Third Parties: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

our main story tonight is unfortunately continuing coverage of the 2016 election or as it's better known lice on rats on a horse corpse on fire 2016 this election has now achieved a dubious distinction Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are among the most disliked presidential candidates in history so it is hardly surprising that some are seeking an alternative who's your vote for right now I really don't like either candidate to be honest Marlee excited about the election I just don't really feel like I like either option Republicans and Democrats are kind of bumming me out 315 320 million people and this is the best tool that we can come up with it's true Americans are so disillusioned by the major party candidates you've seen many would prefer to vote for Kevin Klein's character from the movie Dave or the ghost of Martin Luther King jr. Asumi he only said the three quotes that white people like and this this disenchantment may explain the high interest in America's third parties because when your two main options are depressing any third choice seems good if you're an if you're a KFC Taco Bell and you see a bunch of pigeons eating something in the parking lot you might well think hang on what if they got over there and luckily there are a great many third-party options out there there's Jim hedges of the prohibition party the worst party without alcohol since you are born-again cousin's wedding there's Dan paycheck of illegal marijuana and now party which had really because the illegal marijuana now legal marijuana ASAP party and then there's independent write-in candidates Joe exotic who claims to run the world's largest private zoo for Tigers and produces incredible campaign videos first thing is I'm not cutting my hair I'm not changing the way I dress over fuse to wear a suit I am gay I've had two boyfriends most of my life I'm broke as I have a judgment against me from some down there in Florida and this is all paid for by the committee of Joe exotic speaks for America Wow just wow Joe exotic is truly the candidate you'd want to sit down and have a beer with then another beer and then several more beers until you're drunk enough to try meth for the first time the point is Joe exotic make America exotic again but the best known of the lesser known candidates are clearly libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein in a poll just last month more than a third of young voters said they are considering voting for one of them so they are worth taking seriously and before we go any further we should probably address the common critique that third party candidates can siphon off votes and potentially wind up electing an ideological opponent and there is some historical precedent for that from Teddy Roosevelt's 1912 run which arguably helped to elect Democrat Woodrow Wilson to Ralph Nader in 2000 winning nearly a hundred thousand votes in Florida estate which Al Gore famously lost by just 537 but third parties are a little touchy about that whole spoiler tag just watch Gary Johnson respond after it's brought up then it is just this is just it's horrible why would you even say that we're giving people a chance to vote for something as opposed to the lesser of two evils we're not spoilers we are the first vote so I guess we should drop out is that what you're saying is that is that your editorial here okay Gary just just relax a little bit you you've already undercut your credentials as a serious candidate by wearing a yellow tie with geez come on Gary you're running for president not officiating pikachu's beach wedding although to be fair Johnson's anger is understandable just dismissing third party candidates and spoilers shuts down debate and while the argument that the only thing that stops Trump is a vote for Hillary Clinton is a powerful one so is the argument that people should vote for the candidate who most closely shares their values so let's vet these candidates not as spoilers or as protest votes but as legitimate potential presidents and we'll start with Jill Stein the candidate who looks most like she believes Carib is just as good as chocolate now Stein is currently polling around 2% and she has a lot going for her she's a doctor who practiced internal medicine for 27 years and she has a broadly appealing pitch from environmental issues to expanding LGBTQ rights to reducing income inequality but when it comes to policy we all know the devil is in the details so how exactly is she going to accomplish her goals and let's start with the plan that has been central to her candidacy we're the one party that's actually calling for canceling student debt and bailing out a generation of young people like we bailed out the bankers on Wall Street we can do that for this generation and unleash them to be the stimulus package of our dreams okay hold on because stimulus package of your dreams sounds like how Paul Krugman describes his penis but but but she is right student debt is a massive 1.3 trillion dollar problem canceling it is Stein's flagship proposal it is to her campaign what the border wall is to Donald Trump's so you would assume that she has a well-thought-out coherent plan my campaign is the only one that will do for young people what our miss leaders saw fit to do for Wall Street not that long ago it was about four trillion in free money in the form of so-called quantitative easing which is a magic trick that basically people don't need to understand anymore about and that it is a magic trick no it isn't though it is a very complicated monetary policy tool and while it might not be important for most people to understand it you certainly have to and I don't think you do because for a start while Jill Stein has said the president has the authority to cancel student debt using quantitative easing that is absolutely wrong the President does not have that authority only the Federal Reserve does and it does not take Marting orders from the White House because that would be extremely dangerous you don't want to give presidents the power to just create new money whenever they want to think of it all this if Joe xotic is elected you don't want him to be able to order the Fed to create money for the most lavish tiger themed orgy the nation has because they would then have to print the $3,500 it would take to do that so that issue alone makes our plan a non-starter before we even get into the fact that quantitative easing does not apply here Stein is implying that it was used to cancel banks debts and that is absolutely not what it did using in a way that she's describing amounts to a president unilaterally passing a new law and funding it by printing new money and the the dangers of that should be pretty obvious in terms of how fundamentally flawed that is on every level it's basically akin to saying I'll make us energy independence by ordering the post office to invade Canada no-till that's impractical it's a terrible idea and you don't seem to understand anything about it when I first her student debt proposal was her version of Donald Trump's border wall I meant it because the only way it could be any more unlikely is if she claimed Mexico was somehow going to pay for it and for a candidate who seems to be running on principle it can be hard to pin her down on what those principles are after the EU brexit vote her campaign issued a statement in which she called the decision a victory before changing it to read I agreed with the UK Greens who supported staying in the EU and in response to charges that she was anti-vaccination she tweeted there's no evidence that autism is caused by vaccines before Jill Stein a doctor remember replaced it with a more equivocal I'm not aware of evidence linking autism with vaccines leaving the door open for doubt and Qing measles and this strategic business even applies to answering a question from a 9/11 truther I believe that the hijackers were patsies they did have intent but there was no ways they could fly those planes the way they did and there's no willing way those steel buildings could fall the way you have an opinion about that so I think we need the full story and the 9/11 Commission itself said we don't have the full story so I would simply bring back that Commission this isn't this isn't controversial in my view it's time to get the full story what are you doing you know that man thinks you just agreed with him now right you can't just hear a conspiracy theory fan the flames and then walk away is Katy Perry JonBenet Ramsey well identity theft is a real and persistent issue in this day and age and we really need to look into that and if none of what I've said bothers you that's fine I mean it's it's not really fine but that is your right but you are also going to need to co-sign on one more awkward thing and that is that Jill Stein recorded several albums as part of a 90's folk rock band called somebody's sister and you don't get to not hear what they sound like [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Jill Jill that is a very bad song for a start silent thunder is nothing you're describing silence and and I frankly cannot have a president who's going to play her own inauguration with a band that sounds like the Indigo Girls fronting the Red Hot Chili Peppers so for now let's move on to Gary Johnson the two-term governor of New Mexico and the man who in most photographs seems to be around 80% sure that he is running for president so he has been polling around 6% nationally which is pretty remarkable given that his race has been largely notable for moments like not knowing what Aleppo is not being able to name a world leader he admires and whatever it is that he's doing here do you think if you were able to get on the debate stage that you could pull even I think I could stand up there for a whole day and not say anything and I'm loose as well I'm not sure if he was doing that with his tongue on purpose or if Gary Johnson's tongue just decided it I'm done and tried to escape through his mouth but obviously law to Gary Johnson than just mistakes for instance he is an avid outdoorsman who loves mountain climbing so much he was described summiting Mount Everest like this people ask me gosh what was it like to conquer Mount Everest well I did not conquer Mount Everest she lifted her skirt and I got in there and got a beak and it was really cool okay okay I'm still a little confused here did you actually climb Mount Everest or did you just dry-hump the side of it and then go home it was great now smell my finger there's still some mountain air on it what is wrong with you now now as for his policies as with Jill Stein there is a lot to like there he supports marijuana legalization and opposes the death penalty civil forfeiture and police militarization but scratch beneath the surface and there are some positions you may be less comfortable with frozen sea opposes having a minimum wage and when he says he's for smaller government he's not kidding around governors could you name three federal departments or agencies that you would eliminate uh education the Department of Commerce and Housing and Urban Development how's that for starters oh there he's giving up government agencies left and right this is Sophie's Choice if she hated all of her children take both kids I'm sick of stepping on Legos off you go but but to be fair that is an intellectually consistent position but now watch him fold under the slightest pressure would any of their functions still be performed by the federal government gosh if and you'd have to assume that they were doing something that was of value and yeah if they are doing something of value yes we would we would be looking to continue those operations those departments all do a lot of stuff you can't identify any specific things they did here you're asking you're asking three departments and I'm giving them to you right but then you take the assumption that they should be a little with okay for the record and this is probably obvious those three departments do actually do things of value assuming that you find Pell grants mortgage insurance low-income housing programs the National Weather Service the Patent and Trademark Office and the Census Bureau to be of some value and if it comes as news to you that that's what those departments do well then hi Gary I'm excited you're watching the show quick piece of advice please stop trying to Fountains and again again like Jill Stein Johnson is prone to overly simple solutions that could have disastrous consequences just look at how he applies his small-government approach to tax policy if I could wave a magic wand I would eliminate income tax I would eliminate corporate tax I would abolish the IRS and I would replace it all with one federal consumption tax come on Gary you have a magic wand and the first thing you do is eliminate income tax with it shame on you the first thing anyone should do is make soap tastes as good as it smells and you don't judge me it's not the only thing that I would do it's just the first thing I would do magical simple plan gets complicated very fast because Johnson says his consumption tax would be between 23 and 28 percent on almost everything you buy and that could clearly hurt poor people the most so his answer is that every single home in America would receive a pre-baked check each month covering the cost of the sales tax up to around the poverty line but when a presidential advisory panel studied a similar proposal a decade ago they found that it's not just that simple aside from the complexity of the pre-baked program which by the way would become America's largest entitlement program ever for this policy to work they suggested these sales tax would have to be way more than 28% with the burden falling heavily on the middle class and to avoid all that they might have to be savaged government cuts but rather than honestly admit that Johnson tries to wriggle out of the subject the big problem with doing what you're doing is you wind up cutting the amount of revenues that governor government has to work actually it's a revenue neutral the whole the whole proposal that's not so according economists that's not so easy well then well maybe not your doing Chris but by just to give you the context why if you say the FairTax number that's usually thrown out is 28% this would be your consumption tax so you're automatically reducing the 39% from the top level down that creates an issue about how you want to distribute the tax burden you're writing a little into into the we've figure what D mean to in the weeds the only point of discussing tax policy is to get into the weeds that and preventing premature ejaculation that's the two options and if it can seem like Gary Johnson occasionally just doesn't give a maybe he doesn't because wait until you hear his stance on combating climate change should we take the long term view and it comes to global warming I think that we should and the long term view is that in billions of years the Sun is going to actually grow and encompass the earth right so global warming is in our in our future that's your plan don't worry we'll all be dead eventually anyway I guess we're just lucky that we won't be around to see that day because I do not want the last thing I hear to be Gary Johnson saying the sun's not so much conquered the earth it's merely lifted up her skirt and finger-blasted it no Gary why are you so weird the point here is the more you look about Gary Johnson and Jill Stein the more you realize the lack of coverage they complain about so much might have genuinely benefited them because their key proposals begin to crumble under the slightest scrutiny and look I would love for there to be a perfect third-party candidate I even understand the argument that a third-party candidate can put a new issue or a new solution on the table but it is hard to make the case that that is what's happening here there is no perfect candidate in this race and when people say you don't have to choose the lesser of two evils they are right because you have to choose the lesser of four anyone who goes into a voting booth on November the eighth and comes out saying I feel a hundred percent great about what I just did in there is either lying to themselves or did something unspeakable in that booth and that means as uncomfortable as this is everyone has to own the floors of whoever you vote for whether they are a lying handsy narcissistic sociopath a hawkish Wall Street friendly embodiment of everything that some people can't stand about politics an ill-tempered mountain molester with a radical dangerous tax plan that even he can't defend or a conspiracy pandering political neophyte with no clear understanding of how government operates and who once recorded this folk rap about the virtues of bicycling I feel like we just figured out who or what killed Biggie and Tupac and and before you say well hold on John there is one perfect candidate that you haven't mentioned yet I will remind you he's broke his and he will not wear a suit

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 12,850,018

Rating: 4.3607841 out of 5

Keywords: last week tonight with john oliver, john oliver, last week tonight, third parties, jill stein, gary johnson

Id: k3O01EfM5fU

Length: 18min 39sec (1119 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 16 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/ndphillips]

It's like a staffer went to John Oliver's office after his first season and said "John, it appears you are extremely popular on reddit."

And John said "Find out the things they like, and we will destroy them one by one."

[u/Atraktape]

"The lack of media coverage they've received might have benefitted them."

Yep.

[u/princeofropes]

When people talk about third party candidates, and make the complaint that they can be spoiler votes (which to be fair, John Oliver DIDN'T do here, although some of the commenters on this thread have) it amazes me that no one mentions how terrible the First Past the Post voting system is, and how this is the REAL problem. And it amazes me, and saddens me, that there is not more of a movement to get rid of FPTP voting in the US.

[u/earwig20]

Looking at the proposal on quantitative easing to end student debt.

It seems that minor parties benefit from being able to promise a lot without ever having to deliver.

Politics is about compromise.

[u/ultralightyeezus]

i'm surprised he didn't mention the jill stein anti wifi thing and especially how gary johnston is against net neutrality, considering he has done whole segments on it in the past.

[u/Chigurrh]

What still amazes me is that Ted Cruz was treated as a real candidate and the a reasonable alternative to Trump despite having a tax plan similar to Johnson (which would result in tax revenue dropping by over 8 trillion over the next decade). People need to call that dude out for more than just being creepy.

[u/BoogsterSU2]

If you want, you can DONATE HERE to Joe Exotic's presidential campaign!

#MakeAmericaExoticAgain

[u/suss2it]

God damn he roasted the shit outta those two.

[u/[deleted]]

Voting for Hillary because there is one empty seat in the Supreme Court and the potential for there to be 3-4 more within the first term of her presidency due to the health and ages of several justices. I don't like Hillary, but I don't trust Trump to put judges on the court that won't fuck with abortion, civil rights, and various other humanitarian things. We are stuck with Supreme Court judges for at least 30-40 years each, so we need to make sure we aren't fucked by Trump's choices.