Bill Maher 'not thrilled' with Hillary 2016

As enthusiastic about the Democratic Party as HBO "Real Time" host Bill Maher can seem, he's not tickled by the thought of Hillary Clinton as the next president.

AP Photo/HBO, Janet Van Ham

Asked about the possibility, Maher told The Atlantic (emphasis added):

I am not afraid of Hillary as president. She is really smart and very capable obviously. Unfortunately the Clintons are centrist Democrats, they are corporate, centrist Democrats. They are in a lot of ways part of the problem, a lot of our problems that we face now are because in the ‘90s the Democrat Party gave up on being the liberal party. And a lot of that was Bill Clinton. Glass-Steagall was repealed under Clinton. [Robert] Rubin was the treasury secretary and you were left with a country that did not have a left party. And we still don't. We have a far-right party, and we basically have a center-right party. And we don't have a left-wing party. That is why things like Obamacare are really Republican plans that were repackaged—and as soon as Obama put his name on it, they didn't like it, but it is really Bob Dole's old plan. Or cap and trade! Cap and trade is somehow the Democratic response to global warming now, whereas 20 years ago, that was George [H.W.] Bush's plan to fight acid rain. So you know I am not thrilled with a Clinton presidency, but as a comedian, yes, Hillary and Bill Clinton are always going to be good for comedy.

Maher's preference, he said, is Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).