Bill Maher’s Rich Man’s Red Scare.

Bill Maher may insist that he has not become a Republican. Perhaps he has not. Labels are less important than the work a person performs. At this moment, Maher is performing one of the Republican Party’s most valuable services. He is taking Trump’s red scare, cleaning off the partisan fingerprints and presenting it to liberal viewers as reluctant common sense. The tragedy is not that Maher criticized the DSA. The DSA’s new platform practically begs to be criticized. The tragedy is that a man who once recognized the danger of authoritarian power now appears more frightened by the possibility of losing some money than by the people who already possess the machinery of government. He did not prove that the Democratic Party has become communist. He proved that when wealthy liberals begin to feel personally threatened by economic reform, some of them will discover astonishing amounts of patience for the authoritarian right.