The Democrat party has a branding problem that no amount of spin or slick marketing can fix. It is not just about policy failure, though inflation, a porous border, and international weakness all weigh heavily on voters’ minds.
The deeper crisis is cultural: the Democrats have transformed themselves into a party that sneers at ordinary people, particularly working-class whites and the very nonwhite voters they once claimed to champion. Nothing illustrates this better than the antics of Jennifer Welch and Angie “Pumps” Sullivan, the cohosts of the I’ve Had It podcast.
Welch, an interior designer, and Sullivan, a divorce lawyer, are not household names in the traditional sense. Their careers began in the world of reality television. Both were featured on Bravo’s Sweet Home Oklahoma before they pivoted into podcasting, where they now revel in mocking political opponents with a tone of smug superiority.
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Both are products of privileged professional backgrounds that place them closer to the affluent, coastal liberal class than to the vast majority of Oklahomans. As one might imagine, the average Oklahoman is far more like the typical American than either Welch or Sullivan is.
Naturally, their show, while born in Oklahoma City, is tuned to the ears of lefty “elites” in places like Boston and San Francisco. It’s a case study in how Democrats alienated heartland voters and turned once-reliable coalitions into Republican strongholds.
The I’ve Had It flashpoint came this month, when Welch unleashed a tirade against white Trump voters during a segment that quickly went viral. Her words dripped with disdain: she declared that “white people that triple Trumped” should be banished to Cracker Barrel and barred from enjoying multicultural restaurants, gay-owned businesses, or anything else she associates with progressive diversity. “Take your ass to Cracker Barrel,” she sneered.
For many conservatives, the moment crystallized everything wrong with today’s Democrat party. The comments were not merely a joke, nor just another celebrity hot take. They embodied the contemptuous way well-off, well-“educated” liberals view ordinary white Americans, especially men, who form the backbone of Trump’s base.
When a Democrat-leaning cultural figure mocks white Republican voters as too backward to eat tacos or get a haircut from a gay barber, it feeds directly into the narrative that Democrats are an elitist, condescending party that loathes the very people who make up much of the nation.
The numbers confirm the backlash. By March, NBC News reported that only 27 percent of Americans viewed the Democrat party favorably, the lowest mark since 1990. The Wall Street Journal recorded a 63 percent unfavorable rating, the worst in thirty-five years. Voters were not just souring on policy—they were rejecting a cultural tone that treated them as ignorant rubes.
Welch and Sullivan did not arrive at this posture by accident. Their show has built an audience on a steady stream of ridicule targeting Trump supporters. In a July 17 episode called “Supremely Screwed,” they derided conservatives as blindly loyal to a corrupt judicial system. Just days later, an episode titled “Muffin-Top MAGA” mocked Trump voters as overweight and sexually undesirable.
On July 24, they referred to the MAGA movement as a “big cult” with “little brains.” By July 29, their sneering escalated into crude nicknames for Trump himself in “President Taco Tits.” On July 31, they mocked evangelical Christians in “MAGA Christians SUCK,” ridiculing prayer groups as terrifying relics of the past.
Each of these episodes struck the same chord: open contempt for the very Americans who built and sustained the Democrat party for most of the twentieth century. These are the voters who once formed the backbone of Franklin Roosevelt’s coalition, the union men and small-town families whose lives centered on hard work, church, and community. When Democrats ridicule those values, they hand Republicans a gift.
Even more damaging is how this elitism is concentrated in one demographic: college-educated white women. They have become the driving force of the Democrat party since the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, with 71 percent supporting abortion rights. Their influence has pushed Democrats deeper into progressive cultural battles while sidelining concerns about jobs, crime, and immigration.
By 2020, college-educated whites—led by women—had overtaken non-college-educated whites inside the party. By 2025, one-third of all Democrats were college-educated women, with their stances on climate change and abortion dominating the party platform.
This shift explains much of why Democrats have lost touch with other Americans. In 2024, Kamala Harris held an 18-point lead among white college graduates, particularly women, underscoring their dominance inside the party. But their priorities often clash with those of black and Hispanic voters, many of whom hold more moderate or conservative views on immigration, meritocracy, and family structure. Indeed, The Hill reported that Democrats’ leftward turn, led by progressive white women, alienated minority voters last year.
The result is a Democrat party that represents neither the working-class whites it insults nor the minority voters it takes for granted. Instead, it is the party of urban elites who attend climate conferences, performatively check their “privilege,” and sneer at anyone who eats at Cracker Barrel.
No wonder its favorability ratings have collapsed. A Quinnipiac poll in January 2025 put Democrats at 31 percent favorable and 57 percent unfavorable. By March, CNN recorded only 29 percent favorability, the lowest since 1992. Axios later concluded that Democrats were facing their deepest popularity crisis in half a century.
Podcasters like Welch and Sullivan are not isolated voices. They are the cultural megaphones of this new Democrat ethos. Their mocking tone, crude humor, and outright disdain for white conservatives reflect the worldview of a party that has abandoned the kitchen table for the faculty lounge. While they may amuse the closed-minded “liberal” enclaves of Brooklyn or Santa Monica, their words sound like nails on a chalkboard to the farmers, truck drivers, and small business owners of the heartland.
Republicans, by contrast, have seized on this alienation, using Trumpian populism to not only galvanize the whites I’ve Had It loathes, but the minorities “elite” Democrat politics left behind. Those voters are not just choosing Trump because of slogans or rallies; they are reacting to a political culture that tells them their beliefs are bigoted, their families are backward, and their very identities are laughable.
The story of I’ve Had It is, in the end, a parable of the Democrat party’s unraveling. A pair of reality-TV alumnae turned podcast hosts spend their days mocking millions of Americans, while their words circulate across media outlets from BuzzFeed to Fox News. The backlash grows. Poll numbers sink. Democrats look increasingly like a party of wealthy urban women lecturing everyone else about what they can eat, where they can shop, and which barber they should visit.
If Democrats wish to understand why they are suffering historic defeats, they need only listen to Welch and Sullivan. Their contempt is not hidden. Their disdain is not subtle. It is the sound of a party talking down to America. And America is tuning out.
Dr. Joseph Ford Cotto hosts and produces News Sight, speaking the data-driven truth about economic and political issues that impact you. During the 2024 presidential election, he created the Five-Point Forecast, which correctly predicted Trump's national victory and the outcome in all swing states. The author of numerous nonfiction books, Cotto holds a doctorate in business administration and is a Lean Six Sigma Certified Black Belt. During 2014, HLM King Kigeli V of Rwanda bestowed a hereditary knighthood upon him. It was followed by a barony the next year.