Stephen A. Smith’s blistering takes aren’t just confined to ESPN.
The sports broadcaster swung by “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Friday, turning his incisive invective on the Democratic Party. While granular campaign analysis and four years of soul-searching are in the future for the DNC’s lanyard set, Smith says the reason Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump is simple: voters lost faith that the party could make any meaningful change.
“What voter out there can look at the Democratic Party and say, ‘There’s a voice for us, somebody who speaks for us,’ that goes up on Capitol Hill and fights the fights that we want them fighting on our behalf?” Smith wondered. “They didn’t do that, and that’s why their behinds are home, and that man is back in the White House.”
Smith turned to the subject of Trump’s executive order blitz. He said he was aware that many of Trump’s first-week fiats would fail in the courts but noted how effective the quick movement is from a messaging perspective.
“He’s saying, ‘I kept my promise.’ Then you turn around and look at the left and you say, ‘What promises did you keep?'” Smith wondered.
Elsewhere in the multi-minute monologue, Smith said that the Democrats focused too much on identity politics to the detriment of all other issues. Smith cited trans rights advocacy in particular as a campaign plank that required outsized energy.
“The Democratic party came across as if that was more of a priority than other issues,” Smith said.
Smith sang a slightly different tune during the show’s “Overtime” segment, pointing to Republican animus toward DEI initiatives as misguided. He cited the NFL’s Rooney Rule, which requires football teams to interview minority candidates for open coaching positions.
“What the hell was the policy necessary for to begin with?” Smith asked, rhetorically. “We had a power structure in the United States of America that was inequitable. They didn’t give a damn and somebody had to compel them to do the right thing.”
Watch Smith’s message to Democrats below:
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