Bill Maher says polls prove Democrats ‘pandering’ to minority voters isn’t working, as he slams Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer for donning traditional Ghanaian Kente cloth outfits

Bill Maher warned Democrats that they must focus on class and education rather than race if they want to win the presidential election.

The comedian spent eight minutes of his Real Time show imploring them to “move on” with “identity politics” because it was losing them voters.

Polls show that support for Democrats among non-white Americans is at its lowest level in 60 years, and Donald Trump is doing much better with them than in 2020.

Maher said this showed that Americans were more complicated in their identities than ever before and “no longer fit into neat boxes.”

‘I don’t know who will win the next election. And outdated racist pandering is one of the reasons Democrats are losing elections,” he said on his HBO show.

“When Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi put on Kente clothes, I don’t think it won them one vote because of their powerful emotional ties to Ghana.”

Maher argued that Democrats didn’t realize this yet because they were still appealing to racial groups and assumed they had them in their pocket.

“You’re still sorting people into these fixed categories,” he said.

“Democrats need to get the memo that you can’t win elections anymore by automatically assuming you’re going to get every voter who isn’t (white men).”

Maher, who often disagrees with Democratic positions but wants Trump to lose the election, said Joe Biden’s party needed to refocus on other issues.

“The more you obsess over identity, the more you ignore the bread and butter issues that win and lose elections,” he said.

‘The real problem is class, not race. And the real gap is the diploma gap. And the real future of the party and perhaps of democracy depends on Democrats figuring that out.”

Recent polls indicate a shift of Black and Hispanic voters toward Republicans, eroding a coalition that propelled Biden to the White House in 2020.

It also showed that the voting gap between Americans with a college education and those with only a high school education was growing, which was Maher’s “degree gap” point.

A New York Times/Siena College poll earlier this month showed Biden leading Trump only 56 percent to 44 percent among nonwhite Americans.

Biden won this group by almost 50 percent in 2020, indicating a huge shift in the past three years.

The president still had a big lead, with 71 to 20 percent of Black voters asking who they would support in a head-to-head race, compared to 87 percent in 2020.

But Trump was ahead 45 to 43 percent among Hispanics after Biden took that demographic group from 65 to 32 in 2020.

The same poll found that college-educated voters favored Biden 55 to 38, and reversed that support 36 to 55 for those without a college education.

The percentage of party affiliation for Democrats more broadly has also eroded over the past three years, dropping 20 percent among black voters.

According to a Gallup poll, two-thirds of black adults identify as Democratic or lean that way, and only 19 percent identify as Republican or lean that way.

But this lead was 77 to 11 percent in 2020, when the black vote won states like Georgia for Biden.

The Democratic lead among Hispanic voters also fell from 28 percent in 2020 to just 12 percent, and now stands at 47 to 35 percent.

Much of the racial shift is attributed to black and Hispanic voters being more conservative on many issues than whites.

Non-white voters who have long held more conservative views and are now shifting their votes to reflect their ideology.

Positions on abortion and the size of government make these communities more natural Republicans, and many more describe themselves as conservative.

For years they have supported the Democrats no matter what, because of civil rights and immigration policies – but as time goes by they become less important.

In 2012, three-quarters of black self-identified conservatives voted for Democrats or described themselves as in favor of that party – now that number is less than half.

However, the same Gallup poll found that the educational gaps became increasingly decisive over time, from very small before 2013 to huge now.

In 1999, Democrats had a 14 percent lead among non-college-educated voters, which increased to 14 percent Republicans by 2023.

At the same time, the Democratic advantage among voters with a postgraduate degree rose from eight to 29 percent, and from minus eight to plus five percent among those with at least a bachelor’s degree.

Maher read quotes from minority celebrities like Idris Elba, Raven-Symoné and Morgan Freeman who said they did not want to be identified by their race.

He also pointed out that the US is less racially divided, as 20 percent of marriages were interracial, and there was a 276 percent increase in the number of people describing themselves as mixed race.

To humorously illustrate his point, he listed people who found themselves in positions inconsistent with what would be expected of their race.

These included Beyonce’s number one country music hit and Lil Nas, who was both black and gay, winning a country music award.

Two-thirds of Republican voters support the legalization of marijuana. And 41 percent of Democrats own or live with someone who owns a gun. Ms. Marvel is Pakistani and the winner of the last two NBA dunk contests is white,” he said.

Maher pointed out that Latinos made up half of the Border Patrol, RuPaul has a ranch in Wyoming that does fracking, and the leader of the Proud Boys was an Afro-Cuban named Enrique Tarrio.

He added that Caitlyn Jenner was a pro-Trump trans woman who supported a ban on trans athletes competing in women’s sports.

‘Extreme left-wing liberals live in an old paradigm. Americans no longer fit into neat boxes,” he said.

“In America now you can be many things at once and that’s a good thing, even if it’s really stupid.”