of, like, white men taking political action, generally the idea of what that looks like is terrible — Charlottesville, MAGA, a Klan rally,” said Crass, a longtime organizer from Louisville, Kentucky.

But in late July, with Vice President Kamala Harris suddenly the de facto presidential nominee, Crass saw an opportunity to mobilize “progressive white men for multiracial feminist democracy” — in other words, organizing white men behind Harris and against Trump. Crass, 50, co-founded the group White Men Against MAGA within 24 hours of Harris replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.

Crass is quick to note the idea for White Men Against MAGA came from Win With Black Women, which held a Zoom call with .

Democrats presented a 180-degree version of masculinity at their August convention, which featured Emhoff as the goofy Borat-quoting husband who stepped away from his law career to become the first ever second gentleman, and Walz as the gentle lug of an ex-high school football coach and gay-straight alliance leader whose teenage son cried at the sight of him taking the stage at the Democratic National Convention.

Walz was partially chosen to balance the ticket with Midwestern white-guy energy, and though Walz has not played a direct role in the White Men or White Dudes organizing efforts, he is nothing if not the movement’s unofficial standard-bearer of bear-hug manliness.

“I feel like I’m in the coaches’ locker room,” said former Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, an ex-college quarterback from just outside Youngstown, Ohio, an area of the country where white men lurched to the right under Trump. “The way he straight-talks, the way he delivers, the way he’s animated, passionate … it’s right out of central casting, you know?”

Men are generally “really pragmatic and skeptical,” Ryan said, when asked how he’d describe his gender’s approach to voting. He also confirmed men don’t like bullshit. “Trump filled the no-BS lane in 2016 and to some extent in 2020,” said Ryan, who thinks Walz can help the Democrats corner the no-BS, Midwestern white-guy vote in November by talking about jobs, the economy and kitchen-table issues.

Oren Jacobson, the Men4Choice founder, said Walz and Harris prove “there’s nothing wrong with being a man. There’s nothing wrong with masculinity. But there’s something wrong with trying to control other people, and what you see with Doug Emhoff and Gov. Walz are men who are comfortable and confident in themselves, and able to stand alongside and uplift and amplify women, too. That visual has been so powerful — and that they’ve done it with such joy.”

Jacobson, whose fellowship program teaches men how to talk about reproductive rights without “causing harm or embarrassing themselves,” praised White Dudes for creating a welcoming space for all the bros. “It creates an entry point that feels like my bros are going, right? And guys go where their guys go,” he said.

The White Dudes, White Men and adjacent groups are nothing if not mindful of the critiques of their movement: that resources on the left would be better spent turning out the women and younger voters who are more likely to power their victory. That even the most well-meaning white men risk centering themselves in work that shouldn’t be about them. That it’s … hard to hear white men talking earnestly and academically about other white men.

But the white men for Harris and reproductive justice view themselves as a collective force for social good outside of themselves, and they’re informed and careful to conduct the work with the necessary permission structure of people of color.

“I think sometimes, because of the power dynamics, there’s this feeling that somehow this work is led by Black folks and folks of color, it’s led by women and more marginalized folks. The reality is we have a lot of positional power, so we need to lean into our vulnerabilities and find ways to show up in this intersectional work,” said Jason Biehl, a 48-year-old outreach captain with White Men Against MAGA and volunteer with Showing Up for Racial Justice, a group that formed amid the backlash to Barack Obama’s presidency.

Biehl, not unlike other people in this article, can casually drop references to feminist, multiracial democracy and the author and social critic bell hooks. Asked whether these are ever references he’ll make to, say, a male swing voter in Michigan who is on the fence about Harris, the answer is, of course, no. “I would just say that phone-banking is hard,” Biehl said.

Rocketto pushed back on the idea that Democrats should just focus on women and people of color, arguing that the resources exist now for the party to do it all, including attempting to make inroads with the notoriously Trump-supporting demographic of non-college-educated white men. He also thinks Harris may end up doing better than expected with white men generally in November.

“I think that it is possible that she will win a higher percentage of the white male vote than Joe Biden did,” Rocketto said. “I think that’s very possible. And to be honest, we couldn’t have gotten 200,000 people on a call for Joe Biden.”

Even if Harris falls short, the left must prioritize countering the “manosphere and all that stuff that floats out there on the right. If we don’t, we’re going to continue to see our problems get worse with white men,” Rocketto said, adding that he’s proud Democrats this cycle “have really leaned into putting out their own version of what masculinity can be. I think that’s actually really powerful.”

Crass, the White Men Against MAGA founder, hopes the white guy movement will redefine what it looks like to be a politically engaged white guy. “We’re trying to create something positive that can then serve as a North Star to bring white guys into a place of hopeful, positive vision for the country. But also for themselves — as white guys.”