The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: Democrats’ Desperate Course Correction to Win Back the Working Middle Class in the Midterms

Episode Date: June 11, 2026

After years of alienating working-class voters, Democrats are suddenly trying to rebrand themselves as champions of Main Street with candidates like James Talarico and Graham Platner. From carefully crafted campaign images to handpicked candidates marketed as authentic, the party is betting voters will forget its record.  But can political theater overcome years of rhetoric and policies that pushed millions of working Americans away? The latest attempts to win back the white working class may reveal more about Democrat elites than the voters they're trying to persuade. 👉PEPPERDINE: Daily Signal listeners save 50–75% HTTPS://GO.PEPPERDINE.EDU/DAILYSIGNAL     👉 The Daily Signal cannot continue to tell stories, like this one, without the support of our viewers: http://dailysignal.com/donate 👉Don’t miss out on Victor’s latest short videos by subscribing to The Daily Signal today. You’ll be notified every time a new piece of content drops: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1⁠  Also on Spotify: https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL9753340027  👉Want more VDH? Watch Victor’s weekly, hour-long podcast, “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” now! Subscribe to his YouTube channel, and enable notifications:  https://www.youtube.com/@victordavishanson7273?sub_confirmation=1👉More exclusive content is available on Victor’s website: https://victorhanson.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Daily Signal podcast, where we provide intelligence for the intelligent. Now, without further ado, here's today's take. This Father's Day start with a question, like where did Dad's story begin? Ancestry DNA now has up to $75 off on our Father's Day sale, so Dad can explore his roots across more than 3,600 regions, and discover the places and cultures that shaped his story. Save now, give Ancestry DNA from only 6,000. $69.

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Pursue your MPP at Pepperdine. Daily Signal listeners qualify for an automatic 50 to 75% tuition scholarship and can learn more at go.peperdine.orgene.orgas slash daily signal. It's go.competine.edu slash daily signal. Hello, this is Victor Davis-Hansson. for the Daily Signal. The Democratic Party has a lot of problems that have been widely discussed. One of the most notorious is since the 2009 to 2017 presidencies of Barack Obama, and especially under Joe Biden, they have completely lost the so-called white working class. People have estimated that in 2024, Kamala Harris only gained about 30 percent.

of that demographic. They put so much emphasis on each particular community. Every time a democratic politician would address a crowd, he'd say, and I'm for the LGBTQ plus something community, or I'm plus for the Hispanic community, I'm for the Asian community. And with the onset of DEI and the post-George Floyd, the white working class felt that they were unwanted or not liked or actually despised. And we heard again and again white privilege, white supremacy. And there was a whole vocabulary of disparagement. It started with Barack Obama when he wrote off his loss to Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania because people he basically called clingers, mindless automatons who cling to their Bibles and guns didn't understand the sophistication of Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton went to

West Virginia and said she wanted to shut down the coal industry as if all of those white middle class and working class coal miners didn't matter. Joe Biden said they should learn coding, get rid of them, ban mining. Hillary remember called them deplorables and irredeemables. Joe Biden expanded that vocabulary with chumps, drags, and most infamously garbage. And of course, when any time a Democrat or liberals' communications were leaked or found their way to the public, they were always anti-white working class. The CNN reporter said he went to a Trump rally and had more teeth than everybody in the crowd. Or Peter struck the infamous FBI rogue agent who said to his paramour, Lisa Page, said, texted,

or that he went to Walmart and he could smell them. So they had a problem with them, and they can't win without that rubric. It might be as if you count women and men, it could be as much as of voting age, 30 to 50 percent of the electorate. So now they think they've gotten smart, and they have a new approach. And the new approach is the old approach.

They're going to back off publicly from, DEI in all of these primaries, publicly a little bit from open borders. But you know what will happen? Camilla Harris was for banning deportation. She was going to ban fracking, but she didn't say that when she was running. Many of the candidates in the last election cycle, the governor of Virginia, the governor of New Jersey, had run as moderates, and then they showed their real cells once they were elected.

But now the emphasis is on we've got to find white working class authentically genuine people. And it's very hard for them because they are not genuine people themselves, a democratic socialist, Islamist, new party. So now all of a sudden Pete Buttigigig is wearing a caterpillar hat, grown a beard, Levi's as if he is going to represent the white working class. He's the most sanctimonious, self-righteous, off-putting democratic candidate who has zero chance to appeal to the white working class. They thought that maybe they could have the evangelical angle.

And so they dug up James Talak Rico, and he is a Christian evangelical minister of sorts. And they thought, well, this will get red state. He's out of red state, Texas, will run him for Senate. He might be the next presidential vice presidential candidate. Who knows? Of course, they didn't check his background because the Democratic Party of today, as I said earlier, has a long record of despising traditional values in middle class America. And lo and behold, James Tallerwego has disparaged in social media and in speeches, the white working class. He's called Texans illiberal gun-toting. He said that Jesus was non-binary. He said there was six or seven genders. He said all of these things.

And he comes across as a Pete Buttigig at a pulpit. They tried it again in Maine. They think they can knock off Susan Collins. Remember what their agenda is. They want to win the House, even if by one vote, because unlike the Republicans, they have mass solidarity. And as soon as they get the House in January of 2007, they will impeach Donald Trump.

But they can't do anything to Donald Trump unless they get 60 votes to convict him. And so they really, in their delusional mindset, think they can do that. And one of the people they have targeted is moderate Susan Collins. There couldn't be a more anti-Maga Republican official. She's as moderate as you can be in the Republican Party. She's in a moderate purple state. And she's a winning personality. Even Donald Trump, who gets very exasperated when she votes against him on key pieces of legislation,

has a working relationship. And why not? She's about as conservative as you can get in Maine, and she is a loyal Republican. So they ran an ex-oaster farmer. That's what we were told. But there is no really oyster farmers in Maine. That term is not even used by Maine. It's really a NEPO baby, a man who grew up very absolutely.

affluent and went to one of the most, I don't know, prestigious but surely expensive prep schools of the nation at Hotchkis until he was kicked out. He admirably served his country in Iraq when he had four tours, but in those tours, he was a disruptive figure. He put a Totenkov Nazi symbol on his tattoo on his chest. He disparaged women on social media. He went on disreputable predileged. like social media communications post. He rough-handled women. And when he was asked about all of this,

Ram Platner said that he assured the Democrats on three areas that they could relax and he would be a viable candidate and beat Susan Collins. Number one, he said he had no idea that 18 years ago when he put that tattoo on Toten that it had any connection with the third Panzer Division or SS Eisengupin that ran the death camps. Two, he said he never a physical, he was kind of a bore with his many girlfriends, but he

never physically assaulted them or manhandling. And three, there would be no more revelations. Within hours, some of his girlfriends came forward, even though they were manipulated by the New York Times, who didn't tell their full narratives. but he told enough that that was all a lie. They knew that he bragged about his toten cop. He used the German word for death's head, which is only used since World War II in the context of the SS.

Number two, he did manhandle. He grabbed a woman, pushed her in a room, locked her in all night, and he was very abusive. And number three, after he had assured people, there'd be no new revelations. There were these revelations, aired in the New York Times.

Graham Platner is no more middle class than Donald Trump is. The difference is Donald Trump is authentic. Whatever you think of Donald Trump, he wears his blue suit, his red tie, his orange makeup, his comb over, his black floor shime shoes, whether it's 110 degrees or whether it's 40 degrees, whether he's in Tulare, California, or whether he's watching. mixed martial arts matches or whether he's talking with Putin or Chi. He is what he is.

He doesn't fake himself and act as if he's a working class man and he had to get a vet loan to buy his home when he actually was given a loan by his rich father. Everything about Graham Platner is artificial, but it displays this desire to appeal to a class that they despise. And I'll just finish with good old Joe Biden from Scranton. Remember him? In the 2020 primary, Elizabeth Warren was radical. So was Bernie Sanders. So was Cory Booker. So was Pete Buttigig. They were all going to lose against Donald Trump.

They panic. They got them all out by various backdoor mechanisms, the politicals. And then they refashioned Joe Biden into, he's good old Joe Biden. You remember him from the 1970s, the working guy from Scranton. That was kind of hard to do because he was out in the public saying that he would ban fracking. He would stop the wall. He was going to open the border. He was 100% behind DEI. In fact, he was a waxen effigy that played act as if he was middle class so that the Obama cadre could come back into power and push through the agency of Joe Biden, the most radical progressive agenda we've seen since the New Deal. Add it all up, There is no way in the world that this elite party of Antifa, BLM, bicostal elites, billionaires, fake socialists, wealthy people like Mondami or Hassan Piker can appeal to the working class, especially the white working class. So expect more fake middle class people like Graham Platner, James Tala Rico, and more Joe Biden's.

And guess what? they're all going to crash and burn just as these have because they're not authentic. Thank you very much, Victor Davis-Hanson for The Daily Signal. Thank you for tuning in to The Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition. Automance Auto Group's 37th annual sale event is back.

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