Well, I'll agree with him to this extent:

Parties need to be concerned with choosing candidates that are at least a baseline level of acceptable to the whole range of their usual voters.

Republicans have a big problem with that, because the biggest single segment of their base (at least 40%, probably more) wants Trump, and will be (pretty legitimately) upset / mutinous if the party tries to foist someone else on them. The rest of the party might hate Trump, but they have utterly failed to present an alternative that appeals to a bigger segment of their base than Trump's 40+%.

On the other side of the coin, the Democrats have issues with this also. Not as severe, but Hillary has a really high proportion of haters / mistrust even among registered Democrats.

Assuming Trump and Hillary are the final candidates, I hope that however it turns out there is a huge amount of blowback to *both* parties in terms of drastically higher numbers of people voting for 3rd party "also rans", write ins, or people otherwise clearly voicing their displeasure. Both parties have to do better than this pathetic set of choices.

"Videogamer who finally lands a date with a real woman..."

I just thought that term was weird - "videogamer." Sounds like a half-assed attempt to take a shot at...I'm not sure who. The youth? I play video games, I'm 36. Don't wanna brag, but I've seen some a poon or two, in my day...

It's a joke based on the stereotypical image of the gamer nerd...

And it's been done plenty of times before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F51LWMh7X2k

Seriously, there are enough thin skinned people in the world already.

Oh, settle down. It's a comedy bit.

A joke you say? I must look into this comedy thing. I was all ready to buy some pitchforks and demand Maher's head.

They have to run with him...they poisoned their own party with hate...it's their punishment.

The party has left its base. That is why Trump and Cruz exist.

I Think more people vote against Hillary then vote against Trump.

yeah, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't call it out.

It's a lazy stereotype and honestly, these days it's about as funny, original and accurate as saying "hah! women! everyone knows they can't play sports!"

If you're going to pull out a lazy stereotype at least be funny with it.

The GOP never to this point kowtowed to that part of the base anyway until they decided to attempt to harness the energy of that faction to the point that this faction has a stranglehold of the party, and yet are wholly ignorant on the issues. We're talking about people who hold up signs that read "Keep your government hands off my medicare" caliber people. Or people who think Obama isn't an American. Or people who think Obama is "a complete socialized take over of health care". Stuff like that which is so obviously untrue, it's laughable.

And I want to be clear. I'm not accusing the right of having a monopoly on stupid people in their base. There's PLENTY of stupid liberals. The difference is the Democratic party is doing a far better job of keeping their idiots supporting them without enacting what those idiots want or succumbing to their idiocy.

Here's proof - how many times do you see Democratic leaders constantly say crap like George W. Bush is a war criminal for Iraq? Name a Democratic presidential candidate who actually has said over and over again that Ted Cruz isn't a US citizen? Donald Trump, the current GOP frontrunner, over and over again insists Obama isn't a US citizen, as have many many Republican Congressmen.

When the GOP signed the deal with the devil so to speak by trying to co-opt the Tea Party movement, this was the inevitable outcome. The Tea Party has been hijacked twice by my count because the people within it are so incredibly ignorant, they don't seem to realize what they stand for. It was Libertarian in the beginning both socially and economically. Then it got hijacked to become more socially conservative and economically conservative. Now, it's been hijacked by Donald Trump, who nobody actually even knows what he is socially or economically at this point overall.

Why did this happen? Because GOP support is so contaminated and dominated by so much ignorance, you can have a TV personality say a bunch of stupid crap they want to hear but is certifiably absurd, that he can become the front runner. Building a wall to keep the Mexicans out, no matter how you feel about illegal immigration as far as ideals go, is simply not a practical solution to stop illegal immigration. You can't make Mexico pay for a wall even if you built it. Obama wasn't born in Kenya. Replacing Obamacare with something "terrific" is NOT a policy proposal; it's non-specific anti-Obama BS to make people who hate Obama love you. He could replace it with "Trumpcare" which could be basically Obamacare, and that could be "something terrific" for all you know.

Trump and Cruz don't exist without the Tea Party, and the Tea Party wouldn't be a thing if the GOP didn't decide to eventually attempt to galvanize it. Well, mission accomplished, but you're never going to get the support of the growing minority segments of the population. You've forfeited the support of moderates like myself, too. And young people by enlarge are rejecting this version of the GOP big time. Women are increasingly rejecting it, too.

Your second point... Umm, big fat no.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/21/the-last-presidential-candidate-who-was-as-unpopular-as-donald-trump-david-duke/

First off, he's not talking about everyone who plays video games. He's talking about people who ONLY play video games to the point that they're socially maladjusted. Big difference.

And even if he was talking about the geekier video gaming crowd, I don't even understand why it even registered on your radar as insulting. If you're a group that's actually discriminated against broadly, fine, but nerds? In this day and age of Mark Zuckerburg and Bill Gates? Really?!

It reminds me of this Louie CK bit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AbxHo9ybD0

"You can't even hurt my feelings."

Us poor nerds these days, with our solid paying upper middle class jobs and even higher, with college degrees! Pity us!

Just have the ability to laugh at yourself from time to time. Trust me, it's all going to be ok.

In order to be insulted, I'd actually have to care and it's been a long time since I even remotely considered giving 4/5s of a fuck what Maher has to say.

The difference is Louie CK is actually funny. He does witty and original stuff and can make even something as horrible as child abuse screamingly funny (all without picking on the victims).

He's also self-deprecating, which is a trait common to most of my favourite comedians.

Whereas Maher is a self-aggrandizing knob end, who happens to at least be on the sane side of the political spectrum.

I'm happy to laugh at myself, but only when the material is actually funny.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Dems shouldn't get cocky. This election is far from in the bag.

I think that if it did become down between Trump and Clinton Trump will bring up all the Clinton negatives over the last 25 years.

From the 47 suspicious dead bodies to drug running as Governor to pedophile Bill and all that entails.

The media will clearly cover for the left but Trump would be able to cut through it.

The media pokes fun at Democrats but demonizes Republicans.
http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5709a92252bcd05b008bbc36-1500-1125/fakebostonglobetrumpfrontpage.png

http://15130-presscdn-0-89.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/CfZpQU0UkAAQyIN.jpg

Pedophile Bill Clinton?! Based on what? Dead bodies?!

While you are completely making things up, Trump said publicly that most Mexicans coming over the border are drug dealers and rapists. I wonder when faced with a choice between them, which negatives will Latinos focus on. Or if you are a woman, will you focus on Bill Clinton's negatives or the actual GOP candidate saying only the woman should be punished for getting an abortion?

If you honestly believe the BS you are shoveling, prepare to be shocked when Trump gets crushed should he get nominated.

The GOP has had problems since at least 2008, and they keep building up and up on the same issues.

The problem is the party is sort of stuck, and the split that it desperately needs would hurt it. Fox and the right wing talk radio aren't really on the classic GOP (of the Reagan and prior eras) side. Fox and talk radio and the social media that surround their viewers/listeners has shifted very far to the right. So much so that Reagan would in no way win the nomination today. Today's far right Republican party sees governing, and negotiating with the other side of the isle as a weakness. They don't want a representative democracy, they want a theocratic dictatorship while calling it democracy.

A party split is needed though. They need to split the two elements of the party from one another. Let the Tea Party form on it's own and let Fox and talk radio follow it. They'll find that the mass media is still far more central and closer to them than what they've been led to believe via Fox and talk radio, who accuses it of being far liberal. The party would be hurt for a couple election cycles, but as people start to wise up, they'd come back to the GOP from the Tea Party and the Tea Party would eventually become a footnote. As it stands, leaving the Tea Party elements in it will destroy the party in full.

The GOP keeps trying too hard to appeal to the far right element of it self and abandoning the central core. They are appealing to the hate mongers and bigots rather than the compassionate conservatism that Reagan at least pretended to have (though didn't).

I still think that McCain made two major errors when he ran. First was stepping too far to the right of where his voting record was while running. Had he stuck to what his record showed, he would have stood a semi-decent chance of winning... had he not made a second major fatal error and that was putting a batshit crazy, way far to the right, person as his VP candidate. Even if she wasn't crazy, or had a brain, she was far too the right for most Americans. Now, even if he had stayed true to himself, and used a centrist VP candidate he may have lost as Obama tapped into something... and I don't think anybody saw that coming.

Then the GOP embraced the hatred of Obama too much. Obama could cure cancer and they'd decry it as a bad thing, he can do nothing right so far as they are concerned. They should have toned that down. They also messed up the messaging on Obamacare. They should have embraced it, noting that they invented it, and tried to pass the same thing into federal law 3 times prior, twice under Bush Sr and once under Clinton and each time it was the Democrats who wouldn't take it. Showing how the Democrats embraced your idea would have shown, "look, we were right the whole time. We could have had this ages ago but the Democrats said 'No' and now they realized we were right." Rather than take the high rode though, they rode the crazy train of hate, and pushed more and more to become obstructionist.

Now side note, obstructionism works. Many Republican and non-affiliated voters, blame Obama for the lack of progress, though none of his ideas really got to be tried since they were bound and determined to obstruct everything and have done everything they can to ruin the Nation so they can blame him for the state of affairs, knowing full well most Americans don't know Congress controls the purse and pretty much all things related to it.

Anyhow, then Romney too shifted far to the right of what his record as Governor showed, and again went with somebody who's too far to the right (who oddly enough is now seen as too establishment by the Tea Party element) as a VP candidate... though Obama's popularity, and the popularity of Obamacare would have made it hard to overcome... though again, if the GOP had handled Obamacare properly, as their invention, then Romney would have ridden that strongly as his state used the previous Republican led efforts to create the same program, to do so on the state level. He could have ridden the fact his state had it before anyone else... again they let hatred of Obama override the logical move.

The party in the end is too afraid to do what it needs to do. It's too afraid of the short term losses and doesn't realize that the far goal is obtainable.

The problem is the GOP as constructed is already the minority party at least nationally. Since 1992, they've won the popular vote once in presidential races. Demographics favor voting blocs that track for Democrats. If the GOP splits into a moderate party and Tea Party, that is the effective end of the GOP, and the Tea Party would also be politically castrated. The people who built the Tea Party understood that the way to gain influence was as an insurrection within the GOP, not as a third party. For the Tea Party, it was a smart move. They've gained massive influence nationally compared to their numbers. But it is a cancer to the Republican Party that they've proven they're completely unable to control.

Every single problem or mistake you've listed is all due to one common thread - there are too many supporters of the GOP that are too radical. Why did McCain pick Palin? He was too moderate for the base, so he needed to up his conservative street creds, and he needed a minority splash to combat Obama being black. Combine those two, and you can't get Olympia Snow or Susan Collins, but you could get to either of them if you drop the "needs to be hard right conservative". Why did McCain move to the right in the first place? The base demanded it.

Why can't Obama do anything right according to no one in the GOP pretty much? Base is too rabid and demands it. Why did Romney shift to the right? Base.

You can blame the party for catering to the extreme too much, but the problem is the extreme makes up so much of what they have for support, they have no choice. Tea Party organizers astutely realized that, radicalized their supporters to threaten to not turn out for moderate candidates, and even to primary challenge even guys like Eric Cantor for compromising too much.

I mean this sincerely - the GOP party leadership is not at fault. Blame the original Tea Party organizers. Blame Tea Party candidates. Blame the media environment for increasingly favoring more radical candidates by creating partisan bubbles to carefully dissimenate information that suites partisan goals. Blame an electorate too stupid and/or apathetic to understand that neither conservative nor liberal ideology solves every problem (which is so painfully obvious that I can prove that in about 5 minutes), so you need to learn about each issue, and use those ideologies to form options, and then choose the one that's more likely to work, regardless of its ideological foundation. Yeah, that actually takes work and critical thinking, but you'll actually solve problems!

But that ain't happening, so it's time to sit back and watch the slow decline of the GOP as it eats itself alive, and Democrats will increasingly win because we'll keep being presented more with GOP candidates a majority of candidates can't stomach, and hope like heck the Democrats nominate at least someone semi-competent for office, because that's pretty much all we got.

I couldn't stomach voting for a single GOP nominee for president since George Bush, Sr. It's gotten worse because I couldn't stomach my choice for VA governor last year either. I had to choose between a batsh1t insane Cuccinelli or political sleeze in McAulliffe, and it was both the fastest choice to make for me, yet I was the least happy about having to make it for McAulliffe.

And just when I thought you couldn't get much lower from the GOP, they're on the doorstep of nominating Trump or Cruz for president of the entire country.