The Democratic Socialist of America just put seven members in Congress and thinks America handed them a mandate.
Bill Maher warned Democrats they are misreading every bit of it.
And what he showed about who actually won Tuesday should terrify every DSA candidate planning for 2028.
Maher Called It Communism and the 2026 Midterm Results Prove He Is Right
On HBO's Real Time, Bill Maher sat down with writer and podcaster Coleman Hughes – after Democrats swept Congress – and refused to let his party celebrate.
"These people want communism," he told his audience.
"I mean, if you look at what they say, I try to sell this all the time, I don't think people know it. Just read what they say. It is communism. I'm not down for that."
Democrats had two years to take that warning seriously and chose not to. Tuesday's results made the case for him, and Coleman Hughes walked through why.
"The danger for Democrats is that they take this massive success as a sign that they can just go all the way," Hughes said. "They can run hyper-progressive candidates. The country's so much on their side that they can go as extreme as they want."
Tuesday says otherwise.
"If you look at the results here, the moderate Democrats did better than the DSA-backed progressive candidates across the board," Hughes added.
"El-Sayed in Michigan did significantly worse than most of the moderate Democrats in that state. And that's just one example. This was a pattern we saw. So the real lesson for Democrats is Americans prefer moderate Democrats."
Abdul El-Sayed – the DSA-backed Senate candidate in Michigan – underperformed establishment Democrats in his own state while running on abolishing ICE and ending all deportations.
"To me, one of the great results of this election was it gave moderates a big stick to beat them off with," Maher told the audience. "Who has the guts to say this is the Democratic Party? You are doing a whole different thing."
Nobody in Democratic leadership has answered that question. If they do not, 2028 hands the DSA an even bigger opening than Tuesday just did.
The DSA Plan to Abolish the Senate Is Exactly What Maher Is Warning Democrats About
The DSA earned the label. Their co-chair confirmed the platform on Fox News in July, and nothing about it was ambiguous.
Abolish the Senate?
"True."
Replace the presidency and Supreme Court?
"Yep."
Abolish ICE, end all deportations, open the borders, abolish prisons?
Also yes.
Maher separated what the government already does – Medicare, Social Security, the Marine Corps – from what the DSA is actually pushing. He called the first group appropriate socialism. The DSA is selling something else.
"You just read what they say in their manifesto," Maher told the audience. "They want the government to take over everything. That is a prescription for failure."
Chuck Schumer dodged a reporter's direct question about whether the DSA belongs in the Democrat Party and would not even address their demand to abolish the Senate.
John Fetterman – who wrote publicly, "Why can't Dems call out the DSA?" – is the only Democrat who actually did.
The last time socialists held seats in Congress simultaneously was World War I – Victor Berger and Meyer London as members of the Socialist Party. Democrats just did it again, except this time they came back with their largest House majority in decades.
The DSA now has 120,000 members, the mayors of New York City and Los Angeles, and seven seats in the new Congress – which makes Maher's warning less of a prediction and more of a timetable.
Maher handed the Democrat Party something it will not use. On HBO, in front of millions, he called the far Left communists and walked through Tuesday's results to show that wherever DSA candidates ran, moderate Democrats out ran them.
Schumer will not act on it, Jeffries will not act on it, and the moderate Democrats who just demonstrated the point on Tuesday will pretend it does not apply to them.
The DSA will treat Tuesday's results as a green light, push further Left, and return in 2028 with a longer list of demands.
At some point, the Democratic Party will have to decide whether Maher is right. Every election they spend ignoring him makes that reckoning more expensive.
Sources:
- Julia Bonavita, "Bill Maher Warns Democrats That Some on Far Left Want 'Communism' After Midterm Sweep," Fox News, November 7, 2026.
- Hannah Brennan, "House Dems Dodge Questions on Socialist Agenda That Threatens to Abolish Key Institutions," Fox News, July 18, 2026.
- Hanna Panreck, "DSA Co-Chair Mocked for Proudly Confirming Socialists Want to Abolish the Senate, National Borders, Prisons," Fox News, July 27, 2026.
- Peter Pinedo, "Bernie Sanders, DSA Reveal Demands for Dem Party After Socialists Sweep New York Elections," Fox News, June 25, 2026.
- Alex Miller, "Republicans Sound Alarm Over Far-Left Group's Push to Transform America Into 'Cuban Dictatorship,'" Fox News, July 22, 2026.
- Virginia Grace McKinnon, "Democratic Socialists Reveal Their Plan to Reshape America," Daily Signal, July 27, 2026.