The great irony of John Oliver’s continued political relevance — or even dominance of our country’s political rhetoric — is of course that John Oliver was not born in America. But it’s that outsider perspective, paired with the fact that he cares enough about this country (or at least his wife ) to have become a citizen of the United States, that allows him to so incisively skewer our politics. This week, he’s cut through the bullshit and gone straight to the core of our problem, which is that the democratic process itself is broken.
This statement isn’t something we haven’t heard before, and it’s been trumpeted by Bernie and Trump for months now, due to the fact that candidates can win primary elections in terms of voters but still lose in terms of delegates, which are, at this point, the most important thing in the election. It gets more complicated than that, though, especially when broken down on a state-by-state basis. Washington state in particular is a messy one, because the Democratic primary does not actually count, and yet it still takes place and is participated in by what is surely a sizable number of voters.
Watch the clip below. It’s this week’s extended take, so it’s a little long, but that length allows Oliver to highlight some of the ways the system is truly bizarre, and not just because it’s given reason for Trump’s statements to, for the first time in history, be accepted as truth.