The Nevada State Democratic Party’s official convention, which allegedly resulted in Bernie Sanders supporters sending death threats to one official, provided the current presidential election with its most recent case of widespread animosity among voting members of the same political group. Considering rival Hillary Clinton’s win at the state’s caucus in February (and the frustration that resulted), the resulting confusion and anger with the system(s) of primaries and caucuses should come as no surprise. Hence why Last Week Tonight host John Oliver decided to dedicate his latest show’s deep dive segment to the convoluted manner by which Nevada and other states assign their allotted delegates to certain candidates.
Of course, it’s not just the Democrats who’ve faced issues with various states’ primaries and caucusing systems. After beginning with the ongoing fight between Clinton and Sanders supporters, Oliver points back to Donald Trump’s March win over his closest Republican rival, Ted Cruz in Louisiana. Despite amassing around 4 percent more of the popular vote, at the time Cruz stood a chance of gaining more delegates because of a quirk in Louisiana’s primary system. Trump openly complained about this at a subsequent rally, leading Oliver to conclude that “there is no clearer piece of evidence that our system is broken, no more thoroughly dead canary in the coal mine, than when Donald Trump is actually making sense.”
So what to do about it? After Nevada, many — especially the so-called “Bernie bros” whom Sanders himself has dubbed “disgusting” — are demanding that major and immediate changes be made to the current nomination process. This must happen now, they argue, because they assume the Independent Vermont senator is actually winning the popular vote. However, the Washington Post has determined that Clinton is actually beating Sanders by 2.9 million votes in the popular contest — a fact verified by Real Clear Politics and others news outlets.
Or as Oliver phrases it:
“I know, Bernie supporters — I can hear you typing right now that I look like an angry toucan funded by ‘Shillary’ — but that doesn’t make that any less true. The problem is, there is no guarantee that the candidate with the most votes will win next time. 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.”
“The middle of the game is the worst possible time to change the rules,” says Oliver. So instead of trying to throw one of several, similar-to-past-elections monkey wrenches into the system while nominations are in progress, the Last Week Tonight host argues that everyone should agree in advance on a date to “actually write an email to the chair of each party” demanding they make the necessary changes.
The suggested date? Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017. Why? Because it’s Groundhog Day, “which does seem appropriate because unless this primary process is fixed, we all are destined to live through the same nightmare scenario, over and over again, until the end of f*cking time.”