The best part of @bungarsargon analysis is it gives the working class their own space, separate from the base of each party. The Democrats lost the white working class, and could be losing nonwhite voters, but Republicans are only renting that support themselves. https://t.co/6puPjofjLZ
— Corey Uhden (@CACoreyU) March 2, 2024
March 3, 2024
Batya Ungar-Sargon was terrific on Bill Maher's "Real Time" last Friday.
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People like Bill Maher just don't get it. It is why we are in the predicament we are in today. Good for Batya for telling them the truth. If only she could knock some sense into them.
She sounds as idiotic as the rest. The problem is economic illiteracy, which is to say interest in perverse consequences.
The problem for the parties is how to get the moron vote.
What a hack. Almost Springsteen level of hackness but not quite.
I don't like to go here, but has Maher ever had a real job in his life? Except for selling weed in college (Cornell), of course.
He has the arrogance to assume he knows what the 60% "middle" described herein should think. He might want to step back and rethink that.
The Dems are just struggle to admit that Trump's economic polices did help the working class of all races. They can't wrap their heads around these two facts: 1. He helped, his policies put more money in their pockets and lowered unemployment to historic levels and 2. he's an otherwise awful person. In the Democrat mind, because 2 is true, 1 cannot be true. The reality is that both can be and are true.
Let's see. Which party was respaonsible for putting people out of work during the pandemic? That's a tough one.
Maher the Doofus: "Do you think a trade war with China will help the working class?"
Yes, and yes! The Chi-Coms are cleaning our clock. Apple and Google approve.
Maher echoes the Democrats' ultimate argument, wrongthink. You just think that beautiful rib roast is too expensive to justify as dinner, when in reality, it's very bad for the polar bears, so you shouldn't even think about beef as food, category rightly containing only organic kohlrabi and cricket paste.
Just a talk show host who never shuts up.
Why does he have guests?
Biden has made it clear Democrats offer a future of diminished expectations that hits the less affluent hardest.
Trump not only offers an economic alternative, but he’s attacking the political legitimacy of apparatus trying to foist that regime on the less powerful.
Maher is reflexively stupid. He may start off on a non-partisan, almost reasoned argument, then the knee jerks him back to the left. This is why I won't watch him. He always disappoints.
I love it when Mahr says; "Stop shouting at me!". That has to be the punk bitchiest move of all punk bitch moves. If Mahr would take a break from sniffing his own farts he might realize that not only is she right, but what she's describing happened to UK Labour a decade before it happened here.
I'd like to hear Maher defend his claim that the working class did poorly under Trump.
I deleted the comment that was misplaced and belonged on the Isabella Rossellini post and the comment that pointed that out.
Bill - wake up.
This is not hard.
Democrats do give-aways.
Democrats give away money to buy voters.
Democrats then punish ALL WHO WORK. Democrats levi non-stop tax hikes and Punitive tax rates for all of those who work. Democrats claim to care for the working class - but that is an illusion and a lie. Wake up Bill.
On top - Democrats WASTE money like no tomorrow. (On top of that - democrats fill their private coffers with all the deals that create the shit show I just mentioned)
The Democratic Party supports an exclusive economy fueled through DEI (e.g. racism, sexism), cargo cult science (e.g. [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] global warming), conflation of the sexes, Pro-Choice religion, ethnic Springs, etc., sustained through labor and environmental arbitrage, CAIR (e.g. excess deaths, rape... rape-rapes), law-fare to extract consensus, and redistributive change (e.g. progressive prices, debt/credit).
"The problem for the parties is how to get the moron vote."
Democrats do quite well with the college-credentialed, useless-major lanyard-class voters.
Bill Maher is a clueless hivemind loyalist when it comes to his party and his party loyalty to Trump-hate.
At least he let Batya speak. That would never happen on The Soviet View or any other leftwing alphabet playstation.
She is right.
Democrats are the party of the super rich and the extreme poor. and they want it that way.
Destruction of the middle class gives corrupt democrats more power.
rh - you sound idiotic saying she sounds idiotic.
What she said is 100% true.
Economic illiteracy is threaded into all of it -(on purpose with corrupt D power over education) It goes without saying.
Good for her for having the guts to state the obvious.
That most of our political class doesn't understand this, a decade after the Tea Party, is mind-boggling.
Also--Batya Ungar-Sargon is a Tolkien name for a leader of Orcs. But a great name nonetheless.
Batya Ungar-Sargon has changed her tune since I saw her at a talk with James Taranto in NYC a couple of years ago. At the time, she seemed slightly conservative and firmly anti-Trump, as is Taranto IIRC. I wonder what happened? If I had to guess, it’s that she’s pro Israel (as am I) and isn’t happy with Biden’s Israel rhetoric. What she said to Maher was plainly true, but it was also plainly true two years ago, when she wasn’t saying it.
There it is. Maher and the other idiot to her left believe that voters, in fact do not know, and are not capable of knowing, which president has better policy ideas that serve these individual voters best. They are incapable of discerning the difference in their grocery bill, or even at the gas pump. They are too ignorant to be trusted with running their own lives, or making decisions about their children. There it is: Clueless, in all their fame & glory, convinced of their superiority.
Her frustration with these dopes is palpable, and genuine.
Maher - like most hiveminders- are incapable of giving Trump any credit.
they simply cannot do it.
With Trump we have a strong economy, low unemployment, tax relief (ooo the corrupt left hate that), energy independence...
The left hate all of those things - why the Chi Com-Corruptocrat virus was needed to take it all away.
"I love it when Mahr says; "Stop shouting at me!". That has to be the punk bitchiest move of all punk bitch moves."
Both Meade and I thought it was sexist.
Miss Saigon makes a great point. It's not about actually delivering measurable value to the middle class of working people, it's about making them feel like you have delivered for them. That is Trump's greatest talent. He knows how to blow smoke up skirt while at the same time making his marks embrace the deception.
Re my comment at 9:22, it’s also possible that she’s still anti-Trump and merely articulating the pro-Trump position. (Hard to believe Newsweek would hire a Trumper for deputy opinion editor.) I only watched the clip, not the whole segment.
Can anybody provide a link to the whole show? I've tried, and failed, to find one. I want to hear Tim Ryan's argument that Trump was bad for the middle class.
Joe Biden Is Corrupt said...
Bill Maher is a clueless hivemind loyalist when it comes to his party and his party loyalty to Trump-hate.
Bill Maher is a short, ugly, unfunny, nasty little man with an English Lit degree from Cornell. He's only someone because he's willing to get on television and bolster the lie that his fellow Lefties, who are just as nasty and have similarly useless degrees, are superior to the rest of us. Hence the punk bitch move to shut Ms. Ungar-Sargon down. He has no argument against what she's saying because deep down he know's it true and it's totally against his self-interest to do anything that might, for one second, cause the American Left to doubt itself.
Ann Althouse said...
Both Meade and I thought it was sexist.
Not my first impulse, but I would agree. It's too bad she fell for it.
Even an occasionally deviant prog like Maher can't quite get out of his bubble of contempt. 2016 only increased the contempt. In "our democracy" you don't have to take actual voters all that seriously.
But the issue now is not just economic, "are you better off." It's also the contempt itself: the 24/7 trans transformation, DEI anti-whitey assault, and foreign invasion. Prog message: we despise you and the country you built. Message received.
Bill Mahr said stop shouting because is earns over 500 K and votes Democrat, I have not seen this woman but she was absolutely spot on. I saw that the Democrats were the party of the rich and élite 10 years ago. I was free trade person, but it was not free trade. Other countries protected their industries and we did not. Trump made me realize that. I knew we lost steel and manufacturing and was sliding into service industries. I also knew NAFTA did helped that trend.
Trump very clearly had America first attitude and he spoke directly to small business owner and trade people. I like De Santis who is strong on social issues. But on these other issues he has no policies that are obvious,=. He did recognize Covid was killer of the economy and not close down.
Bill Mahr said stop shouting because is earns over 500 K and votes Democrat, I have not seen this woman but she was absolutely spot on. I saw that the Democrats were the party of the rich and élite 10 years ago. I was free trade person, but it was not free trade. Other countries protected their industries and we did not. Trump made me realize that. I knew we lost steel and manufacturing and was sliding into service industries. I also knew NAFTA did helped that trend.
Trump very clearly had America first attitude and he spoke directly to small business owner and trade people. I like De Santis who is strong on social issues. But on these other issues he has no policies that are obvious,=. He did recognize Covid was killer of the economy and not close down.
I first heard Batya on a Bari Weiss' Honestly Podcast with one other guest. Since she was from Newsweek, I figured she would lean left-I just didn't know how much.
Then she started speaking and I realized she had talked to actual deplorables, understood them, empathized with them, and was a passionate advocate for them.
Maher and his guest abstracted that these voters that should be grateful for the crumbs Biden has handed to them. One of the points she made is that this is the working class-they want to earn their way.
I'm glad she is being exposed to a wider audience.
Congress spending extra trillions on crap counts full credit towards GDP but every kitchen table economist can tell it is phony....
"Both Meade and I thought it was sexist."
She was quick to apologize, too--too quick IMHO.
I had precisely this conversation with a highly intelligent bien-pensant liberal about a month ago. Note how everything she says bounces off Maher’s head due to his cognitive dissonance.
Tucker Carlson’s crypto and not-so-crypto antisemitism started to become clear to me when he stopped having one of his former favorite talking heads, Ungar-Sargon, on regularly at exactly the same time she began wearing a prominent Star of David around her neck.
Hasn't the lady behind the counter working at Dunkin' Donuts looked at her stock portfolio? Sure her bonds might be looking a little shaky, if interest rates rise, but she just needs to go on Zillow and check out the value of her three bedroom Manhattan condo, if she is worried about her financial situation.
This is why working class people should not be allowed to vote, they are threats to democracy because they are so stupid.
If Democrats think that working class people are just going to go back, without them making some fundamental changes, they are wrong. There is an old saying," it's easier to move left on economics than right on culture."
Democrats have come out of the snob closet.
Oh looksie - just what I am talking about.
Democrats want to give away hard working money to people who spend it on luxury. This is how you destroy a nation. The desperate Dems do not care. Dems want to bribe voters.
America's $125 MILLION 'guaranteed income' giveaway: Huge rise in taxpayer-funded programs offering no-string handouts of up to $36,000 - including D.C. scheme used by mom to buy $6K luxury Miami vacation.
I found Tim Ryan's segment on Bill Maher arguing that the working class is better off under Biden than under Trump. Nothing new. Trump passed tax cuts for the rich and Biden's inflation reduction act is "reindustrializing" America with 1 trillion dollars of "spending". Workers are better off, they just don't know it.
Most leftists are technocrats. They really do believe that society should be ran by credentialed experts and that nature has endowed them with the intelligence and moral clarity to be those credentialed experts.
I find Maher to be particularly odious. Because of his degree from Cornell he presents himself as an intellectual. However, intellectuals don't produce a movie ridiculing Christianity without knowing the meaning of the word apologetics. And the clips I have seen where he argues with people over the existence of God and the validity of Christianity are embarrassing, for him. He exudes the kind of condescension that only people who are both deeply stupid and incredibly ignorant are capable of.
The best part of his analysis is that it's cope that Republicans haven't taken ownership of the working class vote for a long time. There's no reason to believe Republicans "are only renting" working-class support save being terrified that it is more permanent than mere "renting."
Bill is totally wrong here. The Democrats claim (falsely) that Trump's tax cuts were only for the rich. Those tax cuts helped middle class people, too. Also, the Democrats are mostly responsible for the recent inflation. Although Trump went along with the Covid stimulus stuff and raised the federal budget from about $4 trillion to $6 trillion a year, the Democrats kept the government at that $6 trillion annual spending level after the pandemic ended. And it's still there today. That's what is fueling inflation. Also, the Democrats are responsible for high housing prices and high mortgage interest rates.
Every Trump supporter I know says that they did better economically under Trump, until the pandemic hit, and have done worse economically with Biden in charge.
Just look at that Dave Chappelle clip on YouTube about Trump where he admits that Trump hit a chord with the middle class when he said, "I know the system is rigged...because I use the system. If you want me to pay more in taxes, change the tax laws." And who is mostly responsible for our current tax laws....Democrats.
Ryan's (and Maher's)assertion is incredibly condescending; workers are better off under Biden, they're just too stupid to realize it. It's a "messaging" problem.
Why does anybody vote for these people?
Original Mike said...
Workers are better off, they just don't know it
Those workng class hillbillies are just too stupid for the intellectual likes of Original Mike. I suppose Mike thinks inner city blacks are too stupid to know that packing their neighborhoods with illegal immigrants is good for them too.
You tell 'em Mike! But you're gonna have to yell loud from the liberal ivory tower if you expect the dumb people on the ground to hear you.
But...sorry Mike..."we loooovvveee the poorly educated". Better than empty credentialed assholes any day.
Maher is not nearly as smart as the left wants you to believe.
Original Mike:
I misinterpreted your comment / opinion.
I'll delete my previous comment when posted.
Original Mike said...
"Workers are better off, they just don't know it."
***********
Yeah. The concrete experience of seeing your grocery, gasoline and elecctricty bills soar each week is MUCH LESS IMPORTANT than being told America is "reindustrializing" to your benefit, someplace far away.
That's their story, and they're sticking to it.
9:47 Howard... You miss the point by a mile.
The middle class do not want government deliverance - or handouts - they want to be left alone and they want the democrats to stop making life miserable via punitive taxes, flooding the zone with cheap illegal labor, punitive and hyper-controlling regulations. (Communist-like hyper control freaks)
The notion that only government can deliver a good life, is a fraud - Howard.
Learn it.
joe said...
The Dems are just struggle to admit that Trump's economic polices did help the working class of all races. They can't wrap their heads around these two facts: 1. He helped, his policies put more money in their pockets and lowered unemployment to historic levels and 2. he's an otherwise awful person. In the Democrat mind, because 2 is true, 1 cannot be true. The reality is that both can be and are true.
3/3/24, 7:29 AM
Sigh... Here I go again. Small letter joe, the internet commenter, please list some proof of Trump's awfulness. You won't, I'm sure, because to actually sit down and think about it, and to attempt to list all the awfulness of Trump the person, you would only end up with a list of a petty, insignificant person's personal jealousies and shortcomings reflected against the brighter light of a greater man.
The reason why the Althouse commenters can count on me to come out of my hole and start throwing shit at you when you errantly assert your personal superiority to Trump is because: 1. it's smug, condescending bullshit that needs to be called out and punctured for the absurd arrogance it is. Not one of you here is the equal of Trump, you are inferior in every way. Don't speak ill of your betters.
2. More importantly than slapping down some delusional shithead on an internet comment board, I'm trying to show everyone that the constant complaints and disparagement of Trump's character is indicative of how much democrat party media propaganda you fucking simps ingest and internalize. Like Maguire yesterday who is recalling the angry raging Trump of the democrat party propaganda when the reality is the exact opposite. Don't be such thoughtless fucking cows! Donald Trump has been a public figure in the spotlight for over 40 years and I wager that in all those decades there is not one clip of Trump angry. You schmucks probably swallowed the Gorilla Channel story.
3. I'll add a third important reason- Trump's in the arena taking the blows, fighting the fight. It's an unfair fight, he's being attacked from all sides by allies and enemies whose actions have been infuriating, illegal, and anti-American, but you losers just have to speak out against the man anyway, tell everyone else, I don't like that guy the mob is attacking. Ask yourself why you feel you have to do that, announce to everyone that you're better than the guy getting killed. I don't care whether you love Trump or hate him, why are you telling me? The answer is that you are not telling me, you are telling the mob killing Trump "Don't do that to me! I'm not like Trump! I hate Trump too!"
That's what it is, I guess, social pressure, fear of the lynch mob. Now that I've reasoned it out a little, I suppose it's somewhat more understandable to me, but I'm still going to ridicule you losers when you do it.
joe said...
"2. he's an otherwise awful person."
Bullshit.
Trump's capital returns through tax refunds was only a mistake in retrospect with the advent of the Sino-Fauci virus and sociopolitical pandemic that was a clear and progressive burden on productivity. Diverse Democratic impeachments in handmade tales and projections only exacerbated the economic uncertainty and working class climate.
Her closing point is so right: "Does someone near the edge financially not tune in and stay aware of how the economy is affecting or likely to affect them?"
I'm not even sure that the "messaging problem" argument isn't false for foreign affairs and political harmony, too! Biden won votes in 2020 on the simple message that he would "unite the country," but no one now thinks the country is very united.
Of course, I'm not saying anything about the election, but we all were able to see how votes were counted without legally required observers in Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Philadelphia.
Why does anybody vote for these people?
Bennies for babies, for one. Political congruence, for another. The rich get richer, the impoverished are subsidized, too. Diversity, equivocation, and indoctrination (DEI) breeds adversity, dysfunction, and profit. Teddy was right.
The Cluelessness of the Man With a Face Only a Blind Mother Could Love.
So Howard was the Sucker Born in That Specific Minute.
deepelemblues said...
There's no reason to believe Republicans "are only renting" working-class support save being terrified that it is more permanent than mere "renting."
That depends on what Republicans you're talking about. Nixon and Reagan seemed to appreciate the Working and Middle class support they got, I don't think either Bush really did.
I like her name. It would be even better if followed by “Queen of Ruthenia” or “Princess-Consort to Ruprecht the Bold of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern”
Original Mike,
Shorter Tim Ryan: " "
That's a pretty good summary, right?
Salena Zito has been covering exactly what Ungar has been saying since 2016. Maher, who also believes Hillary never claimed 2016 was stolen, can claim all he wants that Trump didn’t help the working class, but they know he did. They know Trump brought back jobs and raised real income purchasing power. Just like they know they can no longer afford eggs for breakfast or a burger for lunch. Maher is out of touch, so much so that he doesn’t even know how far out of it he is.
He should just have guests who interview him.
It's like the "Midwit" meme, where the drooling yokel and the Jedi master both say "the economy is pretty terrible right now," while the furious midwit yells "the unemployment rate is X, the number of jobs are Y, the GDP is Z!!!!!"
Data: We've recently seen that illegal migrant killers from Venezuela and elsewhere have been classified as "white" in their booking documents. We know that the covid death-toll was massively inflated by counting everyone who died "with covid" as having died "of covid." We know that there are no diagnosis codes for those who have had heart attacks or strokes due to the mRNA prophylaxes.
What ties these things together: the data are corrupted at the INPUT end. There are all kinds of statistical tests to figure out if data has been manipulated en masse or if it has been misinterpreted, but there's nothing you can do if people put fraudulent data into the knowledge base.
It seems likely that the same kinds of corruptions at the input end are being made to the economic data. And if that's the case, then maybe the economy actually is in as bad shape as it seems to everyone who is actually buying, selling, making, shipping, building, cooking, painting, etc.
We all know that the inflation numbers put out by the government are not matching up with what we are seeing in our own monthly bills, and absolutely nobody has gotten a 17.5% raise since 2020. Many people in finance and banking in Manhattan have been told that bonuses and profit-sharing and all of that is going to be small to non-existent this year; commercial real estate in cities is a complete disaster; hotels are only getting by because they've been stuffed full of migrants, which brings in government money but disguises that people have cut back massively on travel; restaurants are struggling everywhere; even in the defense industry--where supposedly all that sweet Ukraine money is flowing--lower and middle-level engineers and technical people are getting laid off as management changed incentives from retaining head-count to reducing costs.
So maybe it's not that the dumb working-class people are too stupid to know how good things are, but that the dumb working-class people are more in touch with the real economy than the people who draw salaries their from government and those at the top levels of the media complex.
Someone should ask Bill what the price of eggs were at his last trip to a grocery store.
Bet it's been 20 years.
Maher and Jon Stewart are in a first place tie for who should be pictured next to the term "smug prick" in the dictionary.
"Shorter Tim Ryan: " "
That's a pretty good summary, right?"
I'd say it's worse than that.
Althouse
"Batya Ungar-Sargon was terrific"
One space cadet appreciates another space cadet. "Are you better now than you were four years ago back in 2018." (sic). Christ for a minute I had to go check my calendar and see what year it is.
loudogblog said...
"Bill is totally wrong here. The Democrats claim (falsely) that Trump's tax cuts were only for the rich. Those tax cuts helped middle class people, too."
Old Mr Trickle Down.
"Old Mr Trickle Down."
Yep. Works every time.
If you're unhappy with your employer you should seek employment elsewhere. Or learn a trade.
Maher is clueless about life outside of Manhattan "elite-class" social norms. Here in Midwest, we've many friends who parrot these same tone-deaf pronouncements about "Democrats better for people", while surrounded by the dismal outcome of enacted progressive social policies which are point-of-fact detrimental to low-income and working-class people and their children.
Chicago is a poster-child for enacted failed progressive social policies.
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