Summary
In an emotional monologue, John Oliver urged undecided and reluctant voters to support Kamala Harris, emphasizing her policies on Medicare, reproductive rights, and poverty reduction.
Addressing frustrations over the Biden administration’s Gaza policy, he acknowledged the struggle for many voters yet cited voices like Georgia State Rep. Ruwa Romman, who supports Harris despite reservations.
Oliver warned of the lasting consequences of a second Trump term, including potential Supreme Court shifts.
Oliver said voting for Harris would mean the world could laugh at this past week’s photo of an orange, gaping-mouthed Trump in a fluorescent vest and allow Americans to carry on with life without worrying about what he might do next.
Not voting is an act of renouncing your voice and your rights. It’s not a protest. It’s at best complicity with the status quo, and at worst going to support a candidate that will be far far worse for the issues you are “protesting”. You don’t get to complain when you don’t vote. All you get to do is sit down, shut up, and continue your inaction.
When someone that would normally vote blue goes third party, they are giving their vote to trump. That is practically Jill Stein’s while entire purpose.
that is why I tend to submit an invalid vote. I vote for exactly none of them.
calm down, I’m not in the US
Would you be happy for a republican to renounce their vote in protest?
“All you get to do is sit down, shut up, and continue your inaction.”
So how is that any different from what the centrists will be doing? Seems like the same outcome for the peasants either way, especially if you dont live in a swing or red state.
Living in the US as a person who grew up in Western Europe must be most masochistic way of life possible.
The best way to live in the US is to work at an European company and be send out long term to the US branch, you get European paychecks with the European taxing system and have European health insurance. You can receive your pay to a bank that allows global withdrawal with a miniscule currency transfer fee, for everything else you can use a Visa or MasterCard. Sure, this only works for a couple of months to a couple of years max, but you don’t have to deal with so much US bullshit and when shit is about to hit the fan, the company is going to pull you out anyway.
Not really. A lot of people have this personal accountability mentality which supposes we all need to man up and deal with our own problems or suffer in silence. Which is all hypocritical and hardly ever do you find the people who espouse these views live up to them. Be it the self made millionaire trust fund baby who got a job at dad’s dealership after dropping out when he burned through all his college funds. The drowning in debt college grad who doesn’t work in the field they majored in because there wasn’t any attractive jobs. The self made man who came up from nothing but now is completely burnt out or swindling people to amass a fortune.
You show me an American who claims they don’t take hand outs and work harder then any one else could manage; and I’ll show you a self centered prick that got lucky once and sits on their ass the rest of the day consuming conservative media.
That’s my major point, though. By and large Americans are lazy self serving jerks who couldn’t stop consuming if they were only selling turds. They like to binge after they binge and no amount of alcohol or weed is enough to make them contented.
No we aren’t masochists. We are children who want loud orange man to make it so we can have more F150’s and we get to play beer pong every single day.
Wtf is this even? How does this address what the other commenter said? Did you just reply to a top comment for visibility?
Sorry, I commented when it was like 6 points and top of new but whatever.
Let me know if there is something I can explain to you.
I thought it was touching where he discussed his worries about using his last opportunity to speak before the election, and that he could be left wondering if there was something else that he could have said to change the outcome if it ends up going bad. I imagine there has to be a good bit of pressure when you have such a large platform.
For a show that points out so many wrongs with our country, it’s easy to look at things negatively. But for now, at least, we are able to point out those wrongs and still have a hope we can do something about them. Not even 5 years a citizen, I imagine it could be scary as well that if a re-elected Trump goes for a type of “media reform,” Oliver is likely going to be high on the list of people to be looked at.
I hope tomorrow goes well for America. I’ve been disappointed the last few elections that the comedians have been more critical than the mainstream journalists, but right now, I’m glad we’ve had them if nothing else, motivating us to still be our best.
Ukraine went and elected one of those TV comedians, and, while imperfect, he’s been a pretty inspiring leader over the past few years.
I had him in my mind writing my original comment. I don’t know much about him before the war, but he seems to be doing admirable if anyone had concerns at his election.
It’s fun to turn back the clock and read old news:
“I will never let you down,” Mr Zelensky told celebrating supporters.
Russia says it wants him to show “sound judgement”, “honesty” and “pragmatism” so that relations can improve. Russia backs separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Mr Poroshenko, who admitted defeat after the first exit polls were published, has said he will not be leaving politics.
He told voters that Mr Zelensky, 41, was too inexperienced to stand up to Russia effectively.
Mr Zelensky starred in the long-running satirical drama Servant of the People in which his character accidentally becomes Ukraine’s president.
He plays a teacher who is elected after his expletive-laden rant about corruption goes viral on social media.
He ran under a political party with the same name as his show.
With no previous political experience, Mr Zelensky’s campaign focused on his difference to the other candidates rather than on any concrete policy ideas.
NPR: Comedian Wins Ukrainian Presidency In Landslide 22 APR 2019
“What’s amazing is that despite Zelenskiy being a household name, people don’t really know what he stands for,” NPR’s Moscow correspondent Lucian Kim told Morning Edition. “During the election campaign, he was very vague about his positions, and in that way he really became a blank slate for people to project whatever they wanted on him.” The fact that voters chose Zelenskiy shows how desperate people are, Kim said.
But Ukraine’s outgoing president cautioned that the Kremlin is celebrating the election of an inexperienced candidate. Russia believes that “Ukraine could be quickly returned to Russia’s orbit of influence,” Poroshenko said on Twitter.
According to The New York Times, many voters said they had supported Zelenskiy “not so much because they thought he was a good candidate but because they wanted to punish Mr. Poroshenko for deflating the hopes raised by Ukraine’s 2014 revolution and for doing little to combat corruption.”
The Washington Post notes that Zelenskiy is just the latest comedian to win public office in elections around the world. In Guatemala, the former comic actor Jimmy Morales won the presidency on an anti-corruption platform with the slogan, “Not corrupt, not a thief.” In Iceland, comedian Jón Gnarr ran for mayor as a joke candidate and won, serving one term before he stepped down in 2014. And in the U.S., Saturday Night Live comedian Al Franken became a senator from Minnesota.
Maybe laughter and self-reflection is what the world needs right now. The comedians seem to be picking things up when everyone else is dropping the ball.
I suggest watching the entire video from GA State Rep. Ruwa Romman that is embedded in the article. Not so much for her reasoning about why she is voting for Harris, but for her comments of how to accomplish things politically in this country, how it works, how to actually move the country forward bit by bit. It’s hard and takes work and time but it can definitely be done, and her thoughts about the Green party, how it doesn’t do those things and thus never accomplishes anything.
Oliver said voting for Harris would mean the world could laugh at this past week’s photo of an orange, gaping-mouthed Trump in a fluorescent vest and allow Americans to carry on with life without worrying about what he might do next.
This sounds like my dad. He’s kinda a Republican, but doesn’t like Trump, and asserted that Trump would just go away after the last election.
Trump and Trumpism are not going away. If Harris wins, even by a lot, it’s only going to validate his follower’s fears, if it doesn’t start an all-out conflict.
C’mon you lazy people. I already voted by mail almost two weeks ago or three. Do that next time if you’re going to be lazy like me. But now go out there and face the consequences of your inaction…bad weather, MAGA idiots, fake electors…fake date if you are prepared to vote Jan 6th or some other date, etc.
Go now! Vote or we’re going to have Trump as president again and he’s gonna be crazier than before.
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But if I vote today, I get a deal at Krispy Kreme!
(I voted two weeks ago too, but we have to do it in-person here.)
Great.Fucking.Speech.
I expect sales of that shirt to go through the roof now.
I think the first 35 seconds of his “Election 2024: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)” clip are a very strong argument against the Citizens United v. FEC ruling. Same for voting for judges, including marketing at RealCapitalismTM levels in politics is not good, because eventually it will be worth it for sooooo many corporate entities to just pump large portions of the GDP into politics. Nothing can compare with that, so corporations are favored to win, because marketing works. Fatigue is just one of the symptoms that go across the isle, i’m sure.
There needs to be a proper primary system. This choosing the candidate months in advance of the convention by some sort of fiat, no discussion of policies that candidate endorses, then having an eleven month campaign is fucking ridiculous.
If nominees have to get up, espouse their willingness or not to commit genocide in the name of middle east oil interests, and then maybe pay a price for that by not being nominated, might have brought all this to a different end. The DNC’s certainty that they know what’s right for the people that support the Democrats is the reason Trump even got a first term, let alone why this race is a nailbiter.
Their fucking arrogance and complete lack of awareness outside the oligarchic bubble they inhabit needs to have some consequences if Harris doesn’t pull their pickles out of the garbage disposal and then perhaps lay back on the brown-child-murder-endorsement thing.
crying on cue has its uses
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TIL actors lose the ability to cry when they’re sad or scared if they stay in the business long-term.
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You’re gonna have to try harder if you want to ragebait
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Yawn. Boring.
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Anyway, you got a personality or anything cool like that?
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Is it upsetting to read about your friends and heroes losing in world war 2?
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Ugh. It’s always so cringe when late night hosts pull this kind of crap. They have literally become a mouthpiece for their corporate interests. That’s your entire job! You are a breathing advertisement for Hollywood and big media agencies!
And you expect me to see your actors tears and think, hmm…yeah, they are like real people!
Give me a break.
Isn’t john oliver a political satirist? Isn’t his whole thing politics?
Who would you have take the role of pleading with people to vote a certain way?
The coastguard, perhaps?
Are actors capable of crying out of genuine emotion or is that something they lose after being in the business a certain number of years?
maybe he should tell kamala how important it is and to do everything possible to gain voters.
Either Trump will win, or Harris will win. Choose one to help.
Clearly, obviously, Harris stands a better chance of helping Palestinians than does Trump.
harris being better is a low bar and i can’t support the same system & people that genocided my ancestors out of existence in this country; especially after claiming to abhor it for decades once the trail of tears footnote/paragraph became standard in american history books.
i don’t want to be a party to re-legitimizing genocide as acceptable political collateral damage, so i’m voting third party in a solidly blue state and doing so ensures that my vote could never support trump in any way thanks to the same electoral college that gives trump a chance of winning; i’m using the system against itself and i hope others do the same.
Respectfully, what you wrote doesn’t change the binary choice at play:
Trump or Harris will become President no matter what you do.
You could at least help my daughter, my mother, my sister by ensuring the one who supports women’s rights gets elected? Who supports LGBTQ+? Who supports climate change initiatives? That’s even pretending Harris is equally bad on Gaza or that things couldn’t obviously get worse for Palestinians.
You could at least help my daughter, my mother, my sister by ensuring the one who supports women’s rights gets elected? Who supports LGBTQ+? Who supports climate change initiatives? That’s even pretending Harris is equally bad on Gaza or that things couldn’t obviously get worse for Palestinians.
every single one of my identities is targeted by project 2025 and i’m not afraid of it because i benefit from the experience of surviving the aids/hiv crisis in the 1980’s. like it is in gaza right now; my government also did little more than make public displays of support while they idly let people die by the thousands back then and that experience has taught me how to recognize that they’re doing it again. (it’s easy to recognize it this time around since it’s literally being done by mostly the same people).
mutual aid was the only thing that helped anyone back then and we’ll be going back to doing it again once we enact the few remaining parts of project 2025 that we haven’t yet enacted since 1981. your daughter, your mother, your sister, my mother & my husband will not be (and was not) helped by anything trump or harris or any genocider does unless it’s by accident and putting faith in them isn’t going to help matters since they’re clearly hellbent of repeating history.
I’m glad you’re willing to throw that all away, but you’re also throwing it away for my family, too… So thanks, I guess…?
And for what? To get Trump elected? You do understand mathematically you’re supporting Trump’s chances, correct?
Let’s also not forget that if Harris is complicit in genocide in Gaza, then you’re not voting for Harris means you condone and are complicit on Russia’s genocide in Ukraine.
Edit: Bernie Sanders says the choice is clear; to vote for Harris despite Gaza.
i live in a solidly blue state and i’m voting third party. i could never help trump even if i wanted to because of the same electoral college that’s helping him win; i’m using the system against itself, as you should do every chance you get.
my ancestors where genocided out of existence in this country so i’m 100% sure that they would agree with me that being party to the same system & people that have a history of repeatedly using genocide as acceptable political collateral damage is a bad idea and anything good that comes from it is an accident.
I hear this a lot but:
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I’d argue that driving up the support for Harris in the popular vote is critical. If Trump wins Electorally, it’s still rhetorically important to stifle the notion of a mandate by not letting him get 50%.
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Blue states have fallen in the past or can shift purple if the line isn’t held.
That said, I’m glad you’re not in a swing state at least.
Reminder that it was Biden who just recently issued a forceful formal apology to the indigenous people of America. GOP didn’t it. Trump mocked it by having a rally on their sacred grounds no less.
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So you’re ignorant to what you’re doing? Are you just acting like a lost kid or do you not realize trump winning will push the world closer to ww3. Stop bitching, honestly you are contributing to a real threat of the end of the world. Hold harris accountable after we defeat the nazis. The good guys shouldnt fight each other before the main threat is gone. Anyone who continues too isnt really a good person. You can die on your hill all you want, but dont drag others onto it.
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My prediction is that your account, along with many others will magically go silent on these topics come next week.
i think you’re right; but not in the time frame of your prediction.
i’ve had to move from one social media platform onto another since the 1990’s (before it was called social media) and it did so because of enshitification. the defederation-happy instances like .world are using their leverage to mold lemmy into a diet reddit and the lemmyverse will become enshitified because of it.
when that happens, my account will go silent, as you predicted, and you’ll be free to enjoy your echo chamber while supporting the enshitification of both the lemmyverse and the american empire.
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https://psychology-spot.com/basic-laws-of-human-stupidity/?origin=serp_auto
Doing anything else other than voting for Harris in this regard is firmly in the stupid category. Trump would be worse in this regard. You are not only hurting yourself but others as well.
Stupid people really don’t like being called stupid, and in my experience, will be stupid harder just to show you… Something!
i live in a solidy blue state and voting third party so my vote could never support trump in any way thanks to the same electoral college that’s helping trump to win; i’m using the system against itself as you should too whenever you have the chance.
i’m also sure that my ancestors would agree with me that being party to re-legitimizing genocide as acceptable political collateral damage and at the hands of the same system & people that genocided them out of existence in this country is a bad idea.
What are you trying to accomplish by posting this stuff? What are you actually accomplishing by posting this stuff?
experience has taught me that you can’t change people’s minds on anything and i don’t think you can accomplish anything in this system unless you have enough money or sufficient collectivism to affect change.
i’m old enough and am member to enough vulnerable minority groups to have experienced a few forms of enshitification and i’m sharing my experience because i can see it happening to both the lemmyverse and this country; if there’s anything that can be accomplished by my efforts it would be the this.
My my, the display of privilege and ignorance. Especially predictable from an ML domain.
Then you should find someone in a swing state to vote swap with to get Harris a vote where it matters and keep Trump out.
i saw that and i’m wondering how i can leverage it; it’s a FANTASTIC idea!
I was going to bury this lower in the thread but I think this deserves a top line reply.
she could literally just pay lip service the day of the election where it can do the least amount of damage when it comes to moderate voters and that would gain the support of people like me; but she won’t
So let’s make this perfectly clear for everyone else: this person would sacrifice the rights of women/people of color/lgbtq+ people, accelerate genocide in Gaza/Ukraine/elsewhere, and completely doom any action on climate change… because they want lip service on an issue they don’t actually care about. Wonder why that is?
How nice it must be to go through life blaming everyone else for your own stupidity and bad decisions
ignorance truly is bliss and i envy you for it.
How much more stupid can one person be? I too would envy those with any semblance of intelligence if I was you.
i envy the intelligent who have the capacity to share their views without resorting to childish behavior; like your insults.
.ml moment
It’s obviously just not a priority and blaming voters is both lazy and wrong. The Democratic party has shown itself to be a structurally racist institution where subservience to lobbyists is prioritized over victory.
No one asked for any kind of hyberbole from Harris. We simply wanted some kind of a signal that she would be willing to enforce US law (you know, as a prosecutor and as the component of our federal government whose literal job it is to do so) around the use of US arms. We asked for a few minutes on a stages so that we could make the case for why Muslim and Arab voters should stay committed to the Democratic party, and were denied. We could even be afforded lip service by this party, some cheap lies to hold us over, so here we are
There has been nothing gained by this Democratic parties pro-genocide position. But those who are truly to blame for it’s maintenance are here. It’s the apologists, who blame voters for not accepting the onerous positions in the limited times we get access to political power, who blame those among us who dare try and wield it. Those who defended Harris’s position, and argued that you, the voter should be moved to a more moral wrong, rather than the candidate: they own the genocide of the Palestinian people now. Because they demanded we give up our one chance where we have access to power, Election Day, to accept little and less from a broken political system that capitalizes and your willingness to be disappointed.
It’s no longer on Harris, dear apologists. This is your genocide now.
