HBO Host Has a Job for You to Do to Help Fix This
As only John Oliver can, the HBO “Last Week Tonight” host on Sunday took on and actually explained America’s ridiculous presidential primary and caucus system. Noting that “almost every part of this process is difficult to defend,” the British pundit calls this system an “erratic clusterf*ck,” and “the electoral foreplay we’ve been engaging in since February that will culminate in the mass balloon ejaculations of this summer’s conventions.”
Oliver opened by calling Donald Trump “America’s walking talking brush fire” and Hillary Clinton “the woman who exhibits too much or too little of every human quality depending on who you ask.”
Acknowledging that political parties are”basically private clubs—they can set their own rules,” he says the system “clearly needs wholesale reforms.”
“Any competition should have clear rules,” he adds. “You don’t get to the end of a football game and go, ‘OK, who found the most eggs?'”
“The problem is there’s no guarantee that the candidate with the most votes will win next time,” he said. “And if they don’t, all the flaws we just documented will be exposed yet again. Unfortunately we only get angry about the primary process during the primary process when it’s impacting the candidate we care about. But the middle of the game is the worst possible time to change the rules.”
Oliver wants America to fix this mess, and proposes a way to help ensure it happens.
“Let’s together pick a date early next year to actually write an email to the chair of each party and remind them—politely—to fix this,†Oliver tells his audience. “I propose February 2. Now, that will be easy to remember because it’s Groundhog Day, which does seem appropriate because, unless this primary process is fixed, we are all destined to live through the same nightmare scenario over and over again until the end of fucking time.â€Â
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Image : Screenshot via LastWeekTonight/YouTube