May 23, 2016

Everybody put a note on your calendar for next Groundhog's Day. That's the day we will bombard party leaders with demands to fix the broken primary system.

Caucuses, Oliver notes, are completely un-democratic and amount to voter suppression for working people and families with small children. And yes, in my opinion, (which Oliver does not cover,) part of the fix will require a lawsuit with Iowa and New Hampshire over their utterly unwarranted control of the primary calendar. Tough. Newsweek:

This is only a surface-level examination of how needlessly complicated the primary process is. And the more complicated something is, the more opportunity there is for obfuscation and, ultimately, corruption. Even someone with no knowledge of how the process works can look at its many glaring discrepancies and understand it is in grave need of reform. "Almost every part of this process is difficult to defend," says Oliver.

It stays this way, though, because after a nominee is selected, nobody really cares anymore. As Donald Trump said during a recent rally in West Virginia, "You've been hearing me say it's a rigged system, but now I don't say it anymore because I won. Now I don't care."

Oliver proposes that we set aside a day early next year to bombard party leaders with emails demanding reform. He suggests February 2. "That will be easy to remember, because it's Groundhog Day, which does seem appropriate," says Oliver. "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 f*cking time."

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