I nearly always disagree with him, but I enjoy Bill Maher’s HBO show, “Real Time with Bill Maher” (full disclosure, I’ve been on the show before). I like Maher’s disdain for political correctness and his willingness to challenge Democrats. But last Friday’s episode was striking in illustrating just how far to the Left the Democratic Party is running.
This was evidenced by the end of show guest, Democratic New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The mayor went full-socialist. “There is plenty of money in the United States of America,” the mayor explained, “there’s plenty of money in Los Angeles, there’s plenty of money in New York City, it’s just in the wrong hands. That is the reality. That means taxing the wealthy, repealing the Trump tax cuts and giveaways to the corporations and the wealthy.”
De Blasio at least deserves credit for his honesty. Those words aren’t simply an articulation of government redistribution of wealth, they’re a war cry for class warfare. But while Maher has previously argued that he already pays enough taxes, he didn’t challenge de Blasio on Friday. That’s a shame. Because just think about de Blasio’s “wrong hands,” contention. His implied narrative is that wealthier Americans are in some sense intrinsic sense, immoral.
De Blasio showed he isn’t just a ideological revolutionary, he’s an ideological purist as well. Rebuking Maher’s contention that the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee will need to unify progressives with centrists, de Blasio claimed that “centrists got us nowhere.” When it comes to the 2020 Democratic primaries, de Blasio says “centrists need not apply.”
It was a shame that no conservative was there to challenge de Blasio. The formerly conservative panelist, Jennifer Rubin was wholly focused on attacking Trump and had little to contribute. But while I’m sure some conservatives might have been aggravated watching the mayor’s festival of socialism, it actually made me happy. Because in demanding redistribution away from the most productive in society, and in calling for vast new spending programs, de Blasio explains why Democrats have a big problem: They are simply too liberal to win.
And as the 2020 Democratic primary contenders attempt to outdo one another by racing further and further to the Left, they’ll make conservatives seem that much more reasonable.
Conservatives cannot be lethargic. We must wake up to this political reality for what it is: an opportunity to articulate our better economic narrative. Namely, that’s it not whether rich people are rich that matters most, but whether everyone, including the poor, are getting better off. It should be an easy case to make. In 2019 America, conservative policies are indeed making the poor better off, and that’s a success story whose data one cannot avoid.
