Bill Maher warned Democrats that they should focus on class and education instead of race if they want to win the presidential election.
The comedian spent eight minutes of his show Real Time imploring them to “leave” “identity politics” because it was losing them voters.
Polls show support for Democrats among non-white Americans is at its lowest point in 60 years, and Donald Trump is doing much better among them than he did in 2020.
Maher said this showed that Americans’ identities were more complicated than ever and “no longer fit into neat little boxes.”
Bill Maher warned Democrats that they should focus on class and education instead of race if they want to win the presidential election.
‘I don’t give a damn who wins the next election. And outdated racial pandering is one of the reasons Democrats lose elections,” he said on his HBO show.
“When Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi dressed in Kente cloth, I don’t think that earned them a single vote because of their powerful emotional ties to Ghana.”
Maher argued that Democrats had not yet realized this because they were still appealing to racial groups and assuming they had them in the bag.
“You’re still building your politics around dividing and dividing people into these fixed categories,” he said.
“Democrats need to get the memo that you can no longer win elections by automatically assuming you’re going to get all non-(white male) voters.”
Maher, who often disagrees with Democratic positions but wants Trump to lose the election, said Joe Biden’s party needed to refocus on other issues.
“The more we obsess over identity, the more we ignore the basic issues that determine winning and losing elections,” he said.
‘The real problem is class, not race. And the real gap is the division of diplomas. And the real future of the party and perhaps of democracy depends on Democrats realizing that.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress kneel and observe a moment of silence, reading the names of George Floyd and others killed by police.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Kamala Harris and their fellow Democrats in Congress, introduce legislation to combat police violence and racial injustice after weeks of protests over the death of George Floyd.
Recent polls indicate a shift of black and Hispanic voters toward Republicans, eroding a coalition that propelled Biden to the White House in 2020.
It also showed that the voting gap between college-educated Americans and those with only high school was growing, which was Maher’s “diploma divide” point.
A New York Times/Siena College poll earlier this month showed Biden only leading Trump 56 to 44 percent among nonwhite Americans.
Biden won this group by nearly 50 percent in 2020, indicating a massive shift over the past three years.
The president still held a commanding 71 to 20 percent lead among Black voters asked who they would support in a head-to-head race, up from 87 percent in 2020.
But Trump was ahead 45 to 43 percent among Hispanics after Biden surpassed that demographic 65 to 32 in 2020.
The same poll showed that college-educated voters favored Biden by 55 to 38, and that support reversed by 36 to 55 for those without.
Democrats’ party affiliation percentage more broadly also eroded over the past three years, falling 20 percent among black voters.
According to a Gallup poll, two-thirds of black adults identify as Democrats or lean that way, and only 19 percent identify as or lean Republicans.
But this advantage was from 77 to 11 percent in 2020, when the black vote won states like Georgia for Biden.
The Democratic advantage among Hispanic voters also fell from 28 percent in 2020 to just 12 percent, now standing between 47 and 35 percent.
Democrats have a slight lead among Hispanic adults, but it is the smallest gap since Gallup began tracking it in 2011.
Democrats have an advantage among black adults, but the gap has narrowed dramatically by nearly 20 points in the last three years alone.
Much of the racial shift is attributed to black and Hispanic voters being more conservative than whites on many issues.
Non-white voters who long held more conservative views are now changing their votes to reflect their ideology.
Positions on abortion and the size of government make these communities more naturally Republican, and many more describe themselves as conservative.
Anyway, for many years they supported Democrats, due to civil rights and immigration policies, but as time goes on, they become less important.
In 2012, three-quarters of blacks self-identified as conservatives voted Democratic or described themselves as supporters of that party; now it is less than half.
However, the same Gallup poll noted that educational gaps were becoming more decisive over time, from very small before 2013 to huge now.
Democrats had a 14 percent advantage among non-college-educated voters in 1999, which jumped to 14 percent Republicans in 2023.
At the same time, the Democratic advantage among voters with graduate degrees jumped from eight to 29 percent, and from minus eight to plus five percent among those with at least a bachelor’s degree.
Maher read quotes from minority celebrities such as Idris Elba, Raven-Symoné and Morgan Freeman, who said they did not want to be identified by their race.
He also noted that the United States was less racially divided, as 20 percent of marriages were interracial and there was a 276 percent increase in the number of people describing themselves as mixed race.
Non-white voters have long held more conservative views and are now changing their votes to reflect their ideology.
To humorously illustrate his point, he listed people who were in positions incongruent with what would be expected of their race.
Among them were Beyoncé’s No. 1 country hit and Lil Nas, who was black and gay, and who won a country music award.
‘Two-thirds of Republican voters support legalizing marijuana. And 41 percent of Democrats own or live with someone who owns a gun. Ms. Marvel is Pakistani and the winner of the last two NBA dunk contests is white,” she said.
Maher noted that Latinos made up half of the Border Patrol, RuPaul has a ranch in Wyoming that does fracking, and the leader of the Proud Boys was an Afro-Cuban named Enrique Tarrio.
She added that Caitlyn Jenner was a pro-Trump trans woman who supported banning trans athletes from competing in women’s sports.
‘Far-left liberals live in an old paradigm. “Americans no longer fit into small, neat boxes,” he said.
“Now in America you’re allowed to be many things at once and that’s a good thing, even when it’s really stupid.”