The floundering of the Democratic Party is becoming impossible to ignore while Republicans continue to make positive gains in swing states. At least one mainstream media outlet is now admitting that Democrats are in trouble ahead of the 2026 midterms, and the numbers appear to prove it.

CNN data analyst Harry Enten broke down the major gains in voter registration in key swing states for Republicans.

‘The Democratic brand is in about as good a position as the Cracker Barrel rebrand.’

Looking at the data from Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, Enten said, “The Republican Party is in their best position at this point in the cycle since at least 2005, in all four of these key battleground states.”

Enten showed that Arizona had a three-point gain in Republican voter registration; Nevada had a six-point gain. Strikingly, North Carolina and Pennsylvania both had an eight-point gain in Republican voter registration.

RELATED: Trump DOJ targets North Carolina for shaky voter registration

Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

“Are there any bright spots for Democrats? Have they picked up any ground since January 1 in terms of party registration? I’m not seeing it in these key swing states, these four key swing states. That’s what we’re talking about: party registration margin gain since January 1, 2025.”

“The Democratic brand is in about as good a position as the Cracker Barrel rebrand,” he added.

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​Politics, Harry enten, Voter registration, Gop, Republicans, 2026 midterms, Swing states, Cracker barrel 

Happy Sept. 1 to all — even the haters and losers in corporate media who, truth be told, haven’t had a great year.

That doesn’t mean no one’s winning. On Wednesday, One America News announced that Google’s YouTube TV will now carry the channel in its basic package. The deal comes just three years after OAN was dropped by Verizon and DirecTV under pressure from advertisers, activist groups, rising costs, and a political climate openly hostile to conservative media.

The cracks in profits and the resulting hard decisions and pivots are everywhere to see.

Meanwhile, the corporate press keeps sinking. President Donald Trump, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, collapsing public trust, and brutal market shifts have combined into a perfect storm for the old media guard. Line up the casualties, and the wreckage speaks for itself.

Carr set the tone just weeks into the new administration with a Feb. 11 letter to Comcast and NBCUniversal alerting them that they’re under investigation to “ensure your companies are not promoting invidious forms of discrimination in violation of FCC regulations and civil rights laws.”

FCC rules under the Communications Act have long barred companies from discriminating on race, sex, religion, or age. But this marked the first time an administration used those tools against woke corporate culture. It was a warning shot heard around the world.

The shake-up didn’t stop there. On Feb. 24, MSNBC cut ties with Joy Reid, its longtime host known for race-baiting and peddling conspiracy theories.

Days later, on Feb. 26, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos announced a major shift in editorial policy: The paper would now “focus on personal liberties and free markets.” The move looked less like patriotism and more like a calculation to protect Bezos’ global business interests. Still, it stunned the Post’s anti-Trump staff, many of whom saw it as surrender to the country’s new conservative mood. Opinion editor David Shipley quit in protest almost immediately.

Then, a month later on March 27, Carr kicked off the second week of spring by sending another letter warning of an investigation into DEI policies violating civil rights law — this time to Disney and ABC.

Spring capped off on June 8, when ABC senior national correspondent Terry Moran fired off a middle-of-the-night rant about how White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller’s “hatreds are his spiritual nourishment.” He wrote the post just over a week after he interviewed the president in the Oval Office.

It’s the kind of unhinged post that would have been standard fare during Trump’s first term, but times had changed, and ABC fired him. Moran stands by his characterization of Miller. He’s now “an independent journalist.”

By summer, the hits to corporate media were coming harder and faster. On July 2, CBS announced it was settling with Trump over deceptive edits to its “60 Minutes” campaign-trail interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.

The $16 million settlement mirrored ABC’s settlement with Trump seven months prior, paying approximately $1 million to cover Trump’s legal fees, with the rest going to the future Trump presidential library. It also included an agreement to release future, unedited transcripts of presidential interviews.

During the spring, as part of the blowback over the Harris interview, CBS had hired a producer to oversee “sensitive” content. That oversight led to the April 22 resignation of longtime “60 Minutes” producer Bill Owens.

Then on July 17, CBS announced it would not renew Stephen Colbert’s contract. It was the end of the 32-year run for “The Late Show” and a dismal result of how snide and political it had become since David Letterman’s departure from the show a decade ago.

The very next day, on July 18, the Senate passed the White House’s rescission package, ending taxpayer money to PBS and NPR. The hyper-Democratic television and radio networks had been conservative targets for decades; now, they were on their own. Four days later, on July 22, NPR’s newsroom chief, Edith Chapin, announced she was leaving the company.

Then it was back to business. On July 24, the FCC approved a Paramount Global/CBS-Skydance Media merger. The deal came complete with a commitment to eliminate DEI and to install an ombudsman over CBS News. These moves were a direct result of the FCC’s push to actually enforce the Communications Act’s public interest standard, which requires balanced viewpoints for companies that want to use public spectrum.

Biden-appointed FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez was furious. Monitoring for bias, she claimed, is a terrible threat to press freedom.

On July 31, it was back to the Washington Post. That day, “fact-checker” Glenn Kessler, columnist Jonathan Capehart, and dozens of other Democrat journalists accepted the struggling paper’s proposed buyout package.

The following day, Aug. 1, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced it would shut down under the business pressures caused by the end of taxpayer funding.

All that, and the year is far from over. The cracks in profits and the resulting hard decisions and pivots are everywhere to see. When you combine the pressures of declining profits and a rightly distrustful public with an administration interested in using the tools of the American civil rights regime to actually protect all classes of Americans, it’s a near-perfect storm.

Gentlemen, it’s time to reap the whirlwind.

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​Opinion & analysis, Politics 

A recent Gallup poll has revealed that alcohol consumption in the United States has reached a record low in nearly a century, with only 54% of the country reporting that they drink.

The data is consistent with other research, including Monitoring the Future’s national substance abuse poll that found a drastically reduced interest in alcohol among students from 1975 to 2025.

The subcategories of the Gallup poll revealed several bits of interesting information:

Women were more likely to quit drinking than men, with an 11% drop in drinking rates since 2023, compared to a 5% drop in men.White adults were more likely to quit drinking than adults of color, with an 11% drop in drinking rates since 2023, compared to a 2% drop in people of color. From 2023 to 2025, the largest declines in drinking rates were among people earning less than $40,000 per year, with a 14% drop, and those earning $100,000 or more per year, with a 13% drop. In contrast, drinking rates among those earning between $40,000 and $99,999 fell by only 4%Younger generations were more likely to quit drinking than older generations, with a 9% drop in adults ages 18-34 and a 10% drop in adults ages 35-54, compared to a 5% drop in adults 55 and older. From 2023 to 2025, Republicans had a 19% drop in drinking rates, compared to a 6% drop among Independents and a 3% drop among Democrats.

It’s this latter statistic that Stu Burguiere, BlazeTV host of “Stu Does America,” is most fascinated by.

His theory is that conservatives’ massive drop in drinking rates has a lot to do with the pressure to take the experimental COVID-19 vaccine. The anti-vaccine resistance largely fueled MAHA and ignited a movement of distrust in health institutions. Couple that with the new studies coming out that challenge the outdated advice that moderate drinking is safe, maybe even healthy, and perhaps that’s why Republicans are ditching the bottle in droves.

Stu’s theory seems to be consistent with the subcategory of the Gallup poll that assessed people’s perception of alcohol’s impact on health. All three categories showed a rising trend in the percentage of people who believe alcohol is harmful to health. From 2001 to 2025, people who said alcohol makes no difference on health decreased from 46% to a record low of 37%; people who said alcohol is good for health decreased from 22% to a record low of 6%; and people who said alcohol is bad for health increased from 27% to a record high of 53%.

It was also found that young people ages 18-34 were more likely to view alcohol negatively, with 66% reporting it’s bad for health, compared to 50% of adults ages 35-54 and 48% of adults ages 55 and up.

The poll also found that drinkers are consuming less alcohol. The report found that the average number of drinks per week has fallen to 2.8 — the lowest rate since 1996.

Stu is encouraged by these statistics. Not only is this good news for public health, it’s also good news for the culture when it comes to things like graduation rates, unwanted pregnancies, domestic violence, and reduced DUIs and accidents.

“The fact that kids and young adults are choosing to drink less, having fewer drinks, is a real positive thing,” he says.

To hear more about the Gallup poll’s findings and more of Stu’s analysis, watch the episode above.

Want more from Stu?

To enjoy more of Stu’s lethal wit, wisdom, and mockery, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Stu does america, Stu burguiere, Blazetv, Blaze media, Gallup poll, Alcohol, Alcohol rates 

Labor Day didn’t begin as a noble tribute to American workers. It began as a negotiation with ideological terrorists.

In the late 1800s, factory and mine conditions were brutal. Workers endured 12-to-15-hour days, often seven days a week, in filthy, dangerous environments. Wages were low, injuries went uncompensated, and benefits didn’t exist. Out of desperation, Americans turned to labor unions. Basic protections had to be fought for because none were guaranteed.

Labor Day wasn’t born out of gratitude. It was a political payoff to Marxist radicals who set trains ablaze and threatened national stability.

That era marked a seismic shift — much like today. The Industrial Revolution, like our current digital and political upheaval, left millions behind. And wherever people get left behind, Marxists see an opening.

A revolutionary wedge

This was Marxism’s moment.

Economic suffering created fertile ground for revolutionary agitation. Marxists, socialists, and anarchists stepped in to stoke class resentment. Their goal was to turn the downtrodden into a revolutionary class, tear down the existing system, and redistribute wealth by force.

Among the most influential agitators was Peter J. McGuire, a devout Irish Marxist from New York. In 1874, he co-founded the Social Democratic Workingmens Party of North America, the first Marxist political party in the United States. He was also a vice president of the American Federation of Labor, which would become the most powerful union in America.

McGuire’s mission wasn’t hidden. He wanted to transform the U.S. into a socialist nation through labor unions.

That mission soon found a useful symbol.

In the 1880s, labor leaders in Toronto invited McGuire to attend their annual labor festival. Inspired, he returned to New York and launched a similar parade on Sept. 5 — chosen because it fell halfway between Independence Day and Thanksgiving.

The first parade drew over 30,000 marchers who skipped work to hear speeches about eight-hour workdays and the alleged promise of Marxism. The parade caught on across the country.

Negotiating with radicals

By 1894, Labor Day had been adopted by 30 states. But the federal government had yet to make it a national holiday. A major strike changed everything.

In Pullman, Illinois, home of the Pullman railroad car company, tensions exploded. The economy tanked. George Pullman laid off hundreds of workers and slashed wages for those who remained — yet refused to lower the rent on company-owned homes.

That injustice opened the door for Marxist agitators to mobilize.

Sympathetic railroad workers joined the strike. Riots broke out. Hundreds of railcars were torched. Mail service was disrupted. The nation’s rail system ground to a halt.

President Grover Cleveland — under pressure in a midterm election year — panicked. He sent 12,000 federal troops to Chicago. Two strikers were killed in the resulting clashes.

With the crisis spiraling and Democrats desperate to avoid political fallout, Cleveland struck a deal. Within six days of breaking the strike, Congress rushed through legislation making Labor Day a federal holiday.

It was the first of many concessions Democrats would make to organized labor in exchange for political power.

What we really celebrated

Labor Day wasn’t born out of gratitude. It was a political payoff to Marxist radicals who set trains ablaze and threatened national stability.

RELATED: Listen: Glenn explains the history of Labor Day – and why it matters for our future

Photo by Photo by Kean Collection/Getty Images

What we celebrated was a Canadian idea, brought to America by the founder of the American Socialist Party, endorsed by racially exclusionary unions, and made law by a president and Congress eager to save face.

It was the first of many bones thrown by the Democratic Party to union power brokers. And it marked the beginning of a long, costly compromise with ideologues who wanted to dismantle the American way of life — from the inside out.

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​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Labor day, Labor day weekend, Labor day history, Labor unions, Pullman strike, Marxism, Peter j mcguire, Afl-cio, Big labor