And you can't define woman. [music] I mean person who menstruates. You're the teachers union education party and you've turned [music] schools and colleges into a joke.
You just lost a crazy contest [music] to an actual crazy person. [applause and cheering] You love to speak truth to power and we always should. But you have completely lost the ability to speak truth to that isn't a Republican [music] campaign ad.
That's Bill Maher telling his own side that the branding exercise is over. He's not asking Democrats to become conservatives. He's asking them to stop treating normal language, [music] open debate, and obvious reality like there's some kind of right-wing conspiracy.
And honestly, this is bigger than one comedian roasting one political party. When the center left gives up on persuasion, it creates a vacuum and populist [music] are more than happy to step in and fill it. Hit subscribe because Mars real argument is about what happens when a political movement becomes so afraid of upsetting its own activists that it completely forgets how to actually speak to voters.
Egg burning is free speech and free speech is one of the key things [music] that makes America great. So, so now that I have you on my side on that issue, don't be a hypocrite and defend [music] attacks on speech from the left because you either get the concept or you don't. And sadly, a lot of people [music] don't anymore.
Free speech should have its limits. Yes, it should and [music] does. And this comes nowhere close to them.
Mars starts from the strongest liberal ground possible. The speech you hate is the real test. Anyone can offend words that get applause or support from their own side.
Of course, there are legal limits to speech, but ordinary disagreement is not violence. If provocative expression is considered sacred when it targets a flag, but suddenly becomes unacceptable when it challenges progressive language, then that's not really a principle anymore. It becomes a weapon.
And moderates [music] notice that double standard. They don't hear freedom. They hear terms and conditions apply.
There's a lot of stuff like that on the left and cons when conservatives see it, they say, "I'm sorry. We're just not going to go along with reinventing society, often pointlessly, even if we have to cancel democracy to [music] do it. " That's what they're saying.
They see gender is only a construct and sex is assigned at birth. And they say, "We're not doing that. Transing kids by self- diagnosis with no age limit, [music] no parental notification, and no acknowledgement of social contagion.
[music] not doing it. Asylum now covers any reason for anyone to come to America. Listen closely.
Cancel democracy [music] is not an endorsement. It's a warning. Mars point is that when the activist left treats every cultural experiment like it's completely non-negotiable.
The populist right gets an easy opening to sell the backlash as self-defense. [music] And that's a terrible trade. Activists get their purity while authoritarians get the power.
Whether every single point on Mars list is [music] perfectly framed is almost beside the point. Voters have to be allowed to ask where the boundaries are because democracy depends on people having a say. You can't just install a whole new system overnight like a software update and expect everyone to accept it.
Democracy requires consent. If we are ever going to get back to the [music] old America, that's got to be the Democrats part of the bargain. stop coming up with radically new and often terrible ideas and then then the next breath [music] insist there be no debate about any of it.
That if you don't see it right away and go along, you're bad, [music] stupid, and deplorable. As if you were saying, "Duh, 2 plus 2 equals 5. Isn't that obvious?
" Yeah, it's obvious. You can't add You can't just say math is racist. [music] Queers for Palestine.
Looting is cool. Healthy at any weight. If the men's football team played the That 2 plus two joke lands because people can feel when politics starts demanding emotional loyalty instead of accepting what's right there in front of them.
But the deeper problem is strategic. And humiliating people who have doubts isn't going to win them over. It just turns that doubt into resentment.
A movement that truly believes in its ideas, explains them, and makes a case for them. A movement that can't explain itself starts policing words, jokes, classrooms, and even friendships. Then everyone inside the bubble applauds while the people outside it quietly stopped voting for [music] them.
And that's how moral certainty can turn into electoral self-sabotage. The DSA are radicals [music] about this concept and radical economic policy is always inelectably [music] married to radical social policy. Their platform, for example, calls [music] for completely open borders.
Therefore, what Biden was [music] doing, but more. You think you're going to win an election on that? This just seems like more extremism at a time when Americans are [music] begging both parties, please, could just one of you act normal.
[applause] It's either defund the police or military in the streets. Either MAGA's [music] cryptocrony capitalism or cityrun grocery stores. No, I don't want.
Here's where it gets interesting. The DSA's growth is real. The organization said it reached [music] 120,000 members on July 4th, 2026.
But a highly organized activist [music] group is not the same thing as the national electorate. The left sees an energized base [music] while family worried about paying rent may just see another stack of ideological demands. And meanwhile, the right has its own version of the insanity [music] with personality cults, cronyism, and fantasies about state retaliation.
[music] Mars pitch is actually pretty simple. Stop forcing Americans to choose between two political nervous breakdowns. There's a progressive trend now to sacrifice [music] merit for equity.
Colleges are chucking the SAT and ACT test. And in New York, Mayor Delasio [music] announced merit would no longer decide who gets into the schools for advanced learners, but rather a lottery system. You [music] think China's doing that?
Letting political correctness get in the way of nurturing their best and brightest? [music] You think Chinese colleges are offering courses in the philosophy of Star Trek, the sociology [music] of Seinfeld, and surviving the coming zombie apocalypse. Those are real, and so is China.
[music] and they are eating our lunch. And believe me, in an hour they'll they'll be hungry. Mar exaggerates for comedy, but the competition point he's making is serious.
George Town Center for Security and Emerging Technology projected that China would produce more than 77,000 STEM PhDs [music] in 2025 compared with roughly 40,000 in the United States. That doesn't mean every humanities course is worthless or that every test is perfectly [music] fair. It means that if we're trying to reform inequality, we can't turn excellence into something that's treated like a moral defect.
Equity should widen the starting line, not erase the finish line. Because if that line disappears, wealthy families will simply buy their own private standards while everyone else gets handed slogans. You said it before, wokeness [music] is not an extension of liberalism anymore.
It's more often taking something so far that it becomes [music] the opposite. teaching kids not to hate or judge those who are different. Great.
Proud we got there. All [music] for that. But at a certain point, inclusion becomes promotion.
[music] And contrary to current progressive dogma, children aren't miniature adults [music] wise beyond their years. They're morons. [laughter] [applause] This is the boundary.
Mar wants liberalism to recover. Tolerance is not the same thing as compulsion. Teaching children not to bully people [music] who are different is liberal.
But turning every adult cultural controversy into mandatory lessons for very young children is activism. That doesn't mean LGBTQ people should disappear [music] from public life. It means age, context, parental trust, and reasonable limits still matter.
A movement starts losing credibility [music] when every request or boundaries is treated like hatred, add enough rules to a message about kindness, and eventually families stop hearing kindness and start hearing control instead. Confirm something I wish wasn't true, but unfortunately is about [music] certainly not all, but too many Jenzers. They're stupid.
I don't [applause] I don't know what they're teaching them in college these [music] days, but they all seem to have majored in simplicity. [laughter] Oppressed and oppressor, no in between. Healthcare, good guys and bad guys.
Simple. [music] When Trump said nobody knew that healthc care could be so complicated, he was wrong. It's not complicated.
It's simple. The Gen Z swipe is pretty broad because plenty of young voters are thoughtful and honestly just exhausted by both parties. His real target is the online style of politics that takes every complicated issue and turns it into a hero, a villain, and a 15-second verdict.
Healthc care, war, [music] policing, immigration, and education are way too complicated to fit into a reaction video. But social media rewards those simple moral cartoons. Suddenly, [music] complexity gets treated like cowardice and uncertainty gets treated like [music] complicity.
The algorithm doesn't need you to be informed. It just needs you angry [music] enough to keep scrolling. So, here I am again feeling like an old school liberal at odds with the new politics of the far left.
Because it wasn't that long ago when liberals thought shooting people who don't share your politics [music] was bad, or at least a microaggression. [laughter] When Sarah Palin posted a map with crosshairs on the districts [music] of House Democrats she hoped to defeat in 2010, liberals went nuts. But now, vigilanteism is okay when it's someone you want.
This is where Mah turns a mirror around. Liberals once treated violent political imagery [music] as dangerous. And in many cases, rightly so.
But they can't suddenly romanticize political violence just because the anger is aimed in a direction they happen to like. A moral rule that changes depending on [music] who the target is isn't really a moral rule at all. It's just team merchandise.
You don't defend democracy by deciding your enemies deserve less of it. And the moment both sides start excusing intimidation, [music] the argument stops being about left versus right. It becomes about civilization versus revenge.
And then admit [music] that in 2020, the left got a little carried away. Carried away like most of the merch [music] at the shoe store. get it carried away.
Once in a while they need a lady. [cheering] Looting was [music] rebranded as justice shopping. We stopped arresting shoplifterss.
Anti-racist baby was a bestseller. [music] Corporations took DEI to ludicrous lengths. We opened our hearts to all who wanted to [music] come here and then also our borders.
Portland decriminalized all drugs and Seattle set up a no cop zone [music] until they had to reverse course on both. This is a confession Democrats keep mumbling instead of just saying clearly. The year 2020 brought real grief, justified anger, and demand for reform that were long overdue.
But it also brought institutional panic, [music] corporate theater, and policies that many voters experienced as the sorter dressed up in moral language. Two things can be true at the same time. [music] Injustice deserved action, and parts of the response became completely absurd.
Admitting that some things went too far doesn't destroy the cause. It can actually restore trust. Because when you pretend people never saw what they clearly saw with their own eyes, you don't win them over.
You just make them feel insulted. I need to cite [music] you as a cautionary tale to help my country. And the moral of that tale is [music] yes, you can move too far left.
And when you do, you wind up [music] pushing the people in the middle to the right. That's the political boomerang nobody wants to talk about. When you push every disagreement outside the circle of acceptable opinion, [music] the people in the middle don't just disappear, they move.
And it's not necessarily because they suddenly love everything on the right. Sometimes it's simply because one side made normal questions feel forbidden. A coalition that treats moderation like betrayal eventually hands the center to its opponent and then acts completely shocked when the political map starts changing.
This inclination [music] from certain liberals to always and immediately excommunicate instead of communicate is what makes them [music] so unlikable. Christ. First, we couldn't date people who had opposite political beliefs.
Now, we can't even date them if they have no opinion at all. When politics starts deciding who you can date, [music] invite, hire, or even sit beside, it stops feeling like normal civic life and starts feeling more like a religion with terrible music. [music] You build majority by giving imperfect people room to talk, disagree, laugh, and maybe even survive dinner with someone who voted differently.
But if your movement requires a moral background check before brunch, congratulations. You've basically invented loneliness with a yard sign. Excommunicate instead of communicate might be Mar's sharpest diagnosis of all.
Maybe take the close pins off [music] your noses and actually converse with the other half of the country. Stop [music] screaming at people to get with the program and instead make a program worth getting with. [applause] What good is liberalism if you don't win [music] elections?
Last week, Massachusetts [clears throat] Congressman Seth Molton [music] said, "I have two little girls. I don't want them getting run over on a playing field by a formerly [music] male athlete. But as a Democrat, I'm supposed to be afraid to say that.
" Yes, there's the problem in [music] a nutshell. Because Congressman Molton sounds reasonable to me, but his campaign manager immediately resigned in protest. That's the thesis.
Politics isn't a graduate seminar where losing an argument somehow proves your purity. It's the art of bringing enough people together to actually [music] govern. Mars argument can absolutely be challenged, and that's what debate is for.
[music] But his aid's reported resignation turned what could have been a simple policy disagreement [music] into a loyalty test which only reinforces argument that Democrats were afraid of the conversation itself. Leaders are supposed to manage conflict, not hide from it. [music] A coalition that can't simply say, "Let's discuss this.
" isn't confident. It's captive. Let me make this as plain as I can to the smart people.
[music] The campaign manager who resigned. Yeah, let that person go. marginalize that guy.
[applause] [applause] Try making too woke be a cancelellable offense. It's important for America to have a centerleft party and for that party to be competitive. [music] And a good first step toward that goal would be to make the voters not want to punch you in the face.
Brutal. Absolutely brutal. But effective.
And honestly, yes, a party can have brilliant plans on climate, labor, and healthcare. But if voters feel like the people representing that party actually despise them, they're going to stop listening before they even get to page one. This isn't about chasing every conservative complaint or abandoning vulnerable people.
[music] It's about having some emotional intelligence. Stop talking like HR wrote the Constitution. [music] Stop treating ordinary citizens like they're defendants on trial because moral superiority without enough votes to actually govern is just a very expensive podcast.
Conclude by saying the reason I'm so mad at the Democrats is because [music] as a voter the issues that were important to me were democracy [music] and the environment. And now there's no one to champion or defend either [music] of them because you with your aggressively anti-common sense agenda and exclusionary attitude blew it. You lost everything.
That's why the rant matters. [music] Mark isn't celebrating the right. He's angry that the center left has made itself culturally alienating [music] while still claiming to defend democracy and the environment.
Gallup found that a record high 45% of Americans identified as independents [music] in 2025 and neither party should mistake its loudest faction for the entire country. Voters don't reward intentions. They judge judgment.
[music] If Democrats can't separate compassion from chaos, inclusion from coercion, [music] and principle from performance, their opponent doesn't have to look good. It only has to look less exhausting. Mar overstates some [music] details, but his central warning still lands.
A center-left party can't save democracy by refusing to have democratic debates. It can't defend truth while making ordinary language feel forbidden, [music] and it can't win people back by treating their questions like they're immoral. So, the real question is, can Democrats rebuild a broad coalition without giving up their values?
Or has the activist [music] wing made compromise into a dirty word? Tell me what you think in the comments. Hit like if you think Mar said what party leaders were too afraid to say and subscribe because the next political collapse probably won't happen all at once.