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Former NBC News anchor Brian Williams delivered a grim diagnosis of the Democratic Party on Late Night with Seth Meyers on Thursday.
Having been crushed in the November 5 elections — losing the presidency and both houses of Congress — the party must be rebuilt from the ground up.
It has lost its traditional base of working-class voters, and won’t recover until it begins seeking their votes by talking about issues that matter to them. The party, Williams repeatedly said, “insulted” those voters.
Williams’ assessment reprises that of far-left talker Bill Maher, who told Democrats the same thing in rather more salty language.
Williams: Democrats Lost Working-class Voters
After discussing the preliminaries — including the threat from U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) that releasing the House Ethics Committee report on Matt Gaetz would invite releasing negative 411 on other Republicans, including “sexual harassment and assault claims” — Meyers rightly explained what went wrong.
“The Democratic Party lost a lot of white, working-class voters,” he said:
Certainly, their lead with non-white, working-class voters was, you know, eaten into by Donald Trump and the Republicans. It didn’t feel like the Democratic Party under Joe Biden did a lot of things for working-class voters. Certainly, inflation was a giant issue. Messaging, as well.
“It is tough-love time for the Democratic Party,” Williams replied. “I think it needs to be stripped down and rebuilt.”
That requires changing its leadership, including those who thought President Biden, who turned 82 two days ago, should have run again with a popularity rating of 37 percent.
When Biden dropped out thanks to a Ruling Class-Deep State plot to get rid of him, Vice President Kamala Harris was left with a “short campaign season,” Williams continued.
But beyond that, the Democratic Party simply insulted its core voters.
“I think it’s insulting when members of the working class, which the Democratic Party has lost entirely in our lifetimes, to insist the economy’s doing great,” Williams said:
A 12-pack of Bounty [paper towels] is $40. Rich folks don’t feel that. Poor folks already switched to Sparkle during the COVID lockdown.
And I think telling them that the Nasdaq is gangbusters is further insulting.
And the most “insulting” move from Biden was telling Americans the southwest border is secure.
“It’s insulting — I think the biggest unforced error of the Biden administration, by far, was the border,” Williams continued:
To tell people it’s not a problem is insulting. For the working class to see incoming migrants getting welcome bags, debit cards, and motel rooms is probably insulting, as well.
He added that the party “has gone quinoa and the rest of America is eating at Cracker Barrel.”
Must Reach Out to America Again
Meyers observed that Trump appealed to Americans with a message that had him working at McDonald’s and riding a garbage truck, and that Democrats have lost their advantage at that kind of messaging.
The party must “reach out to America again and be less about what’s called suicidal empathy, worrying so much about minority groups in society and in your party that you win the argument, but you don’t win the election,” Williams replied.
Another election lesson, Williams said, is that polling is worthless, and that instead the “betting indexes” nailed the election result. “They were almost all right,” Williams said, “but not the pollsters.”
(In fact, one pollster, Rasmussen, had Trump consistently ahead.)
That aside, Williams concluded by repeating his message. The Democratic Party must appeal to working-class voters.
Maher: Are Trump Voters Stupid?
How the party can do that given its focus on wacky woke ideology is unclear.
Maher, who frequently chastises the Democratic Party for its obsession with identity politics, told the far-left party faithful, who clearly controlled Harris’ campaign, “when you’re in a hole, stop digging.”
“Even the one concession I’ve heard a few people on the losing side offer, that liberals should stop saying that Trump voters are stupid, comes with a kind of unspoken parentheses,” Maher said last week:
We know they are stupid, just don’t say it. Yeah, I got bad news for you. They don’t have a monopoly on stupid. You wear “Queers for Palestine” T-shirts … and masks two years after the pandemic ended. And you can’t define “woman.” I mean, person who menstruates.
Maher said the party ignored polls that showed black voters were concerned about too liberal a president, not too conservative a president. He said the party has become a Portlandia sketch.
Problem: White Progressives
And white “progressives” are the party’s problem. More blacks and Hispanics than white “progressives” think America is the greatest country in the world, he observed, citing a survey from last year. And white “progressives” think the country is more racist than blacks and Hispanics do.
The survey “asked if government should increase border security,” Maher continued. “Same result. Hispanic Americans are less OK with illegal immigration than Whitey”:
The votes are in. They don’t want your pity. And black people can’t afford to indulge rich white people’s need to endlessly flagellate themselves. They just want prices to go down, and good jobs, and the police when you call them.
Black people, they’re just like us.
Wokeness Lost It
Maher also provided an example of how wokeness has gripped the party. After the election, U.S. Representative Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) rejected that madness in an interview with The New York Times.
“I have two little girls,” he said. “I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”
“Yes, there’s the problem in a nutshell,” Maher said:
… Congressman Moulton sounds reasonable to me, but his campaign manager immediately resigned in protest. Let me make this as plain as I can to the smart people. The campaign manager who resigned? Yeah, let that person go.
Maher said the nation needs a “center-left” party. But it must be one that tackles important issues. “A good first step toward that goal,“ he said, ”would be to make the voters not want to punch you in the face.”
But the message from Williams and Maher is the same.
The Democratic Party alienated normal Americans who work hard for a living and are fed up with high prices and open borders, and don’t want their daughters mauled on an athletic field by boys who pretend to be girls.
