Vice President Kamala Harris and her party’s championing of football could cost them the election, according to a piece in the left-wing magazine The Nation that warned Democrats’ attempt to co-opt the iconic sport — which supposedly symbolizes conservatism, violence, and a brand of American “hypermasculinity” — could backfire by alienating younger, more progressive voters.
In a Monday essay titled “The Dark Side of the Democratic Party’s Embrace of Football” and authored by The Nation‘s sports editor Dave Zirin, the magazine slammed the Democratic Party’s “embrace” of football as a symbol of patriotism during its 2024 convention last week, owing to the sport’s brutality.
According to Zirin, the “hypermasculinity and violence of football connects to Kamala Harris’s bellicose convention speech,” as he cautioned that it “could repel young voters” who are committed to the progressive values the party claims to uphold.
The article highlights how football has traditionally been a cultural stronghold of conservative values in America, often celebrated by the right as a symbol of rugged masculinity and resistance to social change.
“One of the universally accepted truths of right-wing media is that the left is coordinating a war on football,’” it states.
It also notes that figures like former President Donald Trump have long linked the sport to a broader political narrative, one that emphasizes strength, toughness, and the rejection of a scheme to “soften” America.
“This was their sport, the right’s loudest hucksters howled,” Zirin writes, describing football as “hostile to social change, comfortable with violence, and guarding the development not only of players but American masculinity itself.”
The piece notes the bewilderment among conservatives as Democrats now claim football for themselves, using it as a symbol of patriotism and teamwork in their efforts to defeat Trump in the upcoming election.
“How confused, how utterly rattled, these conservatives must be at the moment,” he writes. “Democrats are claiming football for themselves; presenting the sport as not only patriotic but as a potent symbol of the kind of teamwork needed to take down Donald Trump.”
This shift was seen at the DNC, he notes, where Minnesota governor and Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, a former defensive coordinator, was prominently featured.
According to Zirin, the sight of “Coach” signs and chants filling the convention hall, alongside former players joining Walz on stage in their old jerseys, underscores the party’s attempt at “flipp[ing] the pigskin script” on the cultural icon that is football.
The event also prominently featured Texas senatorial candidate and former NFL player Colin Allred in what the author argued could be seen as an attempt to appeal to a wider electorate by leveraging a symbol that resonates deeply with many Americans.
“Liberals have been relishing the sight of their opponents—the party of Teddy Roosevelt, the party of football—now playing the role of the weakling (bone spurs?). But for those liberals loving this turnabout, there is a dark side to this,” he writes.
The essay then links the Democrats’ football symbolism to themes of nationalism and militarism in Harris’s speech:
The platforming of football as a patriotic totem cannot be separated from the sport’s embrace of hypermasculinity and violence. These two pernicious parts of the game connected smoothly with the themes in Harris’s red-meat convention speech: nationalism and a shift to the right alongside a bellicose declaration of war readiness—having the most “lethal fighting force.” This message was set to chants of “USA,” warming the heart of even Meghan McCain.
Calling the Democrats’ move one that “gets the underlying political dynamic backward,” the essay warns that football as well as the “reclamation of patriotic symbology” is “pulling the Democratic Party to the right.”
It also praises the exposure in recent years of the sport’s “corrosive nature,” insisting that people are entitled to know “the negative physical and psychological effects that can arise from playing the most popular sport in the country.”
“Football and medical whistleblowers have exposed a right wing willing to look away from public health if it means pats on the back and campaign dollars from the reactionary billionaires that run the NFL,” it claims.
The essay then refers to former famed quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s departure for refusing to stand for the anthem during the 2016 NFL season as a “reminder to all players that any kinds of resistance politics would not be tolerated.”
“This is what the Democratic Party is buying into—and it comes with risks,” the essay warned.
According to the author, the recent embrace of the sport could “repel” young left-wing voters who are “more interested in policy changes than who wins the football wars.”
“Young people care about racism, the economy, climate change, Palestine, and a host of other issues given short shrift at the convention,” Zirin argues.
“Football not only won’t be enough to satisfy them,” he added. “Its embrace may send a signal that the big tent isn’t big enough for them.”
The piece concludes by cautioning that the “championing of conservative symbols like football” could very well doom the chances of a Harris and Walz election.
“[A]nd it will be their own doing,” it ends.
The matter follows a Bloomberg piece this month claiming Democrat Gov. Tim Walz embodies qualities Republicans value and that his traditional masculinity and “manly man” traits are “terrifying” to Republicans.
The essay argued that Walz’s background as a coach, military veteran, and avid hunter is unsettling for the GOP as he joins Harris on the 2024 Democrat ticket. It went on to accuse Republicans of having “scaled back their initial attacks on Harris’ race and gender” and, instead, are now targeting the “traditional signifiers of Walz’s masculinity,” traits that conservatives typically admire.
Previously, Zirin attacked a recent Supreme Court ruling defending a football coach’s right to pray on the field after games, insisting it is “not about freedom” but about “coercion.”
The 2022 article claimed the decision ignored the freedom of students “to not pray,” lamenting that a “white Christian” taking a knee in the name of “freedom of religion” is considered a “hero” while a teen protesting “police getting away with murder” is told to “shut up” and play.
Last year, a Scientific American essay accused the NFL of having “exploited its Black players for decades” and of “persistent anti-Black practices,” insisting that the “violence” of football “disproportionately affects Black men.”
The article’s author previously accused the NFL of “race-norming” through “statistical manipulation” whereby a “lower baseline of cognitive abilities in Black players” is assumed in “legal settlements for concussion-related injuries,” calling it an exemplification of “American football’s immersion in the legacy of slavery.”
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.