The Middle-Aged Girls Who Have Just ‘Had It’

By Christine Rosen

Sunday, December 21, 2025

 

It is perhaps not a question for the ages, but it is one for our current cultural moment: Why is the left’s political influence operation dominated by a bunch of shouty, middle-aged white women making podcasts and TikTok videos?

 

The Donald Trump era has produced its fair share of unusual female enthusiasts on the right as well (MAHA moms, tradwives), but the klatch of mostly blonde women now dominating the political “influencer” space on the left are a different kind of activist than the pussy-hat-wearing Resistance types who participated in the Women’s March during Trump’s first term as president.

 

Consider Leigh McGowan, a “social media influencer” who goes by the moniker PoliticsGirl, even though she is middle-aged. Her website describes her meteoric rise to fame: “She started her YouTube channel in 2015 as a way to inform and inspire because she said, ‘When you understand you care [sic], and when you care you vote.’” McGowan really began caring “after watching the fallout from the Trump years” and so relaunched her brand on TikTok in 2020, “doing rants in her kitchen as a way to engage the younger generation.” Nothing says “concern for democracy and the children” like embracing a platform controlled by the Chinese Communist Party!

 

McGowan, who was born in Canada and became a U.S. citizen, has no firsthand political experience, yet she does not suffer from a lack of self-confidence when it comes to telling people what to think about politics. “People loved her no-nonsense, casual approach and the way she was able to break down complicated issues into everyday speak,” her website boasts. “People like her because she’s smart in a way that doesn’t make them feel dumb,” the site notes, sounding like an influencer koan.

 

Despite her pretense of offering a new, “no-nonsense, everywoman” approach to politics, McGowan is in fact just a good, old-fashioned rabid partisan, albeit one with nice lighting in the comfortable Los Angeles home from which she broadcasts. Her “kitchen rants” are not a cute marketing trick. They really are rants. A typical offering from July 2022 featured comments on the entirety of the Republican Party in the wake of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas. “First of all, f—k you,” she began, in a tone of high dudgeon, before launching a stream of invective against the GOP, with frequent, staccato hand gestures and with an expression of permanent outrage on her face. It is compelling short-form video content. With her blond hair pulled into a tight, high ponytail, McGowan looks like Barbara Eden from I Dream of Jeannie—if Jeannie was very angry at Republicans and dabbling in amphetamines.

 

Of course, as McGowan told Forbes, “I don’t do the news…. I explain the news. It’s not about me looking smart, it’s about my audience feeling smart…. I give the facts in an entertaining way that makes sense.” Does it, though? McGowan likes to lecture the guests who appear on her PoliticsGirl podcast about what she thinks is wrong with politics, yet she seems strangely removed from what politics involves—for example, winning elections. Talking to California Governor Gavin Newsom in November, she said, “It is infuriating to watch your own party, who have the better ideas, the better candidates, who stand up for more people, perpetually lose.”

 

Equally blonde and middle-aged influencers Jennifer Welch and Angie Sullivan, hosts of the popular podcast I’ve Had It, forgo any pretense at explanation and instead embrace what they call “a brand of f—k-you politics.” The two women, who met in Oklahoma when their children became friends, soon bonded over the fact that their husbands were “crazier than s—thouse rats,” as they explained to the Guardian. Their podcast began as an edgy wine-mom discussion of entertainment news but soon morphed into discussions of politics. Like McGowan, Welch and Sullivan pose as experts on matters about which they have no expertise.

 

When former CNN host Don Lemon interviewed them this summer at the 92nd Street Y about their new book, Life Is a Lazy Susan of S—t Sandwiches, the performative aspect of their politics was fully on display. Talking about former president Barack Obama, among their favorite political guests, Welch noted, “We both thought about having sex with him during the interview.”

 

Welch and Sullivan can at times be charming, as when they discuss their friendship and parenting issues; they are much less so when they discuss ideas. Even as they frequently rail against Trump, they have embraced and expanded upon his vulgar style, referring to him as “Cankles McTacoT-ts,” for example, and mocking Vice President JD Vance as “Lil Smokey,” which, the Guardian reports, is shorthand for “Smoky Eyed Failed Drag Queen.”

 

There is nothing wrong with women indulging their inner crones while ranting about the “f—kery” of politics on a podcast if they choose to do so. What’s odd is that the left has elevated them to the status of political seers, the Democratic Party’s answer to Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson. And the party continues to send its brightest progressive stars to their shows. In addition to Obama, guests on I’ve Had It have included Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, former Vice President Kamala Harris, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

 

Popular Twitch streamer and recent Communist China–apologist Hasan Piker has called the I’ve Had It podcast “the headquarters of the actual resistance—and not the 2016-era resistance liberals, the real resistance.” He also approvingly described the show as “the most radical progressive podcast in North America.”

 

If that’s true, then it reveals just how far left the Democratic Party has moved in recent years. Welch’s and Sullivan’s views on geopolitics are more aligned with Piker and the anti-Semitic progressive left than with those of the average American voter. After October 7, Welch advised Democrats to denounce Israel’s war against Hamas and “immediately recognize that this is a genocide.” To ensure her audience knows where she stands, she added, “Tell AIPAC to go f—k themselves.”

 

They aren’t much more subtle about domestic politics. In December, they hosted former MSNBC pundit Krystal Ball, who went on an extended rant about non-white people at Immigration and Customs Enforcement. As the hosts nodded along, Ball called out ICE agents with “a brown skin tone” and “a dude  who looks like his last name is probably like Lopez or Hernandez or something” and said, “Not only do you not have morality, apparently you don’t have self-preservation… and you’re the one implementing the violent force against your own community!” Evidently a bunch of upper-middle-class white women condescending to minorities while trafficking in noxious stereotypes is the future of the Democratic Party, or at least of its political influencers.

 

Judging by their follower counts and views, a significant number of Americans are buying what they are selling. McGowan’s online store features $35 T-shirts that say, “Thank you for caring about politics.” But do these influencers really care about politics? They seem far more invested in cultivating their entertainment brands. McGowan is a failed actress whose website features flattering posts from actors such as Mark Hamill. Welch and Sullivan are former reality TV hosts who revel in playing to the lowest common denominator. Boasting to the Guardian about their approach to politics, Welch said, “You want to go low, we’re gonna go lower… . We need to bully the s—t out of these guys, because they respond to it.”

 

Perhaps. But rather like a richer, older, social media–addled version of Thelma and Louise, they are heroines in their own minds who are driving the Democratic Party off a cliff.