Bill Maher calls Francesca Hong ‘Debbie Downer’ for wanting to get rid of Thanksgiving

Even Bill Maher, who has spent a decade auditioning for the role of last sane liberal in America, couldn't stomach this one. A gubernatorial candidate in Wisconsin who wants to get rid of Thanksgiving is not a strawman we invented. That's the actual platform. And it took a guy who smokes weed on television and once compared religion to a mental illness to be the one to say, out loud, that maybe torching a 400-year-old harvest holiday over its colonial baggage is a bad way to win over voters who just want to watch football and eat too much stuffing.

This is the tell, honestly. Democrats keep losing working people not because those voters are dumb or racist or whatever the exit-poll explainer of the week claims, but because the party keeps nominating people who treat ordinary American life as a crime scene. Thanksgiving isn't a policy issue. It's turkey, family, a nap on the couch, maybe a fight about politics you regret by dessert. Trying to turn it into a referendum on settler colonialism is the kind of thing that sounds smart in a grad seminar and radioactive at a kitchen table in Green Bay.

Maher's "Debbie Downer" line stings because it's accurate. There is a strain of progressive politics that cannot let anyone enjoy anything without first issuing a permission slip full of caveats. People are tired. They had four years of being told their car, their steak, their gas stove and now their holiday are moral failures. Hong may think she's being brave. Most voters will just think she's no fun, and in a swing state, that might be the more fatal charge.