For generations, Democrats have portrayed themselves as the party of ordinary Americans — factory workers, waitresses, truck drivers, police officers, construction workers, and middle-class families trying to get ahead. Yet one of the most striking features of modern American politics is how often Democratic leaders, activists, and media allies seem genuinely baffled by the very people they claim to represent.

The latest example comes from Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse, whose reaction to President Trump’s appearance at a packed UFC event on the White House lawn last weekend revealed a familiar pattern among America’s cultural elites.

Time and again, Democrat leaders appeared surprised that Americans cared more about grocery prices and border security than about the priorities emphasized by elite institutions.

To tens of millions of Americans, UFC is simply entertainment. It is competitive, exciting, patriotic, and increasingly mainstream. To Hesse and myriad other journalists and political commentators, however, its popularity seems to require explanation — as though they are studying the customs of a distant tribe.

That reaction says far more about elite America than it does about UFC fans, and few institutions better embody elite opinion than the modern Democratic Party.

The inability to understand ordinary Americans has become a recurring problem for Democrats. Consider one of the most famous campaign images in modern history. In 1988, Democrat presidential nominee Michael Dukakis climbed into a tank in an effort to project foreign policy credibility. Though the campaign intended the image to demonstrate Dukakis’ strength and command in order to reassure wary voters, the photograph instead became a political disaster.

To many Americans, Dukakis did not look like a commander in chief — he looked like Alfred E. Neuman from Mad magazine, wearing an oversize helmet and generally appearing out of his element. The embarrassing image became iconic because it captured something larger than a single campaign mistake: a cohort of American elites — consultants, strategists, and media professionals — who apparently thought the photo was a good idea.

The same kind of blindness occasionally appears among establishment Republicans as well. George H.W. Bush’s comments upon seeing a new and improved grocery store scanner became a symbol — fairly or unfairly — of a politician disconnected from everyday life. But while both parties have produced elite figures detached from ordinary concerns, the problem is far more pronounced today on the left.

Indeed, many of the institutions that now shape Democratic politics are populated almost exclusively by people who live, work, and socialize within a remarkably narrow slice of America. They attend the same universities, read the same publications, and live in the same metropolitan areas. They follow the same social media accounts. Their children attend the same schools, and their friends share the same political and cultural assumptions.

And increasingly, they seem unable to comprehend how other Americans think.

When Hillary Clinton dismissed millions of voters as a “basket of deplorables,” many Americans viewed the comment not as a gaffe but as a rare moment of honesty. It reflected a prevailing attitude among Democrats, and elites more broadly, that disagreement could be explained only by ignorance, prejudice, or moral deficiency.

President Biden repeatedly displayed a similar tendency. During the 2024 campaign (before he was ousted), he and his allies often portrayed concerns about illegal immigration, inflation, crime, and cultural change as either exaggerated or illegitimate, even as polling showed those issues dominating voters’ concerns.

Time and again, Democrat leaders appeared surprised that Americans cared more about grocery prices and border security than about the priorities emphasized by elite institutions.

Vice President Kamala Harris often suffered from the same disconnect. Her public appearances frequently projected the impression that she was speaking to an audience of policy experts rather than to working Americans — when she was not donning fake accents, that is. Her campaign’s struggles were not merely ideological; they were cultural. Many voters simply concluded that she did not understand their lives.

The pattern extends well beyond politicians.

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Millions of Americans attend NASCAR races, pack country music concerts, and watch UFC fights. Elite commentators scoff and express bewilderment in response. Millions more display American flags, fill church pews, and worry about rising crime and open borders. Too often, the response from elite circles is not curiosity but contempt.

The Democratic Party once excelled at connecting with ordinary Americans precisely because it better understood their views. Franklin Roosevelt, known as a “traitor to his class,” spoke the language of workers because he wanted them to be part of the Democrats’ coalition for generations. Harry Truman connected with voters because he shared many of their instincts. Even Bill Clinton possessed an intuitive feel for middle-class anxieties and aspirations.

Today’s Democrat coalition increasingly draws its leadership from elite universities, media organizations, nonprofits, foundations, government bureaucracies, and professional-class enclaves. These institutions exercise enormous cultural influence, but they are not representative of America as a whole.

As a result, Democrats increasingly mistake the views traded in faculty lounges, newsroom editorial meetings, and Washington policy conferences for the views held around kitchen tables. That confusion helps explain their shock at one political surprise after another, especially Trump’s victories in 2016 and 2024.

Democrat strategists express astonishment after yet another batch of election results defies their expectations. Panels of “experts” search for explanations, and reports are circulated that blame political circumstances or voters’ various “isms.” But the possibility that the Democrats have lost touch with ordinary Americans is rarely, if ever, considered.

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A political movement cannot represent people it does not understand. And it cannot understand the views of many Americans whom it increasingly views with a mixture of confusion, suspicion, and disdain. For a party that still considers itself the party of the people, that is a major problem it has yet to reckon with.

And it is also a problem for America as a whole. A healthy republic depends on officeholders who can understand — and respect — the culture and traditions of their fellow citizens, even when they do not share them. When America’s governing and cultural elites lose the ability to see the nation as it actually is, they make poorer decisions, deepen political divisions, and erode the mutual trust on which self-government depends.

A republic cannot long endure if those who wield influence come to view ordinary Americans not as fellow citizens to be understood but as strangers to be belittled and ignored.

Editor’s note: This article appeared originally at The American Mind.

​Democrats, Ufa, Trump, Hillary clinton, Deplorables, Kamala harris, Elites, Nascar, Middle america, Upper class, Opinion & analysis 

On May 15, Gen Z director Curry Barker’s “Obsession” hit theaters. The psychological horror film follows a young man whose wish for his longtime crush to love him comes true in far more intense and unsettling ways than he had hoped.

The film was an instant box office phenomenon, grossing over $285 million worldwide despite its humble $750,000 budget. Its popularity is driven largely by Gen Z viewers; audience data shows roughly 75% of ticket buyers are ages 18-34.

Dubbed a “Gen Z Fatal Attraction,” the mainstream take is that the movie resonates because it warns against toxic “nice guy” dynamics. In Zoomer internet culture, “nice guys” are men who believe they deserve romantic interest simply because they’re polite and friendly. When rejected, they grow resentful and angry, convinced they’re entitled to a woman’s affection. Their niceness is viewed as a manipulative tactic rather than an offer of genuine friendship.

In the film, protagonist Bear is hopelessly in love with his longtime friend Nikki. Mainstream critics see him as the classic “nice guy” who turns to manipulation — snapping a “one wish willow” to force her affection, making the story catnip for a generation that loves to call out such behavior.

But BlazeTV host John Doyle argues this surface-level reading misses what is really drawing young people to “Obsession.” On this episode of “The John Doyle Show,” Doyle unpacks the film’s true cultural power.

In the film, Bear asks his friend Ian for advice on confessing his feelings to Nikki.

“He’s immediately told by Ian that he’s just, you know, too real, man. He’s too authentic about all of it. And because he’s so authentic about it, it’s coming off cringey and weird,” says Doyle.

This is exactly what keeps so many young people single and lonely today, he argues.

“We literally will not do anything at all,” Doyle says. “We will just, you know, sit there in the corner with our cool cards until we die.”

Or they’ll resort to “epic [pickup artist] tactics” like “negging” — dishing out backhanded compliments or subtle insults in hopes of making the romantic target seek the negger’s approval. But never authenticity.

This outright refusal to be authentic is portrayed in the film when Nikki point-blank asks Bear if he likes her, to which he replies “as a friend.”

“He failed to be authentic. He was too afraid,” says Doyle, rejecting the mainstream narrative that “Obsession” is about “nice guys trying to exercise control over women.”

“[‘Obsession’] is, I think, just about that inauthenticity, and I think it ultimately is telling you the truth.”

To hear more, watch the episode above.

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There have been numerous studies in recent years highlighting correlations between political affiliation and mental health.

A 2021 study published in the journal SSM-Mental Health, for instance, concluded — on the basis of an analysis of depressive attitudes among conservative and liberal 12th graders from 2005 to 2018 — that “conservatives reported lower average depressive affect, self-derogation, and loneliness scores and higher self-esteem scores than all other groups.”

‘These findings have far-reaching consequences.’

A 2023 study conducted by Gallup on behalf of the Institute for Family Studies found that adolescents with “very conservative parents are 16 to 17 percentage points more likely to be in good or excellent mental health compared to their peers with very liberal parents.”

A 2025 study published in the journal PLOS One found that “even after accounting for a variety of other factors, there is a clear propensity of conservatives to provide more positive assessments of their mental health in comparison to liberals” — although the researchers ultimately attempted to credit this tendency to stigma or survey terminology.

The American left’s mental health issues show no signs of clearing up. In fact, while conservatives continue to enjoy relatively superior mental health, the sickness on the other side appears to be attracting sufferers into a political identity all its own.

In a study strongly recommending “replication and further exploration” that was recently published in the journal Political Behavior, Lauren Van De Hey of Utah State University found that “mental health identity has begun to function as a political identity for some individuals,” particularly among “younger (Gen Z) and more liberal Americans.”

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Utilizing data from the national Cooperative Election Study administered by YouGov in 2022, the Utah researcher determined that a great many people now “categorize themselves as having had a mental illness, the vast majority of whom view mental illness identity and mental illness alienation as important to their sense of self.”

“People who have experienced mental illness feel close to others who have experienced mental illness,” wrote Van De Hey. “They are also likely to self-categorize as having or having had a mental illness, share a sense of group consciousness with others who have or had mental illness, and recognize the need to work together to change laws that are unfair to people with mental illness.”

This obviously has political implications, explained the researcher, as it correlates with “support for increased state spending on health care, education, and welfare.”

The study cited Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) as an example of a political elite for whom mental health appears to have become a “politicized identity.”

Smith has on numerous occasions discussed her past experiences with depression, grouped herself with sufferers, and identified “mental health parity” as a legislative priority.

“Those more likely to categorize as having a mental illness are more likely to have a college degree; be a Democrat, liberal, and white; and have slightly lower family income,” said the study. “For both the [Mental Illness] Identity and [Mental Illness] Alienation scales, the only consequential variable is ideology: Those with higher MI identification or MI Alienation are more likely to be liberal.”

Van De Hey concluded, “These findings have far-reaching consequences for mental health advocacy and the role mental health identity will play in the political sphere — especially as Gen Z matures as a cohort.”

Dealing with a sample of 860 respondents, Van De Hey found that 26% categorized themselves as having had a mental illness in their lifetime, 22% categorized themselves as having had a physical disability, and 168 categorized themselves as having had a serious chronic physical illness.

Of the 220 respondents who said they had mental illness in their lifetime, 70% identified as “liberal” or “very liberal,” 24% identified as “moderate,” and 32% identified as “conservative” or “very conservative.”

Of the same 220 respondents, about half stated that their identity as a person with a mental health illness was “important” or “very important to them.”

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​Politics, Science, Study, Utah, Mental illness, Illness, Health, Conservative, Identity 

On June 16, Vice President JD Vance released his new book, “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith.” It’s a memoir detailing his straying from the Christianity of his youth, his journey to atheism, and his return to faith through conversion to Catholicism in 2019.

In a recent exclusive interview with Glenn Beck, Vance opened up about his faith journey.

“Can you talk a little bit about the moment you chose to commit [to faith]?” Glenn begins.

In the summer of 2018, Vance visited a Catholic cathedral. At this time, he was “curious about Christianity” but “wasn’t yet ready to commit.”

“It was completely empty, and I felt this kind of sense of despair. … There was nobody praying. It felt almost lifeless. And then there was just this beautiful sort of ray of light that came through the stained glass windows,” he recounts.

Vance recalls how at that time, the Catholic church was under fire for a massive scandal in Pennsylvania, where a grand jury report exposed credible allegations of child sexual abuse by over 300 priests across six dioceses, harming more than 1,000 victims over decades, along with systematic cover-ups by church officials.

“I felt this sense that, you know, yes, the church is going through a tough spot, but things are going to be OK, and I belong here,” he says.

“And that was sort of the moment that I decided, you know what, for all of my belly aching and back and forth … this is my home, and I’m going to try to make this home as successful as possible and contribute as much as I can, and that’s what I did.”

“That seems like a commitment to the church. Is that the same as the moment to follow Christ? Did that come first and then the commitment to the church or are they the same thing to you?” Glenn asks.

Unlike the moment in the cathedral that led Vance to commit to the Catholic church, the decision to follow Jesus was more “gradual.”

“I was raised in sort of an un-churched but very devout household. My grandmother would take us to church every now and then, but not regularly … and so I became as a teenager, sort of an early 20s kid … an arrogant atheist,” he explains.

“I went about trying to achieve every marker of worldly success. You know, I wanted to go to the best schools, and I wanted to have the best job. I wanted to make the most money. I wanted something prestigious to hang my hat on, and I kind of got to this point where I had won all of these elite competitions,” he continues, highlighting his time at Yale Law School.

But despite the worldly success, an emptiness haunted him.

“I was kind of looking around and saying, you know what, those people that I dismissed as simpletons, they’re much happier and much healthier and much more interesting people than the elite crew that I seem to be joining,” Vance tells Glenn.

He began to wonder if the “character” and “wisdom” they exhibited came from “this Jesus Christ figure that [he’d] kind of discarded.”

“And so [following Christ] was not like a conversion on the road to Damascus. That was me slowly seeing reflections of Christian truth in the way that various Christians lived their lives and the way that they raised their families, and over time, I just started to think, you know what, there’s something real here,” he shares.

Christ, he decided, was not only something he wanted for himself but for his family too.

“I wanted to give my family what I didn’t have as a kid, which is a real formation, like an actual church community,” he says, “and I kind of, you know, experimented with different churches and went to a number of different places and eventually, you know, found a home in a church that we love, and that’s kind of where we are today.”

To hear more, watch the full interview above.

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An LGBTQ+ advocacy group for a small town in central New York says it is canceling a scheduled Pride parade after its founder was arrested on child sex-messaging charges.

New York state police claimed 46-year-old Travis J. Longo of Cazenovia had a pattern of sending the sexually explicit communications to a child under 12 years old.

‘This decision follows serious criminal charges against Travis Longo, the founder of Cazenovia Pride Fest and a longtime figure in our organization.’

Astoundingly, Longo was elected in 2024 to the Cazenovia School District Board of Education and, as of Friday afternoon, continues to be a member of the board.

Longo was charged with four misdemeanor counts of endangering the welfare of a child. Police have released few details about the alleged communications but are asking the public for any information that might aid their investigation.

The group Longo founded said in a post on Facebook that the parade planned for June 27 has been canceled and the group is dissolving.

“Cazenovia Pride Inc. is canceling this year’s Pride Festival and all associated events, and we are dissolving as an organization,” the post read.

“This decision follows serious criminal charges against Travis Longo, the founder of Cazenovia Pride Fest and a longtime figure in our organization,” the post added. “Travis Longo has no further affiliation with Cazenovia Pride Inc.”

Longo had apparently performed as a drag queen under the name “Anita Buffem.”

An Instagram appearing to belong to Longo as the drag queen persona has dozens of posts. Buffem is also listed as a “hostess” at the first Pride festival in Cazenovia in 2021 that was organized by Pride Cazenovia.

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“We are deeply sorry for the pain and disappointment this causes our community,” concluded the statement from the Pride group. “The years of support, love, and solidarity you have shown us have meant everything. Thank you.”

Cazenovia is a town of about 6,700 residents in Madison County.

Neither Longo nor the board of education responded to a request for comment from Blaze News.

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The American dad has spent the last 40 years serving as the culture’s favorite punching bag.

From the misanthropic, couch-locked Al Bundy in “Married… with Children” to the bumbling, well-meaning hazard-to-himself Phil Dunphy in “Modern Family,” Hollywood conditioned us to view fathers as overgrown teenagers.

The massive domestic imbalance that has inspired a million angry think pieces is virtually nonexistent in the data.

They were the morons who couldn’t find the milk in an open fridge even after moving everything except the milk, the slow-witted domestic saboteurs who would accidentally incinerate the kitchen if left unattended for 20 minutes.

For decades, the consensus was clear: Men were biologically, or perhaps pathologically, unfit for adult responsibility.

Different breed

Then came the modern panic over falling birth rates, and the blame was promptly dumped at the feet of these cinematic man-children. Women, the conventional wisdom claimed, were refusing to breed because men refused to grow up. If only dads would stop playing video games, put on pants, and learn how to operate a vacuum, fertility rates would soar.

It’s a convenient narrative. The only problem is that it happens to be wrong. A recent report from the Institute for Family Studies dismantles it entirely. The myth of the detached, useless dad is officially dead.

Far from dodging domestic duties, modern American fathers are putting in an enormous amount of time at home.

In the mid-1960s, a married father with young children spent fewer than 10 hours per week on household chores and child care combined. Never mind the all the other hours spent earning the money to put a roof overhead and food on the table — the average dad had a reputation for being terminally checked out, loafing through family life behind the sports pages.

That stereotype is now hopelessly out of date. Today, married fathers spend close to 30 hours per week on household chores and child care. In little more than half a century, paternal involvement has tripled.

Quantity time

Meanwhile, appliances evolved. Washing machines, dishwashers, and robot vacuums eliminated the soul-destroying physical labor of the past, reducing the hours required to maintain a home. But instead of using that freed-up time to drink scotch in a recliner, the modern father rolled up his sleeves and absorbed the extra hours.

Married fathers now spend roughly 45 hours per week directly in the presence of their kids. In other words, dad isn’t just providing a paycheck any more. This is a man wearing half a dozen hats: chauffeur, soccer coach, homework warden, amateur therapist, technology troubleshooter, and occasional short-order cook. He is expected to be present for every bedtime routine, school recital, and emotional wobble.

Even Steven

The most shocking revelation from the IFS report comes when you look at the total workload. When researchers tallied up paid employment, unpaid labor, child care, and household obligations, they discovered something remarkable. Today, married mothers and married fathers of young children each average roughly 63 hours per week of combined labor.

The massive domestic imbalance that has inspired a million angry think pieces is virtually nonexistent in the data. Both parents are working long, exhausting hours. Both are making massive personal sacrifices.

This completely flips the fertility debate on its head. If fathers are already maxed out, increasing paternal participation isn’t the magic cure for declining birth rates. More importantly, it tears up the old script that men can’t be trusted with a grocery list, let alone a young child.

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Bubble-wrapped childhood

However, this hyper-involved, positive picture of modern fatherhood does come with an important caveat: the rise of over-parenting. In the past, parents let their children wander the neighborhood until the streetlights came on — partly out of trust and partly because they just wanted them out of their sight.

Today, children are rarely left unsupervised. Teenagers spend less time with friends, neighborhoods are less connected than they once were, and parents increasingly feel obliged to schedule every waking minute of their children’s lives. What used to be an afternoon of “go outside and be home by dinner” now requires a color-coded calendar.

This total elimination of childhood freedom has created a new kind of claustrophobic family dynamic. By bubble-wrapping their offspring, modern dads are inadvertently raising a generation of anxious, hyper-dependent kids who can’t make a decision without a text thread consultation.

Thank a dad

Furthermore, this extreme devotion has exacted a heavy toll on men’s mental health. Time is finite. Every hour spent curating a child’s resume or driving to a travel-team baseball game in another state is an hour stolen from personal maintenance. There are only so many hours in a day. Increasingly, fathers have paid for their expanded responsibilities with their own leisure, hobbies, and friendships. The modern dad has sacrificed his own social survival network on the altar of family responsibility.

Despite the dangers of helicopter parenting, the overarching reality is shifting toward something undeniably positive. American fathers didn’t shy away from changing social expectations. If anything, they adapted with remarkable speed. If the old model of fatherhood was largely financial, the new model demands presence, participation, and constant engagement. And, as the report shows, millions of fathers have embraced it.

So this Father’s Day, if you’re lucky enough to still have one, thank your dad. And if you’ve spent years insisting fathers don’t show up, don’t care, or don’t pull their weight, the evidence suggests you might owe him an apology as well.

​Lifestyle, Fathers, Fertility crisis, Dating, Marriage, Family, Father’s day