 So, as many of you know by now, Bernie Sanders recently received arguably the most important endorsements of the 2020 race. He was endorsed by three out of the four members of the squad, AOC, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib. So, this matters because to have some of the most vocal, visibly progressive members of Congress back your campaign, that demonstrates to voters that you really are the most progressive, that you really are the real deal. However, if you're Bill Maher, then you're going to somehow find a way to spin this as a negative for Bernie Sanders. Not kidding. Bill Maher in this clip that I'm about to play for you is going to argue that not only is this not good for Bernie Sanders, it's actually good for Elizabeth Warren that they endorsed Bernie over her. So, you're going to see him interview Chris Cuomo, they're both going to pontificate about why this really isn't a big deal and if anything is better for Warren, and it's going to be one of the most insufferable clips from Bill Maher that you've seen in quite some time. So, let's watch. And then I have quite a bit to say about this because this really is rich-splaining 101. You're going to see two out of touch assholes talk about something that they really know nothing about. So, the two-three-fourths of the squad came out for Bernie Sanders. Yes. What? Yes, they did. I just, I laugh at that because I don't know how that squad thing actually happened. Like, I don't know why we're calling a bunch of freshmen some kind of entity of influence in a system they just got into. Because they do have a lot of influence. They have a lot of social media influence, they have political cachet, the media loves to talk about them. But I think you have to put points on the board if you're going to earn your office. Get things done for your constituents, not just for your own profile. Okay. My question was... Louis! I love you. Imagine if that were his name. That was so Italian of you. I take no offense. No, you should. But is that the squad coming out for Bernie? First thing I thought was, that's good for Elizabeth Warren. Because? Because it makes him to the left of her. And she needs to move to the middle. And what always happens, it's not unusual in politics. You know this, I'm sure all of you do also, is that primary takes you to a poll, a polar position within your party, and then you try to fight your way back to the center. I think what's going on with the Democratic Party is a little bit more extreme than we've seen in the past. We had a poll not too long ago that said if the person running against this president identifies as socialist, or can be identified reasonably as socialist, they lose by six points. So I think labels matter in politics. They do. The Senator Sanders has a tough time in defining socialist as a good thing to a capitalist society that doesn't like the idea of that kind of distribution of assets in general. Even in his own party, I don't think it really goes. I think they got a tough task. That was awful. That was completely and utterly insufferable for a number of reasons. So the first thing I want to touch on is Chris Cuomo down playing the significance of their endorsements. And their membership in the party. He says, I don't know why we're calling a bunch of freshmen some kind of entity of influence in a system they just got into. You have to put points on the board, get things done for your constituents, not just for your own profile. Now, first and foremost, this is incredibly insulting to say. He's insinuating that they don't actually care about policy, that they really are doing more to promote themselves than the policies that they care about. I mean, if this were actually the case, don't you think that there would be an easier route for them to take if they did, in fact, care more about self promotion? I mean, if they chose to sell out to special interests and start taking money from special interests and raising money for elites, you know, that would be a way to advance in party leadership. That would be a way to get praise from the mainstream media. But because they're remaining principled, that demonstrates that they truly do care more about their constituents than anyone else. And second of all, ask yourself this if you think that they're not influential. Why are we talking about the Green New Deal? Why are presidential candidates having to pledge their support to the Green New Deal? It's because of AOC. Why are we even considering student loan debt cancellation? It's because of Ilhan Omar and Bernie Sanders co-introducing legislation to do just that. So to dismiss them as not having much influence because they're freshmen, that means absolutely nothing. Because think back to 2010, how influential the Tea Party was at moving the Republican Party to the right. Now, were they truly grassroots? No, they were propped up largely by the Koch Brothers, Americans for Prosperity. But what they did, even if they were a small block within the Republican Party, was absolutely substantial. All you need is a large enough block in Congress to actually exert influence, and you can accomplish change. Now, I'll admit that the block in Congress is still relatively small, right? But they're the most popular for a reason. It's because they're talking about things that people care about, Medicare for all, student loan debt cancellation. Nobody else in Congress really is demonstrating to people that they actually care that they're listening. So for you to downplay it, Chris Cuomo is incredibly smug and elitist. Like, to say that, it really is rich-blaining. Now Bill Maher then chimed in and said the squad coming out for Bernie first thing I thought was that's good for Elizabeth Warren, because it makes him to the left of her and she needs to move to the middle. So this is idiotic on a number of levels, right? First of all, Elizabeth Warren would disagree with you because she was aggressively courting the endorsements of squad members like AOC. Now, second of all, during a primary if you move to the middle, that's not going to bode well for your campaign. You can ask Amy Klobuchar how that's working out. Talk to John Delaney and see how his centrism is helping him in this primary. Out of all of the three front runners, two of them are the most progressive in the race. You have Joe Biden, sure you can make that case. He is filling the space of, you know, the centrists in the party, whatever. He also has a lot of name recognition and a lot of Biden supporters admit that they support him because they think that he's the most electable incorrectly. So but nonetheless, during a primary to shift to the center, if you want to lose, then shifting to the center is a great way to do that. So Bill Maher doesn't know what he's talking about. He is giving them horrible advice, horrible advice because if that strategy was conducive to electoral success, then most centrists wouldn't be stuck at one percent indefinitely. But you know, Chris Cuomo assured him that the pivot is a thing and he says what's going on in the Democratic Party is a little more extreme than what we've seen in the past. Now think about how one dimensional this line of thinking is. Do you ever hear people talking about the Republican Party in the same way? Do we ever talk about how far to the right the Republican Party has shifted? No. For whatever reason, even though the Overton window is so far to the right that we elected a literal fascist, we're still talking about how far left the Democratic Party is. Donald Trump moved the entire Republican Party to the right and he didn't pivot in the general election. Let me remind you and guess what happened. He's still won. So why is this worry about not being moderate enough something that only centrists worry about? That only centrists fear monger about to the left? Well this hinges on their worldview because according to them winning elections is about flipping as many undecided centrist voters as possible. Not about exciting the base. So the way that they view elections is there's always this fixed block of undecided centrist voters and in order to win the general election you've got to win over that fixed block. Now this is something that Democratic strategists would agree with right? A lot of Democrats agree with this but between 2008 to 2016 Democrats lost more than a thousand seats in state legislatures across the country specifically because this is the strategy that they pursued. It's always about winning over moderates but in trying to shift right and appeal to moderates what have Democrats done? Well they shifted so far to the center and the right that they left a lot of space open on the left and they abandoned their base. People stopped showing up because it seems like they care more about winning over Republicans than they do about winning over us. So rather than actually pursuing an electoral strategy that will be conducive to victory by going after non-voters by exciting the base what Bill Maher and Chris Cuomo are advocating for is for them to pursue the same strategy that led to them being wiped out. It's like 2016 never happened and empiricism isn't a thing and we can never learn from the past. Unbelievable like in 2019 I shouldn't have to be talking about the viability of a strategy like that like we should all acknowledge collectively that running to the center is a horrible idea for Democrats but this is still something that they're doing. Republicans never worry about running too far to the right. Democrats and elites always fear longer about the left pushing the party too far to the left. I'm over it right? It's insufferable. I'm so fucking sick of it. I'm done with that. On top of that Chris Cuomo invoked the fear of socialism and how that could potentially be a hurdle for Bernie Sanders. Now I get that when you look at some public opinion polls voters tend to not want to vote for a generic socialist but first of all that doesn't necessarily mean that they won't vote for Bernie Sanders because a generic socialist with no connotations attached to it is different from a politician who was one of the most trusted and popular senators in the country and on top of that they're not acknowledging that this election will largely be decided by young voters because a new YouGov poll found that 7 in 10 millennials say that they would vote for a socialist and 50% of millennials and 51% of Gen Zers have an unfavorable view of capitalism. Now most people pay more attention during the general elections and if a self-declared democratic socialist is at the top of the ticket even if you may worry about whatever hurdles that poses you can expect young people to turn out which means that this will increase our chances of beating Donald Trump like young voters have essentially decided elections by turning out or not turning out so if we have someone who's a self-declared democratic socialist people are going to turn out and vote for him and guess what happened we increase our chances of beating Donald Trump now I've got bad news for you if you are worried about that socialist label being attributed to Bernie Sanders because he is a self-declared democratic socialist any Democrat is going to be a socialist Mitch McConnell even referred to Joe Biden as a socialist so it doesn't matter who the nominee is they could be as right wing as you want them to be Republicans will by default say that they are socialists because that's what Bernie Sanders is going to be a communist who is a center right neoliberal so it doesn't matter who the Democratic Party nominee is the political toxicity of that label is still going to remain consistent but I would argue that Bernie Sanders would fare better because he is a self-identified democratic socialist so by not running away from that label he actually has the ability to take it and own it and actually redefine it and not allow Republicans to define it for him because it's not going to be the way of Bill's Bernie bashing because there was another part where a panelist condemned Medicare for all and Bill Maher of course agreed with him. I'll tell you one thing though you tell 160 million Americans that they can't have their choose their private insurance you're going to lose an election and these people are smoking crack you know forget about not even paying being able to pay for 34 trillion dollars and they work really hard to put me in a position where I can buy the kind of insurance I want and if I can't or the people on this panel I can't buy for my children we are going backwards we're fucking Denmark okay. So that of course was Donny Deutch he is a multi-millionaire with a net worth of 200 million dollars and his logic is completely asked backwards he's basically saying that if we have a Medicare for all single-payer system healthcare is free at the point of comprehensive and universal we're actually going backwards that makes no sense because it's idiotic we're not going backwards if we get Medicare for all we're going forward because if we end a system where healthcare is a commodity and 30,000 people die every single year to stop that we're not going backwards we're going forwards you disingenuous hack but this is someone who we should expect to lie because he already admitted on Morning Joe that he would literally vote for Donald Trump over Bernie Sanders he would vote for fascism before he votes for socialism that's what he admitted before having to walk it back because according to him socialism would be bad for this company I mean country his words not mine so this logic is so stupid but I found the perfect response on twitter because as Jonathan Copeland said if we replaced the lead pipes and flint 96,000 people will be kicked off their current water sources and that's exactly right you're framing an upgrade as losing something and that's fucking stupid if somebody took away my PlayStation 4 and gave me a PlayStation 4 pro would I say you took away my PlayStation 4 or would I say you upgraded my PlayStation 4 like that's probably not the best analogy but I mean the point still stands he literally said that if you tell 60 million Americans that they can't choose their private insurance then you're gonna lose an election I mean you're just being disingenuous you are being intentionally deceitful that or you're really really stupid but I would argue that he knows at least that a Medicare for all system it wouldn't lead to people losing health insurance but he wants you to think that so that way he can help drive down support for it so I mean look Bill Maher's show has become insufferable for Bernie Sanders supporters which is interesting because back in 2016 Bill Maher purported to be a Bernie Sanders supporter albeit tapently right he didn't really seem to be very enthusiastic about Bernie Sanders because he didn't think that Bernie would be able to beat Hillary Clinton but this time you know in 2019 when Bernie Sanders is in the top three out of a field of what 20 plus candidates and he actually has a shot of winning he's raising the most money he has more than a million volunteers all of a sudden Bill Maher is saying actually maybe he's too left wing for the country unbelievable Bill Maher used to be someone who actually provided a somewhat different take an alternative look at American politics he was more anti-establishment and now his commentary is indistinguishable from a lot of the other commentary we see from corporate media pundits and a lot of what he says is exactly the same this is what you'd hear from Fox News so Bill Maher is absolutely atrocious and we just have to prove him wrong and get Bernie Sanders elected but even if Bernie Sanders is elected I still don't think that Bill Maher is going to admit that he's wrong because he just likes to rich-splain and never listen to normal Americans he's in that elitist bubble he is a multi-millionaire so he just likes to hear himself talk at this point and I can't watch unless it's to hate watch him and shit on him you know on my show because he's just he's that bad now he's that bad