The Democratic Party has a little problem. Actually, scratch that — it’s a massive, neon-lit, impossible-to-ignore problem. They can’t stop sneering at the very people they claim to champion. And Victor Davis Hanson, the one academic conservatives actually want to hear from, just laid it all out with surgical precision.

NEW: Victor Davis Hanson *ROASTS* Gavin Newsom's wife

"Get out, Gavin — you and your wife. Gosh, his wife — she claimed she took her children on a zoo tour, but the zoo animals were Alabamans and Georgia."

"Can you imagine getting in their BMW SUV and driving through Mobile… pic.twitter.com/gmPj64XZZF

— Jason Cohen

(@JasonJournoDC) April 4, 2026

Let’s start with the Newsom family safari. Jennifer Siebel Newsom — wife of California’s perfectly coiffed governor — apparently loaded the kids into the family SUV and drove through the American South so her children could witness “real bigotry” up close. Not a museum trip. Not a history lesson. A zoo tour where the animals were everyday people in Alabama and Georgia.

Hanson’s take was pure gold:

“Get out, Gavin — you and your wife. Gosh, his wife — she claimed she took her children on a zoo tour, but the zoo animals were Alabamans and Georgia.”

“Can you imagine getting in their BMW SUV and driving through Mobile…”

Yeah. Imagine being so dripping with coastal contempt that you treat a road trip through the South like a National Geographic expedition. “Look, kids — a working-class white family in their natural habitat. Don’t tap the glass.”

The Costume Party That Fools Nobody

And here’s where it gets stupid. This isn’t just one governor’s wife with a tin ear. This is the entire Democratic brand. Jimmy Kimmel — Hollywood’s favorite hall monitor — mocked Senator Markwayne Mullin for being a plumber before entering politics. A plumber. The guy who fixes your pipes when your basement is flooding at 2 a.m. on a Sunday. That’s who the “party of the people” decided to ridicule on national television.

Hanson nailed the contradiction. Democrats claim to be the champions of the working class while openly despising the working class. It’s like a vegan opening a steakhouse and then gagging every time someone orders a ribeye.

In his column at American Greatness, Hanson dug deeper into the wreckage. After getting shellacked in 2024 — losing Congress and the presidency — Democrats did their little internal autopsy. And the results were about as surprising as finding sand at the beach.

Their obsession with biological males in women’s sports, open borders, radical green fantasies, DEI-driven racial essentialism, and government entitlements swimming in fraud had torched their relationship with white middle- and working-class voters. These voters, by the way, still make up roughly 40 to 50 percent of the population and punch above their weight at the ballot box.

So what did the Democrats do with this information? Did they change course? Did they rethink their ideology? Of course not. They put on costumes.

Beards, Lobstermen, and Other Party Tricks

Hanson laughed at the rebrand attempts. Pete Buttigieg grew a beard — because nothing screams “blue collar” like a McKinsey consultant with facial hair. Democrats in Maine rallied behind a lobsterman for a Senate run. The whole thing felt like a Hollywood casting call for “Average American Male, age 35–55, must own flannel.”

They wear the working class like a Halloween costume and expect nobody to notice the price tag still hanging off the sleeve. But voters aren’t stupid. They can smell a phony from three states away. You can’t spend years calling people bigots, deplorables, and domestic terrorists, then throw on a Carhartt jacket and ask for their vote.

And this is exactly why they hate Trump. The man is a billionaire who eats McDonald’s, talks like a construction foreman, and has never once looked down on the guy changing his oil or framing his house. Trump didn’t study the working class in a sociology seminar. He built buildings with them. He understands them because he actually likes them — a concept so foreign to the Democratic establishment that it might as well be written in ancient Greek.

The Contempt They Can’t Hide

Here’s the thing the Democrats still haven’t figured out. The working class doesn’t need saving. They need respect. They need someone who doesn’t treat their towns like safari stops or their jobs like punchlines. And every time a Newsom or a Kimmel or a Buttigieg opens their mouth, they remind millions of Americans exactly who looks down on them — and it’s not the Republicans.

Hanson called it a huge problem for Democrats going forward. That’s generous. It’s not a problem. It’s a terminal diagnosis they refuse to treat because the medicine — genuine humility — would kill the patient. The modern Democratic Party runs on condescension the way a car runs on gasoline. Take it away and the whole machine dies.

Keep the safari tours coming, Democrats. Every mile you drive through the South with your noses in the air is another mile closer to permanent minority status.