It’s more than a little interesting that Bill Maher – a hard-leftist, at least until recently – is, more and more, becoming a source of common sense reasoning from the Democrat side.
Case in point: his commentary on Friday night’s “Real Time” show, in which he takes apart the identity-politics strategy of the Democrat Party: a strategy which, it should be noted, has gained it a lot of votes and a lot of election wins in the past.
But now?
Here, pulled from Joseph A. Wulfsohn’s article in the New York Post, is what Mr. Maher has to say about how this strategy is working now:
“I do give a shit about who wins the next election. And outdated racial pandering is one reason Democrats lose elections…
“…Here in California, we’re now segregating kidnapping. Really. California doesn’t just have AMBER alerts for missing children. We have “Ebony alerts” for Black children and “feather” alerts for Native American kids. What is that, you look for them by listening on the ground?”
“…”(now) It’s not working for them or for us. Democrats are hemorrhaging the very voters they think they’re pandering to. The Financial Times writes ‘Democrats are going backwards faster with voters of color than any other demographic.’ And suggests the reason is ‘a less racially divided America is in America where people vote more based on their beliefs than their identity.’ Exactly. Far-left liberals are living in an old paradigm. Americans don’t fit into neat little boxes anymore. Who has the number one country song right now? Beyonce. Lil Nas X won a Country Music Award and he’s Black and gay!…”
“…My point is look, you’re still building your politics around slicing and dicing people into these fixed categories. Democrats need to get the memo that you can’t win elections anymore by automatically assuming you’re going to get every voter who’s not these guys,” Maher said while showing a photo of White men in suits from the 1950s. “The more you obsess over identity, the more you ignore the bread and butter issues that win and lose elections. The real issue is class, not race. And the real gap is the diploma divide. And the real future of the party and maybe democracy depends on Democrats figuring that out.”
Do I agree with everything Mr. Maher says? Nope.
But do I agree with his general premise that voters – especially Latino voters but, albeit somewhat less rapidly, Black voters as well – are less concerned with identity politics than they are with what used to be called bread and butter issues? That is, the issues that most affect their everyday lives, especially their everyday economic lives?
You bet I do. And the Democrat strategy people ignore this at their party’s own peril.
In that connection, I’ll end with what I consider to be a very interesting prospect: what if Donald Trump names Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) as his running mate?
Donalds is 45 years old – which, in and of itself is a huge benefit in a race between a 78 year old and an almost 82 year old. He has a private-industry background in banking and finance. As a young professional he was a Democrat, but changed parties and became a Republican 14 years ago. He was a two-term member of Florida’s House of Representatives and is now serving his third term as a U.S. House member. He is a conservative thinker, and an extremely intelligent speaker who puts entire thoughts into relatively few words (a talent that, in 78 years, I have yet to master), he has a solid personal life…
…and he is Black.
My suspicion? If Trump were to select Mr. Donalds as his running mate (assuming Donalds would accept), it would give the OK, the imprimatur, for a great many Black voters, sick and tired of how they are treated by the Democrat Party, to move in his direction (Hey, Byron Donalds is Black just like me, he was a Democrat just like I am, and since he changed parties Republicans not only haven’t mistreated him, they have made him a young superstar. So what’s holding me back?)
If my suspicion has any validity – if even, say, just 5 – 8% of the Black vote moves to Trump/Donalds from Biden/Harris, they might as well not even hold the election.
This is not to say there aren’t other VP selections that would benefit Trump’s run for the White House. But, in my view, as of now (all things are subject to change in politics), Byron Donalds would be the single strongest.
We’ll see….
