Mr Maher points out, in his monologue, that the Left is shooting itself in the foot, ignoring the public’s feelings, including the minorities they are allegedly defending.
He goes on to point out that the Red Hats “do not have a monopoly on being stupid”, and urges the Hard Left to come down to earth.
All this, without surrendering to Trump.
I believe it is a clear vision, and I urge you to watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtCK-dMb-F8&t=350s&ab_channel=RealTimewithBillMaher
There is no point dumping wokeness. Let 4 years pass and the voters will know who “did it” this time.the usual pendulum.The woke issues are the coalition. And the permissiveness can stay there (trans rights etc) as long as you don’t make it a big issue. Abortion was a big issue, don’t know what to do with that. But point out that senators and congressmen and state level politicians are practicing medicine. Treating miscarriages is now banned.
On the plus side, there were millions who showed up to vote for Trump. And nothing else. They have no 2028 candidate. Vance will fail.
The public feels that inflation is too high. So the Left implements policies that decrease inflation. The public feels that there are too many criminal immigrants. So the Left cracks down on immigrant crime. The public feels that low-paid workers are getting the short end of the stick. So the Left tries to increase the minimum wage.
We’re paying plenty of attention to peoples’ feelings. But the problem is, our policies can only affect actual reality.
But there’s the rub. The culture-war themes were made a big issue by the Republicans, brilliantly wielding the “I just want to make him have to deny it” play.
The mainstream Democratic Party did NOT embrace and push “extreme left woke” agendas. Just ask anyone in the far progressive left, they’ll tell you. What happened was that the Right went in early and hard in being the ones defining the discussion, calling regular old Liberal positions “extreme woke” and forcing the Dems onto the defensive. Again.
The problem has nothing to do with Democratic policies and has everything to do with Republican propaganda. Any suggestion to change anything else is useless.
I wonder if there is a concerted effort to split the Democratic party. I am hearing a lot of chatter here and other places online about purging the left wing from the Democratic party and embracing more of MAGA lite approach that actively pushes away minority issues and focus almost exclusively on white male issues.
…as the resident Social Justice Warrior in chief, this is 100% accurate. The Republicans reportedly spent over 200 million no anti-trans advertisements and propaganda. The Democrats said the word “trans” only twice during the convention.
By choosing not to make it a “big issue”, or any issue at all, the pendulum has been allowed to swing. Choosing to say nothing now is not an option, no matter what people like Bill Maher might think.
…its what happened in the UK. Its inevitable it will happen in the US. It will be a combination of the establishment not wanting the left any more, and the left no longer being able to tolerate being under the “big tent.”
The Democrats have a longstanding reputation for neglecting and betraying their base, which is one reason they struggle to get that base to vote for them. Betraying that base, openly and deliberately will just make it worse. And pandering to the Republican base in some hopes of placating them has never worked, despite the Democratic insistence in doing so over and over.
Then both factions will become permanently irrelevant, and then dead. Both will be too small to matter politically even if meaningful elections happen again, and absolutely ensure total victory by the fascists. Who will kill them all.
I wouldn’t count on it. My “pro-choice” MAGA mother blames the Democrats for the overturn of Roe v. Wade. You might be trying to find the logic behind that belief but I urge you to avoid straining yourself. I’ll paraphrase a Doper (I wish I could remember who to give credit to), but MAGAts will happily eat a turd sandwich served by Trump while complaining the Democrats made it taste bad.
I get where you’re coming from. MAGA is in charge for the next few years so logically they should be blamed. I’m not sure if that’s what will happen though.
Exactly right. As I alluded to in several other threads, the fundamental problem isn’t the divisive ideology that Maher is alluding to, the problem is that a very large proportion of American voters haven’t the vaguest fucking idea of what they’re voting for. As Maher pointed out in that exact same program, on election day a lot of them didn’t even know who was running for president! That sort of abject ignorance is the bulk of the Trump constituency – knee-jerk reactions, zero facts, zero analysis.
Maher was wrong in his “New Rules” editorial. You can’t fight ignorance with rational policies. It’s a fundamental deeply rooted problem that the fascists have tapped into that leverages to their advantage long-standing racism, basic social infrastructure problems, and mass media that is at best useless and at worst propagandizing and actively malignant.
It’s not a long-term winning strategy for Democrats to campaign on shallow promises of shiny objects and tax cuts to appeal to the ignorati.
…I’d argue that they are already now permanently irrelevant. And dead. The Republicans control the police, the army, the supremes, the senate, the house, the executive, and multiple states. The Democrats, as is, will become nothing but a sideshow in sham elections.
I’m not arguing this is optimal. But the Democrats are on track to abandon trans people and double down on the push to the right. And just like in the UK they will be the ones that start the purge. You saw it with the likes of Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman already. They’d get rid of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib in a heartbeat if they could.
I agree. (Maher doesn’t think clearly when the topic is The Left; he starts from ‘they’re awful and ruining everything’ and then tries to make that fit whatever topic is at hand.) Anti-incumbency is powerful, and so is majority-minority anxiety. The demographic trends of the USA are freaking some people out, and MAGA offered a “simple solution” that lots of people weren’t willing or able to think analytically about.