Democrats can’t beat President Trump in the general election in November 2020 if they are not willing to go low, to play dirty, says HBO show host Bill Maher. To hear Maher talk, you’d think the Democrats are not already doing just that.

Maher spent some time laying out his case to the Democrats by insisting that they stop talking about getting tough and actually doing it. He wants them to stop abiding by Michelle Obama’s mantra of “When they go low, we go high.” That’s amusing to me since I never saw them actually doing that, but maybe that’s just me. He said Democrats have been bringing “a notion to a gunfight.”

“Ever since Democrats lost the 2016 election there’s been a backlash to the ‘when they go low, we go high’ approach,” Maher said on Friday’s “Real Time.” “But they never say what exactly it is we should do, just, ‘We gotta fight dirty.’ OK. But how?” After recommending Democrats enlist “some reptilian scumbags of our own” to match the efforts of Republican “dirty tricksters on their payroll” — like Roger Stone, Karl Rove and Rudy Giuliani, Maher said — he then suggested focusing on Trump’s mental state.

Maher goes on to say Democrats need Michael Avenatti as their designated reptilian scumbag but he’s not available right now, being in jail and all. So, to encourage Democrats, Maher created a campaign-style ad as a template for them. He uses alleged Deep Fake ads from Team Trump as an example of what Democrats should do. He particularly is interested in running a fake pee tape, because, of course, he is.

It’s a crude and obnoxious segment of the show but it is standard stuff. I’ll note that the King of Never Trumpers, Rick Wilson, was a panel guest. He found it hilarious, if his laughter was genuine.

The focus on Trump as a “neurological mess” played out with a montage of video clips of Trump mumbling, slurring words, and using incomplete sentences. But wait, who does that sound like to at least half of the country? That’s right – good old Uncle Joe. No one can compete with Joe Biden in that category.

The ad showed the president mumbling and stumbling over his words, recalling how those who’ve known Trump in the past have said he’s “not the same person he was” and another saying he “may be having small strokes.” It ends with footage of the POTUS boarding Air Force One with toilet paper stuck on his shoe. “No one wishes ill health on the president, but a country needs a leader to be there… a leader who is ALL there,” the ad concluded. Maher added, “Make that go viral, would ya, because Democrats should really be running that for real.”

The easiest argument to be made against Maher’s accusation that Democrats aren’t fighting dirty is that little matter of impeachment. Where has Maher been? From the day Trump was inaugurated, even before that day, there have been Democrats crying out for his impeachment. This circus has been playing out for over three years. It’s still not over. Impeachment is a political exercise, not a legal one, and it is the ultimate political action. The impeachment process has been seen as a sham because it is being done on strictly partisan lines. Democrats hung their hats on impeaching and removing Trump from office in order to gain revenge over the 2016 election results. They are determined that Trump not win re-election. It is backfiring on them, though. Throughout all this time, all the years of Trump’s first term in office, his record is solid and he can legitimately claim historic victories. One of his biggest victories to date was done on a bipartisan basis – the USMCA trade agreement. That is a bitter pill for Democrats to swallow.

Maher admits that Trump has a loyal army of supporters that will likely carry him to re-election. Bernie, not the moderates running in the primary, has the same.

Maher began the show’s panel segment by saying he’s gone “back and forth” between progressives Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., but argued that moderates like former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., can “win more easily.” “I’ll tell you why Bernie Sanders is attractive to me now because he’s the only Democrat who, like Trump, has an army, who when it gets to this other level, he’s got a bunch of bad— motherf—–s who will get in the streets,” Maher said.

He’s right about that and the BernieBros are still angry over the raw deal Bernie got in 2016 from the DNC. However, Trump will get the undecided Independent voters in a potential Trump – Sanders match-up in the general election. I don’t see Independents going to a far-left socialist over a populist on the right who is overseeing a strong economy. Bernie’s policies would be an economic disaster.

There is plenty of mud to go around. There always is in politics, especially in national politics and presidential elections. To say that Democrats are playing nice is absurd, though. And, what scares Democrats most is that Trump is the biggest streetfighter of anyone.