The Democratic Party's widely ridiculed campaign to spend $20 million on a "strategic plan" to "study young men" was spearheaded by the former president of a left-wing activist group that supported efforts to "defund the police," denounced the Supreme Court nomination of "frat boy" Brett Kavanaugh, and attacked "white women" for upholding "the patriarchy."

Politico reports that Ilyse Hogue, former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America (now known as Reproductive Freedom for All), cofounded the Speaking with American Men project, or SAM for short, along with MSNBC contributor John Della Volpe and former Democratic congressman Colin Allred. In an interview with the Virginia-based news blog, Hogue argued the widespread mockery of the group's efforts, which include "super charg[ing] social listening" and analyzing the "syntax, language and content that gains attention and virality" in male online communities, proved that they were on the right track.

"Democrats are seen as weak, whereas Republicans are seen as strong," Hogue said. "Young men also spoke of being invisible to the Democratic coalition, and so you've got this weak problem and then you’ve got this 'I don’t think they care about me' problem, and I think the combination is kind of a killer."

Hogue, a professional left-wing activist who worked at groups such as Media Matters, MoveOn.Org, and Greenpeace before joining NARAL in 2013, is perhaps uniquely ill-suited to the task of helping Democrats win back male voters. In July 2024, for example, when her activist husband helped organize the widely mocked "White Dudes for Harris" fundraiser, Hogue was initially skeptical, but eventually came to see it as "sexy." (It was not.)