During his closing monologue on Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher stated that the Democratic socialism pushed by New York City Mayor-Elect Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani (D), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) doesn’t actually work and is far more radical than traditional Democratic Party policies, and singled out the failures of an attempt single-payer healthcare system in Sanders’ home state of Vermont.
While talking about socialism, Maher said, “Democratic socialism is like a dating profile. Things look great, until you meet up in the real world. For example, Bernie Sanders, his big thing was always bringing single-payer health care to our country of 340 million. But when liberal, tie-dyed Vermont tried to do it for a population of 626,000, it collapsed like that poor f*ck in the Oval Office last week.”
He continued, “Bernie, AOC, Mamdani are not Democrats. They’ll be the first to tell you that. They’re Democratic socialists, and that’s a very different thing. And I don’t think people know that yet. I don’t think people realize we already have a lot of socialism…much of it appropriate to soften the edges of capitalism, but the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) are radicals about this concept.”
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