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.
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.
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:
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%.
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.
it was another public display of the same “shallow understanding” from moderates that MLK jr wrote about; but i think he can be forgiven for it since the native americans in canada and united states seem to have similar understanding.
and the blue states conversion is going to happen at the same rate as democrat’s conversion into diet republicans.
Yet for all of MLK’s grievances, who ultimately provided the pathway to lawful change in Congress in 1964?
waiting for election to end before taking action to stop a genocide sounds too much like the definition of that timetable MLK jr was referring to and voting for an genocider enabler to help maintain negative peace is something he actively warned against.
moderates have a “shallow understanding” of MLK jr’s efforts because americans are indoctrinated against all it of it except for his nonviolence and it’s relevance along with my experience is saddening since i’m literally watching history repeat before my eyes as it’s enabled by the overwhelming majority who never bothered to reach out past that indoctrination.
All due respect, you didn’t answer the question.
Pyrrhic victories are meaningless. In the end, who actually followed through with change?
Obama himself, the first black President, sympathized with you that change never seems to come quickly enough. Partly because people like Trump are so damaging and disruptive to progress. In their absence, we’d be far more free to advance more quickly. Alas, that’s just dreaming.
So in the end, it was those liberals in Congress who passed the monumental change. And without question, MLK had more allies among them than he did the Confederate successors in the KKK, obviously.
In the end, some change is better than no change is better than regression through entropy.