I guess Bill Maher is back with his “Real Time” show, and in the latest bit he’s going to anger a lot of “progressives”. Why? Because he’s taking out after Democrats—in particular, the cowardice of Democrats. (Even liberal Democrats haven’t forgiven Maher for saying that he had a cordial dinner with Trump—despite Maher’s having called out Trump’s politics during that dinner.)
It is curious that prominent Democrats won’t appear on Maher’s show while prominent Republicans will, even knowing that Maher is going to try to take them down. And Maher is a Democrat! I conclude that he’s right: the Seth Moultron example is right on point, and I suspect Democrats like Kamala Harris and Bill or Hillary Clinton won’t go on the show for the reason that Maher proposes: they’re afraid of an open and confrontational discussion. I’m betting that you will never see AOC, Elizabeth Warren, or Zohran Mamdani on that show.
It’s a pretty good bit (I like the gender [really “sex”] joke and his discussion of Title IX), but it’s better than usual because it makes a serious point. Dems won’t start winning until they start facing the hard questions, including ones about wokeness.
Back in the 40s and 50s, the Left (tried to) make a distinction between Stalinists and an anti-totalitarian Left. The Dems need to realize that it is ok, in fact necessary, to reject extremism and push it out of the party. Right now it seems like a lot of people are saying that people like Mamdani are the only way to counter Trump. But at what cost? I know that there are people who hate Trump and love America. There’s no need to align with people who hate America, too.
The only issue I have of Maher is his anti-vax stances. But that means he is from the older left generation, where anti-vax was still a big thing. Now it mainly has been eaten up by the populist right-wing where all forms of conspiracies have now a place, no matter how they are contradicting or irrational and entirely without substantive evidence.
But that aside, I entirely agree that as long as the left does not abandon their “holier than though” arrogance and paternalism. And their insistence that science is always on their side, whilst in the background the science is at best a lot more nuanced than they state.
The left has to change, go back to the roots of protecting the small, low SES people from the rich like they did in the past. And if they do so, they will protect many of the minorities they are now so fond of as well. They have to stop focusing on the Israel – Palestine conflict. And focus on their home turf and on the things they can actually change and improve. And they have to stop being the “disproportionately highly educated echo chambers and silos” that only isolate themselves from people with smaller vocabularies, which is at the least, more than 50% of the population that they previously targeted. Too much on the left is like on the right at the moment, the main strategy seems to be “If you can’t baffle them with your smart vocabulary, baffle them with your BS”. Peterson is rightly criticized for his BS large complex word garbage which he never seems to explain if he even can. But on the left they do the same with nonsensical overly zealous philosophies, and complex jargon that never gets explained in simple concrete terms so people that did not get PhD’s and masters can also understand what they are saying.
I see this in the Netherlands as well. We have our own right-wing populist nutt that is hyperfocused on migration and anti-woke (and the corresponding obvious racism and nonsense that goes with it) as being the sole problem of everything, so they can do subtle power grabs and fill rich pockets behind the curtains. And the left just blames the voters for their extreme losses and continue with their ways that caused them to lose in the first place, i.e. focus on identity politics and minority protecting at the cost of the rest of the lower SES population. Where the right is obviously investing in learning how to manipulate voters and learning from their past failures, the left seems to be incapable of learning from their mistakes, is fragmenting due to moral purity testing and therefore can’t create a strong front anymore. Which is troubling, as in many cases the less extreme left takes better care of low SES than the right does. And what they propose as a solution just does not work, which is too often some protest on the streets without actually fighting power with power which is judicial and decision-making power at the top.
The democrats have to remove the extremist from their midst, let the extremist make small parties that only exist in the margins again. Stop being afraid of the most extremist online activist trolls. Twitter no longer exists and now is a right-wing propaganda machine, but they also have to stay away from echo-chambers like Bluesky or at the least don’t be influenced by mobs of either the corpse of twitter or the almost as stupidly constructed to-be wasteland of Bluesky.
Let the silent majority of left-centrist speak (which in the past were just the left).
And focus on the centrists, don’t focus on the minority of highly educated people (as they are by their definition always a minority and thus never a lot of votes). Listen to the people and stop trying to manipulate voters to speak a party line that they do not agree with. Only the right does this, but they are smart (and very much unethical) in how they manipulate people, they just seed the social media world with manufactured fear by paying directly or indirectly influencers that know how to move people, to spout propaganda.
Do pay attention to the note about overcommenting in Da Roolz to the left. So far you have written 50% of the comments.
I’m no fan of Wilders but he gives people the impression that he knows what makes society less pleasant and he wants to do something about it. People are tired of the blue-haired gender cult screaming about rivers and seas. They’re tired of dudes spitting on the sidewalk as they pass.
But what does the left have to offer besides more divisiveness? If they aren’t willing to talk publicly about society’s ailments then they’ll never offer a plan to heal them and so the average Jane will think twice about voting for them. We saw this happen in the USA and it’s happening in the UK and elsewhere.
The Dutch know well that society thrives on differences – but only with comity and compromise can it be healthy. Acknowledgement and proposals (whatever you may think of them) are only coming from the right whereas the left thinks finger-pointing is the best political platform with proposals being conspicuously absent.
Maher’s not entirely anti-vax but he is adjacent enough to REALLY piss me off. Still… I listen to him on other things and often agree. I too am a diseffected former “1990s center leftist”.
On The Netherlands: I also notice what your country does b/c I’m a student of (economic/political) history and you people are, along with the Japanese, the most advanced nationality.
Much of the British Enlightenment thinking came from the Netherlands. So I listen.
And I’ve long admired your sex and drugs policies.
Seems that there is a much stronger anti-Islam movement over there (with Gert Wilders. et al) now. This has been a long time coming in Europe.
Recent revelations (also from Germany and Sweden) attest to the differential “contributions” (positive and negative) of different nationality immigrants. In the US we don’t record “nationality” only legal/illegal and race.
Note – I have unfortunately never visited your country. I intend to.
best,
D.A.
NYC
https://x.com/DavidandersonJd
Liked it! I think that the “fear” thing is real with the Democrats. They’re afraid of their far left minority, to the detriment of the party and to the electorate.
The current election primary system has lot to answer for. It was a solution to the corrupt smoke-filled-rooms candidate selection process, but now it empowers extremists of every stripe. (On the Right, iDJT would have far fewer elected toadies without the certain-to-turn-out MAGA mob.)
Open primaries, combined (non-party) primaries, and other such reforms have little genuine support among state legislators, for a variety of mainly self-serving reasons.