Can Dems Save Themselves by Spending $20M on ‘Speaking With American Men'?
In the aftermath of Donald Trump's morbidly authoritarian return to the White House, several members of the Democratic Party elite have been pitching plans and multi-million-dollar ideas for how to win back young male voters, many of whom spurned Democrats last fall.
One of these proposals, 'Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan,' went viral after receiving a brief shout-out in The New York Times on Sunday. Described as a $20 million effort to 'study the syntax, language and content that gains attention and virality' in male-dominated spaces online (such as video games), the 'SAM' fundraising pitch was roasted by everyone from left-wing podcasters, to Kamala Harris 2024 operatives, to Joe Biden's former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who discussed the proposal with The Bulwark.
After days of watching derisive comments pile up on online and on TV (including on Fox News), and joking among ourselves about starting a competing 'Speaking to Dudes' plan for only $19 million (codename: 'STD'), Rolling Stone decided to get to the bottom of questions that until now remained publicly unanswered, including: Who or what is 'SAM,' and who is actually running this thing?
Our reporting soon led us to the names of two Democratic Party heavy-hitters running the 'SAM Project,' as well as to some of the national party's stalwarts who offered preemptive, hefty derision toward the new effort.
Certain details of this project had been circulating in Democratic circles for weeks. One Democrat who received the fundraising prospectus says that they saw it, skimmed it, then closed it immediately because what they had seen seemed so 'fucking stupid.'
Still, we wanted to see for ourselves, so we reached out to the two key figures behind the SAM Project to learn more about it and review its much-discussed fundraising prospectus (embedded below). The group also shared with us its 31-page presentation titled, 'How to Stop Losing the Culture Wars — and Win Back Men.'
'Speaking with American Men' is being led by Ilyse Hogue, the former president of the abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America, and John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics and an adviser to Biden's 2020 campaign. The project's fundraising pitch lists former Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas), a one-time NFL player who lost a Senate race to Ted Cruz last year, as part of the SAM Project team.
In a joint interview with Rolling Stone on Wednesday, Della Volpe and Hogue wanted to clarify a few things. (Yes, they have seen the mean social media posts.)
For one thing, they stress that the $20 million they set out to raise is for a two-year budget, which would be dedicated to not just research, but also for outreach, organizing efforts, and communications. The group intends to study and engage niche communities popular with young men of different races and backgrounds, including in forums and spaces focused on video games, cryptocurrencies, fitness, and DIY videos.
The point of the project, they explain, is to listen to 'a cohort of young people who don't feel like the Democratic Party hears them or cares about them,' as Della Volpe puts it. He says Democrats' failure in 2024 was about 'over relying on analytics and not listening to people,' and that the Harris campaign did 'something that no other [Democratic] campaign this century has done, which is to not optimize young people.'
Hogue and Della Volpe both sought to warn Democrats last year about their growing problems with men, particularly younger men. Hogue wrote several pieces for The Bulwark last year about Trump's appeals to young men and Democrats' 'male voter problem.' Della Volpe wrote an op-ed for the Times about how Trump was successfully 'exploiting the fears and insecurities of young men.'
Their SAM Project is not just a fundraising pitch — it's happening. Without saying how much money they've raised, Hogue confirms they've received 'initial investment in the work that we're doing and a lot of interest, honestly, in the research that is coming out of it.' Over the past two months, Della Volpe's research firm conducted 30 focus groups among men aged 18-29.
'This level of listening is something that these young men have expressed explicitly that they have been waiting for for a long time,' says Hogue, adding that '$20 million seems like actually a drop in the bucket when you think about what is being spent over … a two-year cycle on speaking to voters. It actually feels pretty modest when you think about by how much we lost this group and how much we have to make up ground.'
The SAM Project says it is being fiscally sponsored by Democracy Matters, a Washington-based nonprofit with ties to David Brock's liberal American Bridge network.
While some of the planks in the SAM Project documents risk coming off as ham-fisted ('Develop, disseminate, and test high-quality, meme-friendly content'), the group aspires to engage with real problems, such as how the right radicalizes men via online platforms — 'utilizing the algorithms to cycle them into a right-wing funnel.'
It also highlights key financial concerns that young men face in today's society: 'job security, home ownership, wage growth, and affordable education/trade programs.' The prospectus seeks to 'highlight the ways in which billionaire-backed culture war distractions serve as a smokescreen to divert attention from economic inequality, stagnating wages, and corporate exploitation.'
The SAM Project's presentation notes that young men recognize that 'institutions have failed them.' They feel 'let down by politics, education, law enforcement, and labor systems.' They 'don't believe Democrats fight for them, but many don't think Republicans care either.' And they have 'learned to expect neglect, not support.'
The presentation says that 'economic insecurity cuts across income and identity,' and young men are 'overwhelmed by the cost of living, the instability of work, and the distance between what was promised and what's real.'
On the other hand, the SAM Project's financial solutions, as described in the fundraising prospectus, seem fairly small-ball: 'expanded child tax credits, homebuyer incentives, and workforce training.' Democrats' 2024 platform, which failed to drive necessary support among young men, already contained references to such items. (The SAM Project team advises developing 'specific language' to frame these policies 'as a path to economic empowerment rather than government dependency,' which almost sounds like a conservative talking point.)
Asked about the fact that Democrats had already pitched similar ideas during the Harris campaign, Hogue says it's impossible for the party to 'build trust' around their economic policies 'if you're not in the spaces [where] people are debating them far in advance of the election, and the Democrats were completely absent from those spaces.'
Hogue says there are areas where many young men agree with Democrats, such as on social issues, as well as on economic policies, but the latter are 'not being emphasized.' She explains that 'unless the Democrats are saying these are top priorities because they affect young men, which they really were not, then that's not going to resonate as much as it could.'
The SAM Project presentation indicates that many young men view Democrats as weak — and 'want leadership that signals strength, clarity, and follow-through — especially in a world that feels unstable and demanding.' The document says there appears to be some level of 'generational tolerance for authoritarian tendencies,' relating in part to institutions that aren't working for them.
Hogue says that, in their research so far, what they've been hearing from people is that ''Democrats don't care about us, [and] even if they did care about us, they're weak. They can't get anything done.' And that is an issue — that is a gap, a chasm, that needs to be addressed.'
The presentation quotes a Hispanic man from a rural background saying of Trump: 'I think he has that strong man, you know, vibe that definitely a lot of guys, you know, like or relate to. I think people view him as, you know, kinda tearing down the structures that maybe they feel haven't helped them.'
The duo fronting SAM are acutely aware that they have, even at this early stage, their fair share of intra-party critics who appear far from being won over. Several of these SAM Project skeptics are not mincing words, either.
'I think both Ilyse and John are smart, talented operatives who have very good intentions. I think broadly, writ large — and this is hardly unique to Ilyse and John — it is beyond embarrassing that in the year 2025, the Democratic Party wants to spend tens of millions of dollars to figure out how to talk to half of the population. It really isn't that hard,' says Ammar Moussa, formerly the rapid response director for Harris' 2024 campaign. 'This really isn't rocket science. We're treating young men and working class voters like they're foreign aliens who just visited earth who are speaking a different language. And to some degree, we are [speaking a different language], for a multitude of reasons — mostly because the Democratic Party is staffed with operatives who no longer reflect what the electorate looks like anymore. And that's a problem.'
But, Moussa adds: 'This isn't a zoo!'
The Democrat who received the SAM Project's prospectus, and who requested anonymity, says: 'What pissed me off is that we're doing all this research trying to find out the right combination of words to try to get them to like us, rather than understanding what their struggles and dreams are, and what they want out of life, and meeting them there.' This person also argues that multi-million dollar fundraising efforts such as this run the risk of siphoning 'money from organizations actually doing the work.'
One other Democratic recipient of the fundraising document says the pitch — particularly things like the use of word 'syntax' — made the project read as broadly 'condescending' to young American men. The price-tag of $20 million also seemed 'way too expensive,' this source says, referring to the idea of conducting a 'safari-type study' of young male voters 'as if they are a different species' as 'insulting … why do this?'
But Hogue and Della Volpe contend that the issue is that there simply aren't enough effective messengers or committed Democrats actually doing the work in these spaces, and that any liberal consultants or Democratic officials saying otherwise are fooling themselves.
In Hogue's view: ''Syntax' is obviously sort of an academic word, but the way that breaks down for me is, when I, in the summer of 2024, was saying, 'Hey guys, we have a problem. Trump just did a town hall on Kick with Adin Ross,' and Democratic operatives were saying to me, 'I don't understand a single word you're saying,' that is a problem. When I wrote a piece earlier that year about the intentionality of RFK Jr. doing his failed presidential launch, bench pressing shirtless in jeans, which was a direct line to the red-pill fitness channels, online Democratic operatives looked at me and said, 'I've never heard of red-pill fitness.' So they are free to suggest that the focus on language is a problem, but they don't understand the language that people are speaking in the spaces where they are absent.'
'The solution is not word-smithing our way to better slogans,' says Della Volpe, arguing that he and critics of the SAM Project likely 'feel the same way around understanding values and experiences. There's a misrepresentation, I think, of what the project is about.'
Here's the SAM prospectus. See for yourself what all the hullabaloo was about:
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