This election season, sports are taking center stage, but not in a way anyone would’ve predicted. Normally, it’s the Republican Party—stuffed to the gills with athletic machismo and toxic testosterone—that tries to appeal to their overarching base of angry white men. They trot out football players, NASCAR drivers, and Ultimate Fighting martial artists to growl at the cameras and claim that the Democratic Party is leading us down a path of decline, weakness, and “wussification.” The argument, sometimes implicit and often explicit, drips with sexism. Democrats are the “feminized” party, and being a woman is equated with inferiority of body and mind.
All of these arguments are bigoted trash, but they’re rooted in one element of truth: The voting gender gap between parties is less a gap than a chasm. Yet, bizarrely enough, in a year when Democrats are running Vice President Kamala Harris to become the first woman elected as President of the United States, the sports and “manhood” tropes have been turned upside down.
On the Republican side, you have Donald Trump, whose sport of choice is cheating at golf. Especially as Trump continues to further his commitment to avoiding exercise, the brashly unhinged top of the GOP ticket looks enfeebled. His running mate, J.D. Vance, gives off the vibe of someone who spends way too much time online. Vance is openly misogynistic and appears uneasy in front of both women and crowds in general. He’s also a graduate of Yale, a best-selling author, and the opposite of how the Republican Party sees itself: think Ronald Reagan crossed with Paul Bunyan. Instead, we have William F. Buckley Jr. meets Pee-wee Herman.
On the Democratic side, standing next to Harris is Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who is a burly and authentic former football coach and a labor-supporting former union member. Neither candidate on the Democratic ticket went to an Ivy League school, unlike Trump and Vance. Walz’s experience as a football coach has been constantly highlighted by the campaign, but it works only because Walz’s speeches feel like pep talks that are familiar to anyone who has ever played on a team.
Perhaps this is why, when both vice presidential candidates spoke separately in front of the influential International Association of Firefighters in Boston in August, Walz was cheered when he referenced the late-season push by the Boston Red Sox as a metaphor for the Harris-Walz campaign; Vance, on the other hand, was booed as he made several poor attempts to be funny. (One statement that wasn’t meant as a joke was when Vance claimed that he and Trump were the most “pro-workers Republican ticket in history.”) Vance commanded no respect while Walz commanded the room.
By seizing traditionally masculine tropes like sports, Harris and Walz can then claim the mantle of patriotism and Americana. This is in contrast to Trump, who glorifies insurrection, lawbreaking, and treason. It’s a daring gambit that might attract enough “Republicans for Harris” to secure a victory in November.
But this aggressive usurpation of faith, family, and football from the right also carries a risk that it might backfire by causing Harris’s base to tune out—exactly when enthusiasm is needed most. Harris shouldn’t try to co-opt Republican talking points, but rather understand why Walz is so appealing to Democratic voters. Football as a conduit to patriotism isn’t what they find attractive. Rather, it’s an activity that promotes a sense of community and a needed break from divisive and destructive politics. By focusing on teamwork, football can be an antidote to Trumpism, not a way to be “Trumpier than Trump.”