I admit, I rolled my eyes when my husband jumped in to help organize the White Dudes for Harris call. I was not in the mood to pat him on the back for copying the white woman call. I warned him it could backfire. I was nervous about the evidence that leading with identity hurts this candidate.
He insisted I didn’t get it.
And now I humbly admit: He was right.
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In fact, this event—juxtaposed against a media cycle in which GOP men were having a collective meltdown over being called “weird”—leads me to believe this moment was the inflection point that flipped the script on the politics of modern masculinity. Their wildly successful call brought together nearly 200,000 people, included too many jokes to meme them all, and raised almost $4 million dollars.
The magic of the call was foreshadowed by the sheer number of celebs clamoring to join: Gen X hero and Goonies actor Sean Astin joined a bill with Mark Ruffalo, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, J.J. Abrams, and more. Ultimate Dude Jeff Bridges laid out the simple equation at the top of the call when he explained: “I’m white. I’m the Dude. And I’m for Harris.” Fictional West Wing Deputy Chief of Staff Bradley Whitford hailed the call for so much whiteness, calling it a “rainbow of beige.”
The White Dude jamboree had a vague tinge of activist-style “teach in” as Mayor Pete–arguably the best at this–coached the men on how to actively support abortion rights, the winningest issue for Dems. A distinct vibe of Seventies consciousness raising crept in as singer Josh Groban talked about taking risks as a musician to be a whole person. It had the whiff of nostalgic Jerry Lewis telethon, complete with Silicon Valley billionaire and anti-Trump philanthropist Reid Hoffman pledging to match donations.
And in perhaps the best he-man clubhouse dare ever, Prof. Scott Galloway paid a cool $50,000 to hear Mark Hammill say, “I’m Luke Skywalker and I’m here to rescue you.”
On and offline, women were cheering on their men for joining the call or looking to date one who did. Being on the call was sexy! Some white dudes were wrapped in the American flag reclaiming patriotism as supporting Harris. Some white dudes listened with their young kids modeling a stark contrast to the right-wing pining for a day when men were men and trad wives were trad wives.
Coming at a moment where headlines blare that men are suffering from a loneliness epidemic and an uneasiness with–if not outright hostility to–identity politics, this call quashed conventional wisdom. As Minnesota Governor and VP hopeful Tim Walz told the assembled dudes, “How often in the world do you make that bastard wake up afterwards and know that a Black woman kicked his ass and sent him on the road?”
Electing Harris effectively becomes the ultimate revenge on the ultimate bully. And the GOP bully is already on defense this week in a classic nuh-uh-you-are rant.
A flood of couch and dolphin memes have doggedly mocked the VP nominee J.D. Vance. Right-wing Twitter (X) melted down after Walz took the director’s chair to recast the right-wing positions from scary to weird. "These are weird people on the other side. They want to take books away. They want to be in your exam room,” he said, adding, there’s no “sugarcoating this: These are weird ideas.”
Everyone from Don Jr. to former presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy raced to the internet to prove that they are rubber and Dems are glue. Only it didn’t stick. When you’re liberal, you wear “weird” like a badge of honor. Only when your power comes from fear does weird become an epithet.
Let’s be clear, the White Dudes for Harris call was still a little cringe and annoying. The call stepped on a white women call featuring Chelsea Clnton and Gloria Steinem, natch, already scheduled for the same time. They won’t ultimately get blamed for a loss in November like their female counterparts inevitably do. While we white women doubled down on our earnestness, the boys were having a little too much fun, and they seemed delighted with their participation trophies just for showing up.
But that was part of the charm. It’s hard to overstate the great social realignment that’s occurring when hundreds of thousands of white men gather to proudly claim their supporting role in electing Kamala Harris. Doing so while recasting the opposition from “scary” to “weird” is a master class in cultural jujitsu. I wrote just last week that Democrats need to embrace “an authentic partnership between a strong woman and a strong man” to win in November. Maybe Kamala Harris got what she needs: two hundred thousand strong men stepping up to partner and make her President of the United States.
Ilyse Hogue is a senior fellow at New America, director of its Gender, Extremism, and Engagement project, former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, and author of The Lie that Binds, a history of the anti-abortion movement.
