Some time back I wrote a brief post about Jonathan Haight’s book The Righteous Mind, which is a book I highly recommend. One of the aspects of the book that I did not touch on in that post is Haight’s frustration with the Democratic party (I believe in 2004) for yielding the field to the Republican party on issues that align with Haight’s moral foundations. These are the basic types of gut-level feelings that, in Haight’s account, give rise to all other moral judgments. The foundations are: Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity.

My memory is fuzzy about the specific examples given in the book, but I imagine Haight would say that the Democrats failed on connecting on the basis of Loyalty and Authority. That is to say, Republicans were able to appeal to people’s gut-level feelings about right and wrong using four out of five of Haight’s dimenisions of moral intuition; whereas the Democrats were focusing on just one dimension (Fairness).

I thought back to that analysis when I read an interview in the New York Times with Reuben Gallego, a Democratic senator elected in Arizona in 2024, despite Trump’s carrying the state in the presidential election.

This except from the interview is not even the main focus of the interview. I’ve just quoted a single exchange between the interviewer and the senator.

You won Latino men by 30 points in an election in which Trump dominated that group. I know men are a very broad group, but what do you think Democrats have misunderstood about them? That we could be working to make the status of men better without diminishing the status of women. A lot of times we forget that we still need men to vote for us. That’s how we still win elections. But we don’t really talk about making the lives of men better, working to make sure that they have wages so they can support their families. I also think some of this is purely psychological — like we just can’t put our finger on it. During my campaign, I noticed when I was talking to men, especially Latino men, about the feeling of pride, bringing money home, being able to support your family, the feeling of bringing security — they wanted to hear that someone understood that need. And a lot of times we are so afraid of communicating that to men, because we think somehow we’re going to also diminish the status of women. That’s going to end up being a problem. The fact that we don’t talk this way to them makes them think we don’t really care about them, when in fact the Democrats on par are actually very good about the status of working-class men. It was a joke, but I said a lot when I was talking to Latino men: “I’m going to make sure you get out of your mom’s house, get your troquita.” For English speakers, that means your truck. Every Latino man wants a big-ass truck, which, nothing wrong with that. “And you’re gonna go start your own job, and you’re gonna become rich, right?” These are the conversations that we should be having. We’re afraid of saying, like, “Hey, let’s help you get a job so you can become rich.” We use terms like “bring more economic stability.” These guys don’t want that. They don’t want “economic stability.” They want to really live the American dream.

One of the difficulties for Democrats is that what you’re describing are more traditional values. But people vote on values!

Are you saying that Democrats should recognize that people want more traditional gender roles? Be less afraid of that? No, I think Democrats should recognize that people want to understand that they matter. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re going to say the single mom is less important than the father. That’s not what we’re saying. But just saying, “Yes, you matter too.” Because as Democrats, we’re supposed to be fighting for everybody.

What strikes me about this interaction is that Gallego reports having made the most anodyne of appeals to what is surely a basic male instinct: to provide for one’s family, achieve a measure of independence (or independent contribution), and a measure of material success.

His specific lines are: “I’m going to make sure you get out of your mom’s house, get your troquita” and “And you’re gonna go start your own job, and you’re gonna become rich, right?”

The interviewer is somehow taken aback by this. She identifies these as “more traditional values” and specifically as “more traditional gender roles.”

Remember the context here: aside from the generic promise of becoming “rich,” the economic prizes here are moving out of your mom’s house and purchasing a truck. This is a bridge too far for the interviewer.

Two observations:

  1. Democrats are yielding ground in a very basic and universal human desire (not even just a male desire): to succeed and to provide for one’s family.
  2. Extremists are enabled when moderates lose the center.