The Daily BS • Bo Snerdley Cuts Through It!
The Daily BS • Bo Snerdley Cuts Through It!

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Roseanne Barr goes at it with Bill Maher over whether to call it ‘Democrat Party’ or ‘Democratic Party’

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BS BULLETIN:

  • Roseanne Barr told Bill Maher his political views are increasingly starting to sound like hers.
  • Maher rejected the premise, saying he hasn’t moved — the Democratic Party has.
  • The longtime liberal went considerably further, arguing the party is now filled with socialists who are actually communists.

Roseanne Barr thought she had Bill Maher figured out: after years of mocking her politics, the longtime liberal comedian was finally drifting in her direction.

Maher had a different explanation.

During a wide-ranging appearance on “The Roseanne Barr Podcast,” Barr told Maher she gets a “thrill” watching him increasingly call out the political left.

“You are getting more and more like me all the time,” Barr told him, adding that his views were evolving toward positions he once considered crazy.

Maher wasn’t buying it.

“My views aren’t evolving at all,” he said. “The Democratic Party evolved.”

“They became the Democratic Socialist Party,” Maher said. “I didn’t change at all. I’ve always believed in capitalism. The party now is full of socialists who are really communists. They’re not socialist.”

That is quite a declaration from a man who still describes himself as slightly left of center and has spent decades identified with liberal politics. The two comedians did not suddenly become political soulmates, however.

When Barr later asked whether the “Democrat Party” could still be fixed, Maher objected to her terminology and insisted it is the “Democratic Party,” dismissing the conservative habit of dropping the “-ic” as a pointless dig.

Barr had an answer ready: she said she refuses to call the party “Democratic” because she doesn’t believe it is democratic. Maher promptly pushed back on Republicans as well, citing Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the 2020 election.

The disagreement is notable because Maher’s criticism of the Democratic Party has become increasingly pointed without turning him into a Republican. In a CNN interview aired Sunday, Maher again hammered the party’s activist left, describing the Democratic Socialists of America as a “crazy animal” living inside the Democratic Party and warning that its influence could become a serious problem heading toward 2028.

His basic argument to Barr was simpler: don’t mistake his attacks on today’s left for a political conversion. As Maher sees it, he stayed where he was. The party moved.

MY QUICK TAKE

This is the political version of standing still on one of those airport moving walkways while everybody else disappears down the terminal.

Maher has been making essentially the same complaint for years, but notice how much stronger the vocabulary has become. We have traveled from “woke excesses” to a longtime liberal openly saying his party contains socialists who are really communists.

That’s not a Republican campaign commercial. That’s Bill Maher.

And that’s what ought to worry Democrats. Parties rarely notice an ideological migration while they’re making it because everybody inside the room is moving together. The warning comes from the people who suddenly look around and ask, “Wait — when did we get over here?”

Roseanne says Bill moved. Bill says Democrats moved. Considering Maher is still criticizing Trump and Republicans while saying this, Democrats might want to at least consider the possibility that the guy has a point.

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