Bill Maher Warns Democrats Their Midterm Win Will Be a 'False Positive'

Bill Maher told Democrats on Friday's Real Time that the midterm win he expects them to score will be a misleading signal, and that the party should push the Democratic Socialists of America out of its ranks.

The HBO host, a longtime critic of the Democratic left, made the case less than two weeks before Election Day. Democrats lead the generic congressional ballot by 8.5 points in PolitiKool's polling average, 48.9 percent to 40.4 percent.

"I think a lot of Democrats are getting a false positive," Maher said. "Like, I think they're going to kick ass. And they're going to think, oh, the people want what we were giving them back in 20-- and they don't."

Bill Maher Says the Far Left Is the GOP's Best Asset

Maher said that apart from what he called election "cheating," the one thing Republicans have going for them is that "the Democrats still really are not renouncing their far left. I don't hear it."

"Every election, I think, is always the first battle in the next election," he said. "So this 2026 election is the first battle in the 2028 election."

He then turned to the DSA. "It's not socialism. It is communism," Maher said, citing what he called the group's own words. He did not propose a mechanism for separating the party from it. He framed it as a wish: "I would love to hear somebody say, you know, you are not the Democratic Party. You are free to do this, but you should take it somewhere else and be your own party."

PolitiFact found in July that while the group has members with communist views, the DSA itself is not a communist organization. Ted Henken, a Baruch College sociologist, told the fact-checker that its platform "is certainly radical in its call for reforms, but it is not revolutionary in the sense of a communist takeover of the means of production and the abolition of capitalism."

Andy Beshear Declines to Disown the DSA

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat weighing a 2028 presidential run, answered by pointing at the White House. He said "there's only one current elected official in all of America" who is "taking government stakes in the means of production, and that's Donald J. Trump." The administration took a roughly 10 percent stake in Intel in August 2025, converting federal grants into shares, Bloomberg reported.

"But again, that's not really answering the question," Maher replied.

Beshear then drew a line of his own. "So, Bill, socialism is a failed experiment. It's not some big, bold, new idea," he said, before adding: "I come at issues like hunger or health care in a very different place than DSA candidates, but we both want people to be able to see a doctor when they're sick."

DSA Candidates Gain Ground in 2026

The group has had a strong primary season. DSA candidates have toppled at least three incumbent House Democrats this year, Fox News reported.

Hilton also predicted a DSA win in Los Angeles. "We're going to have a DSA mayor here in Los Angeles," he said, naming Nithya Raman as the candidate he expects to win.

Raman, a Los Angeles City Council member who was elected to the council with DSA support, faces Mayor Karen Bass, a fellow Democrat, in the November 3 runoff. She entered the race late, after having endorsed Bass for reelection. Bass received under 35 percent of the vote in early returns from the June 2 primary, which sent the race to a runoff, the Associated Press reported. The Los Angeles chapter of the DSA has since endorsed her mayoral bid, Bloomberg Government reported in September.

What Polling Shows About Socialism

A Gallup poll conducted August 1–20, 2025, found 66 percent of Democrats viewed socialism positively, compared with 42 percent who said the same of capitalism. Among all U.S. adults, 54 percent rated capitalism positively and 39 percent socialism.

The shift is sharpest among younger Democrats. Just 31 percent of Democrats under 50 viewed capitalism positively in 2025, down from 54 percent in 2010, Fortune reported from the Gallup data.

But the party's image overall remains weak. Democrats hold a 40.1 percent favorable rating against 57.4 percent unfavorable in PolitiKool's polling average—though Republicans fare worse, at 36.3 percent favorable in PolitiKool's average.

What Happens Next

November 3 will test both Maher's prediction and the DSA's reach, in House races across the country and in the Los Angeles mayor's race. Beshear said the 2028 nominee should be "a Democratic governor," but whether any Democrat with national ambitions will make the break Maher asked for remains an open question.