Cokie Roberts didn't go as far as some of the right-wing pundits on Fox and hate radio with their contempt of the newly elected Mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, but the contempt was there none the less. From this Sunday's This Week on ABC, Roberts pooh-poohed the notion that there's a liberal resurgence in the United States.
Her proof -- only twenty percent or so of Americans self-identify as liberals. Gee, I wonder why? We've only had the right demonizing the term liberal for the last fifty years or so. Most Americans like liberal policies whether they want to self-identify as liberal or not.
That's been changing with the rise in popularity of the likes of Elizabeth Warren and her ilk and the right and the Villagers like Cokie Roberts are none too happy about it.
KRISTOL: Look, I think, leaving aside the foreign policy side, there is a market in the Democratic Party, and you saw this with your clips of de Blasio here in New York, for a populist democrat who will run against Hillary Clinton as the former senator from Goldman Sachs, and must too close to...
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STEPHANOPOULOS: And I do want to bring that to Ben.
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ROBERTS: And then that person will lose the general election.
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SMITH: You saw who was on-stage with de Blasio, which is Bill Clinton. And I think the Clintons are intensely aware of that. I mean, that was the most either Clinton has probably talked about inequality on that stage.
ROBERTS: Yes, but that is a big danger zone for her, because he can fail and he can fail quite spectacularly. And then, you know, she's associated with him.
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STEPHANOPOULOS: … de Blasio. Yes.
NAVARRO: Can I tell you guys something. See, you're all from the Acela corridor, right, Washington, D.C., and New York. Well, guys, it's not all about you.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Not you two.
NAVARRO: No, no. We're from Montana and Miami. And we were talking before the show. And I said, Brian, do you think anybody in Montana knows who Bill de Blasio is? Because nobody in Miami does.
STEPHANOPOULOS: No, not the mayor, but about the points that he's raising and the themes that he's running on, on this inequality theme, and anti-corporatist theme, that is a theme that you have been hitting as well.
SCHWEITZER: Love to talk about it. But the point is, you're a mayor, buster, you've got to make sure the snow gets plowed. You've got to make sure the garbage gets picked up. You've got to make sure the bad guys get locked up. Mayors have to run cities. Governors have to balance budgets. Washington, D.C., they get to talk about inequality.
ROBERTS: But that's where he can fail so miserably and that's where it can be a problem. It's also true that this notion, that this resurgence of liberalism, there's a difference between populism and liberalism.
And the liberalism, you know, we never see a poll that shows more than about 20 percent of Americans identifying themselves as liberals.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, de Blasio calls it progressivism.
ROBERTS: We know what that means.
