Maher: Democrats need to ‘look in the mirror’ after Harris loss

Comedian and TV personality Bill Maher said that Democrats need to “look in the mirror” after Vice President Harris lost the 2024 White House election to President-elect Trump this week. 

“My message to the losers: losers look in the mirror,” Maher said during his “Real Time” monologue on HBO Friday night. “No? Well, maybe you should. Sorry. Well, that’s my feeling. Losers look in the mirror.”

“For months Democrats have been saying, ‘How is this even close?’ And they’re right, it wasn’t,” he said. “They could not conceive of a second Trump term, but they should’ve. When does America ever turn down seconds?

Maher said Trump “ran the table” after managing to secure all seven battleground states. The president-elect improved across most demographics in this election and was able to make inroads in some Democratic strongholds, something Maher, a frequent Trump critic, acknowledged Friday night.  

“He has an amazing coalition,” he said. “He kept the old crowd that likes him. He got a lot of new voters. He got a lot of people who say they just want to see what he'll do.” 

After the election, some in the Democratic camp started to wrestle about how the party should move forward and go about messaging and strategy. Some have argued the party has left the working class behind while others say it has moved too far to the left, arguing it did not appeal well to more moderate swing state voters. 

Maher said in late September that he was confident Trump would end up losing to Harris come November, arguing “I’m not even worried about it."

The comedian also said this week that Harris failed to make a “good” case for herself and did not run a "flawless" campaign.

"I think America is perfectly willing to elect a woman. They just didn't like the last two that were put up,” Maher said while later adding that the vice president “didn't make a good case." "She didn't denounce the past stuff that people didn't like. She just tried to ignore it.”