LOS ANGELES – In today’s rough-and-tumble political scene, few conservative thinkers carry as much weight as Victor Davis Hanson. A leading voice in classical and military history, he offers steady analysis in a time of noise and spin. As the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, he applies a lifetime of study to current events.

Born in 1953 on his family farm in Selma, California, he shares the rural traditions he often writes about. A fifth-generation farmer, he worked full-time in orchards and vineyards from 1980 to 1984, then turned to teaching.

He earned a B.A. in classics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1975, followed by a Ph.D. at Stanford in 1980. He founded the classics programme at California State University, Fresno, and later became professor emeritus there.

His awards match the scale of his scholarship. In 2007, President George W. Bush presented him with the National Humanities Medal for his work on Western thought. In 2008, he won the Bradley Prize for contributions to liberty and civic life.

Other honours include the Eric Breindel Award for Opinion Journalism (2002), the Claremont Institute’s Henry Salvatori Award (2022), and the American Spirit Award from the National World War II Museum (2021).

He has held fellowships with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Alexander Onassis Foundation, and was named alumnus of the year by UC Santa Cruz. He has written more than two dozen books.

Victor Davis Hanson Syndicated

Key titles include The Western Way of War (1989), a major study of Greek hoplite warfare, and Carnage and Culture (2001), an account of why Western militaries have often prevailed through innovation and confidence. His essays appear in National Review, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, and his syndicated columns reach a wide audience each week.

What makes Hanson a touchstone for many conservatives is his mix of historical insight and frank cultural critique. He often draws lines between ancient examples and modern dilemmas, comparing the complacency of late Rome to elite detachment in America, or reading lessons from the Peloponnesian War into recent foreign policy errors.

His appeal rests not only on learning, but on connection to place. He writes as a farmer-scholar from the Central Valley, not as a coastal insider. He backs traditional ideas like merit, free speech, and deterrence, which speak to readers weary of identity politics and expanding bureaucracy.

A Hoover Institution profile called his approach “principled realism”, a stance that some see as echoing Andrew Jackson’s spirit.

Influential figures such as Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich have praised his clarity. Limbaugh hailed The Case for Trump, first published in 2019 and updated in 2024, as an ideal guide to the 45th president. In an academy that leans left, his position at Hoover gives him a central role as a classicist within modern conservatism, with reach from Capitol Hill to campaign war rooms.

Hasnons Case for Trump

Hanson’s case for Donald J. Trump is central to his recent work. He presents Trump not as a wrecking ball, but as a needed counterforce to a tired and self-protective class. In the updated The Case for Trump, he argues the 2016 result was a Jacksonian revolt, not a fluke. The outsider with no prior office overcame 16 Republican rivals and a well-funded Democratic effort by tapping the anger of the heartland.

That coalition included working-class whites, some union voters, and a fifth to a third of Latino and African American voters who felt looked down on by elites. Hanson compares Trump’s rise to ancient figures who upset entrenched circles, but he says the turbulence has purpose.

In his view, the country could not endure serial presidencies as volatile as Trump’s, yet after years of drift, it needed one outsider who would take on tasks that career politicians would avoid. He argues this posture allows Trump to uproot the stale practices of globalisation, identity sorting, and bureaucratic sprawl.

At home, Hanson frames a second Trump term, beginning in January 2025, as a counterrevolution on the scale of the New Deal, only with a restorative aim. In essays such as “Can Trump Revolutionize America?” in The Free Press (March 2025), he lists early claims of progress.

He points to tougher border policy aimed at reversing what he counts as 10 million illegal crossings under Biden, sweeping deregulation to cut federal costs by trillions over time, and tax changes that put growth ahead of deficits.

Radical Revolution

He says Trump ignores corporate pressure for cheap migrant labour, channels immigration through legal points of entry, and shifts culture from grievance to pride, a trend he links to public figures who once knelt for “systemic racism” and now celebrate wins. On trade and finance, he backs tariffs as a bid for fair-dealing with China and others, guarding American industry and shoring up the dollar’s reserve status.

In society, he targets “woke” orthodoxies. He casts universities as overpriced indoctrination centres that should lose public funds if they silence speech, and calls for procurement reforms in the armed forces to sweep away DEI rules that he believes hurt recruiting and morale. Grounded in his farming past and his study of Greek citizen-soldiers, he praises a system based on merit and duty.

He says this turn would correct the “radical revolution” of the 2020s, which he describes as an Obama third term under Biden, marked by open borders, expanding entitlements, and runaway debt. He wants a reset to constitutional standards and renewed class mobility.

On foreign affairs, Hanson argues the world grows safer when America projects toughness with restraint. He highlights what he calls Trump’s “principled realism”, or a Jacksonian do-not-tread-on-us stance that deters foes without starting new conflicts.

In The Case for Trump, he credits the first term with no major new wars, record domestic energy output that undercut OPEC, and the Abraham Accords, which he says supported a calmer Middle East.

He contends the Biden years rolled back these gains. After Trump’s 2024 win, Hanson points to swift moves he endorses, such as pausing aid to Ukraine to force a negotiated end, paired with resource deals, hitting Iran’s nuclear assets with precise strikes, and leaning on Europe to meet NATO duties in the face of Russian pressure in the Baltics.

Support Isn’t Hero Worshiping

He argues Biden’s approach rewarded bad actors, citing the Afghanistan exit, Chinese balloons, and Houthis attacks in the Red Sea. Under Trump, he says, leaders like Putin and Xi would rethink their plans. He claims tariffs crimp China’s Belt and Road push, and that Israel’s actions against Hamas and Iranian-linked sites gained from stronger US backing after 7 October.

Drawing on The Second World Wars (2017), he warns that American power is finite, so friends should find no better ally and enemies no worse foe. He believes Trump follows that rule, which in his view helps avoid long slogs like the Ukraine crisis or prolonged fighting in Gaza. In a 2025 Hoover podcast, he urges a review of the UN’s New York base, calling it a spent institution like the League of Nations, out of step with real threats.

Hanson says his support is not hero worship, but a judgment shaped by history. He casts Trump as the cure for what he describes as Barack Obama’s flawed reading of demography, where affirmative action grew into tribal politics, and for Joe Biden’s careful branding of radical measures as moderate.

He claims Trump’s knack for baiting elites exposes double standards, from antisemitism on campus to legal cases timed for effect, including those brought by Jack Smith. For conservatives, his voice draws on hard work in Selma’s vineyards and long study of wars from Marathon to the Somme. It backs a picture of America that is guarded, orderly, and fair, where strength keeps the peace and common sense replaces revolution.

He also warns of obstacles. In “Reflections on the Counter-Revolution in America” (June 2025), he argues that the left’s pushback, from lawfare and media storms to sanctuary city defiance, mirrors the zeal of French radicals. He cites early 2025 moves like cancelling clearances for Biden-era officials and cutting refugee funding as early tests of resolve.

Yet he stays upbeat. He says Trump’s base now includes many former Democrats, a sign of a broader “MAGA meritocracy” with staying power. Across his X feed and podcasts, he returns to a theme from antiquity. Great powers fall when they grow soft, but they recover when leaders confront decline.

Hanson’s staying power comes from this mix of history and straight talk. For readers tired of drift, he offers not only argument, but assurance. In his view, Trump’s revolution is not chaos; it is a last push to save the republic.

In a time of wars abroad and discord at home, he says a steadier and safer world is within reach for those who restore deterrence and demand fair play. Like a farmer turning the soil, he works to prepare the ground where hope can grow.

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Trump’s Ukraine Peace Push Met with Mainstream Media Maelstrom

NEW YORK – After the bruising 2024 election, where Democrats suffered major setbacks, anxiety has spread through the party’s traditional base. Centrists and moderates, the practical voters in suburban swing seats who once powered Joe Biden, now warn of a hard-left turn.

Their worry is simple. Figures like Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, are not outliers. They are the face of a party moving left, economically aggressive, and risky with mainstream voters.

Mamdani’s rapid rise, built on a June 2025 primary win with pledges like a 30-dollar minimum wage, rent freezes, and city-run grocery shops, has heightened those fears. Critics, from business leaders to Democrats such as Sen. John Fetterman, call him “not even a Democrat honestly,” accusing him of pushing socialist plans that could wreck city budgets and drive away working-class voters.

With Mamdani polling well against independents like former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Eric Adams, many see more than a New York story. They see a preview of the party’s 2028 approach, where compromise gives way to ideological purity.

This panic fits a bigger storyline. The progressive wing has, in the eyes of its critics, wrested control of the party over the last decade, powered by young, media-savvy activists. What began as a fringe burst in the 2018 midterms now looks like a dominant bloc, with centrists shunted aside.

Congressional Progressive Caucus

At the centre is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Bronx organiser-turned-MP whose 2018 upset over a two-decade incumbent announced the Squad’s arrival. The group includes Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and, later, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman.

All members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus have used viral media, demands for the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, and primary threats against party stalwarts who deviate.

By 2025, that influence feels like control. AOC, now 35 and a household name, tops CNN polling as the perceived leader of the Democratic Party, ahead of figures like Barack Obama and rising MPs such as AOC and  Rep. Jasmine Crockett. Crockett, a Texas lawyer-turned-congresswoman elected in 2022, captures the next wave of Squad-style politics.

Her viral clashes with Republicans made her a media star, but her past nods to “defund the police” and digs at party elders show the same insurgent streak. Together, they have shifted the party from a big tent to a vehicle for hard-left ideas, with identity politics, redistribution, and anti-capital messaging eclipsing the pocketbook focus that wins in swing territory.

The shift shows up most clearly in the pressure on moderates. In 2024 primaries, progressive groups like Justice Democrats poured millions into challenges against so-called corporate Democrats, punishing those who broke with them on Israel and economic policy.

Bad Look for Democrats

Crockett, mentioned for roles like House Oversight Committee ranking member, has mocked the party’s seniority system as stuck in the past, urging a generational handover that rewards loud reformers, not dealmakers. ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith captured the mood on HBO’s Real Time in August 2025, blasting AOC and Crockett as a “bad look” for the party.

“Republicans are having a field day,” he said, warning that elevating these figures risks electoral collapse. Post-2024 assessments in outlets like The Hill echo that view, arguing the Squad’s message, rooted in failed 2020 slogans like defunding the police, shrank the coalition and cost seats in right-leaning districts that once backed Democrats on stability and security.

Critics say this is not an accident; it is a method. The progressive left capitalised on the party’s post-Trump confusion, using grassroots power and donor cash to overpower moderates. AOC’s “Fighting Oligarchy” tour with Bernie Sanders in 2025 raised 21 million dollars.

Yet, as Crockett reportedly told The Atlantic in private, it looked like self-promotion more than party-building, showing rifts inside the left even as the faction grows. On X, conservatives mock a “Squad hijacking” as a gift to Trumpism. Users like @BullDogBorn15 question whether Mamdani’s brand of socialism unites anyone, repeating the fear that Democrats are becoming a party of big-city radicals, not national leaders.

On Reddit’s r/AskALiberal, some praise Crockett’s firebrand style. Many centrists push back, saying they would rather back a winner like Joe Manchin than lose with a candidate like Paula Jean Swearengin. The message is blunt. All-in progressivism carries a big electoral risk.

The Rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

The tension is sharpest in Congress, where AOC is seen as the power behind the curtain. Polls show her beating Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in imagined 2028 New York primaries, 54 to 33 in a Data for Progress survey, with even bigger spreads elsewhere.

Republicans such as Vice President JD Vance and Sen. Markwayne Mullin blamed the October 2025 shutdown on Schumer “listening to far-left radicals,” saying he blocked clean funding bills because he feared an AOC challenge.

AOC called that “ridiculous,” and said Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries were leading the fight. Reports in WIRED tell a tougher story. Schumer’s “stuck in the ’90s” style has worn thin, with insiders guessing he will retire after 2026 to avoid a showdown. Trump piled on in October 2025, saying AOC is “taking Hakeem Jeffries’ place,” a jab at her influence.

Schumer’s moves, including support for progressive asks on spending and foreign aid, look like attempts to head off revolt. During the shutdown, he rallied Democrats against a Republican continuing resolution after AOC publicly demanded added health care protections, which forced his hand. The episode split the Senate caucus.

Nine Democrats broke ranks on a 2025 Israel aid bill, lifted by Squad pressure that Schumer could not contain. TIME reported that even centrists now talk about an “AOC Senate,” with her Gaza comments and anti-oligarchy rallies exciting the base and spooking Jewish donors and moderates. Crockett ducked direct talk of a Schumer fight, but hinted at an “appetite for fresher candidates” by 2028, a sign of the left’s long-term play.

Business Owners Preparing to Flee

The policy package rattles the centre. Universal basic income pilots, cuts to police budgets, and so-called sewer socialism, the kind Mamdani backs, are untested at scale. Mamdani’s DSA links, once dismissed, now help him edge toward a possible win in November 2025, which would make him the country’s most high-profile socialist mayor.

Business leaders, according to ABC News, are in “panic mode,” coordinating with Adams to stop him, worried about tax hikes and a flight of firms and high earners. Nationally, this softer form of socialism mirrors AOC’s Green New Deal. Polls suggest it excites young voters and turns off seniors and independents, the same groups Democrats lost in 2024.

Even so, the left flank acts as if moderates belong to the past. Crockett’s MSNBC clips slam the “old ways,” and AOC’s tour with Sanders frames compromise as betrayal. On X, users call the “Squad hijacking” a slow-motion self-own, with a 2020 thread warning it cost moderate seats. Roll Call notes Republicans now cast Crockett and AOC as their preferred foils, since their viral soundbites make easy ads.

For centrists, the worry is survival. A party driven by ideologues could be locked out of power. Yahoo argues that AOC and Crockett speak to a shrinking faction of purists and that this undercuts hopes for 2028, risking a return to Trump-era irrelevance.

Mamdani’s rise, AOC’s sway over Schumer, and the push to purge moderates do not look like wins to them. They look like warnings. Unless pragmatists take back control, Democrats could become a socialist showcase, while the country’s centre drifts away.

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The Democratic Party’s Leadership Vacuum Fuels Chaos and Exodus

WASHINGTON, D.C — After Donald Trump’s sweeping win in 2024, a hard truth has set in for Democrats. Years of alarms about fascism, Nazis, and threats to democracy have not cut through the daily grind.

With prices high and budgets tight, many voters care more about the weekly shop and the fuel gauge than rhetoric about tyranny. The party’s shift to the left has also cost it ground with moderates. If that continues into 2026, analysts say a heavy defeat could lock in Republican strength for years.

The story has repeated since 2016. Party leaders, candidates, and surrogates cast Trump and Republicans as racists or white supremacists, and as dangers to the republic. From Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” remark in 2016 to Kamala Harris calling Trump a “fascist” in the 2024 debates, the message barely changed.

The aim was to fire up the base and pull in independents by tying GOP policies to dark chapters of history. Polling in 2025 suggests this is falling flat. A Reuters/Ipsos survey in September showed 26% rated “political extremism or threats to democracy” the top issue.

The economy came in at 22%, and that was with Democrats heavily represented among those citing democracy. Among independents, the gap was wider. A Pew Research Center poll in October found 42% focused on rising prices and bills such as food and housing, while only 18% prioritised concerns about democratic decline.

Democrats Out of Touch

“Democrats have been shouting ‘Nazi’ for nearly a decade, but voters are not deaf, they are broke,” said Mark Penn, former Clinton pollster and CEO of the Harris Poll. In a post‑election memo in November 2024, he attacked the “politics of demonisation”, arguing that branding opponents “Hitler” or “fascist” pushed moderates away and failed to win sceptics.

“It went way over the top,” he told The Hill. He added that the labels strengthened Trump’s base and made Democrats look out of touch. Data support the point. A CBS/YouGov poll in July 2019 on Trump’s tweets about congresswomen of colour found 84% of Democrats called them “racist”, but only 34% of all Americans agreed.

Among Republicans, 70% rejected the term. By 2025, the pattern remains. On X (formerly Twitter), one Democrat wrote in October, “Ppl heard the warnings. They just didn’t care,” blaming the party’s platform for missing what voters value.

Voter fatigue has set in after years of repetition. Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat has compared Trump’s “enemy within” lines to Mussolini’s rhetoric. She has also noted on PBS that while the parallels have merit in scholarship, they often backfire in politics because people switch off. A 2025 Times/Siena poll shows the change.

A majority, 55%, still say the United States is a democracy. Yet concern over polarisation now rivals inflation only among Democrats. Some 52% of Democrats see a crisis for democracy. Across the wider electorate, economic worries hold first place. Republicans put the economy top, followed by “Democrats” as the problem. That is a poor sign for a message built on defending democracy.

Trump Stealing Moderates

The party’s move left has added to the strain. Gallup’s 2024 figures point to a major shift in self‑identification. Some 55% of Democrats now call themselves liberal or very liberal, up from 25% in 1994. The share calling themselves moderate fell from 48% to 34% over the same period. That has electoral costs.

In 2024, Trump gained with parts of the Democratic base. Younger voters, Latinos, and Black voters shifted right on crime, immigration, and public safety, according to AP VoteCast. The drift continued after the election. High‑profile exits fed the narrative. Former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean‑Pierre left the government. Florida Senate Minority Leader Jeff Pizzo said in April that the state party was “dead”. Senator Joe Manchin, an independent in recent years, remained a symbol of the rift.

Moderates say the party lost touch with core economic concerns. Analyst Quantus wrote in a 2024 Substack that a leftward turn on culture, shaped by progressive elites, widened the gap with the median voter. Immigration and criminal justice were key points of friction. Martha Johnson of Northeastern University argued that 2024 losses grew from poor tactics.

The campaign leaned too hard on abortion, which helped Harris voters but did not move enough swing‑state independents, and it played down wages. A Brookings review reached a similar view. By 2022, 54% of Democrats called themselves liberal. Nonwhite voters, once the backbone of the coalition, were less aligned with white liberals on ideology, which fed the 2024 slippage.

The fallout shows up in brand damage. A Gallup survey in March 2025 found 45% of Democrats wanted the party to move to the centre, up sharply from 2021. Only 43% of Republicans said their party should stay as it is. A centrist meet‑up in June 2025, billed as the “CPAC of the Center”, featured figures like Rep. Tom Suozzi.

He blamed “acquiescence to liberal groups” for 2024 and urged a turn to economic populism over “hyperonline activism”. On X, analysts noted the same trend. “Moderates are leaving because the party no longer reflects their values on public safety and immigration,” one wrote in May.

Republicans Odds Rising

The 2026 map is unkind, yet midterm history helps the party out of power. Since 1950, the party in the White House has lost House seats in all but two midterms, with an average loss of 26. Republicans defend 22 Senate seats, including Ohio and Florida specials. Democrats need a net four to flip control.

Sabato’s Crystal Ball model gives Democrats a decent shot at taking the House, with Trump near 42% approval and inflation still above 3%. William Galston at Brookings cautions against easy assumptions. Trump’s approval, 53% in early 2025 per Reuters/Ipsos, could sink if tariffs raise prices. But internal fights could waste the “midterm loss rule” as an advantage.

Sticking with “threat to democracy” as the main theme may deepen the losses. A Newsweek poll in June 2025 showed Republican odds rising on economic pain. Yet Democrats have overperformed in some specials. They flipped Iowa’s 1st District by 4 points, showing what a reset could deliver.

An Emerson poll in August reported voters split on National Guard deployments, but were keen on practical leadership. The economy led at 33%, while democracy threats sat at 24%. The chorus on X is blunt. “No one can say they were not warned… but Americans give a crap about inflation over party ID,” a conservative posted in February.

A better route is clear. Drop the apocalyptic tone and talk about household costs. As one X user put it, “Democracy can be really stupid sometimes.” The party can still listen to moderates who are leaving and to families trimming the weekly shop. If it does, a rebound is possible. For Democrats, 2026 is not only about Trump. It is a test of identity. Ignore it, and a long spell in the wilderness awaits.

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