John Oliver Has Some Light Praise And Damning Criticism Of The Democrats’ Strategy Against Trump

The Democratic National Convention was held last week, and during Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver pointed out a few issues with the multi-day celebration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The DNC “spent the week steering hard toward middle of the road,” Oliver said, noting that instead of highlighting party stars like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “a lot of time was given to Republicans,” including Meg Whitman and Colin Powell (leading to the resurgence of this photo). “It’s hard to convince progressive voters that you’re a forward-looking party when your convention feels like a Zoom cast reunion except the show is the 2008 RNC,” he noted.

Oliver also observed that Biden’s warmly received speech played it safe, and “while he name-checked broad goals like expanding child care or ending racism, the speech was light on detail… Normally, I’d point out that compassion and decency are not concrete policy agendas, but considering open authoritarianism is also on the ballot, sure what the fuck Adequate vs. evil, let’s go,” as photos of Biden and Trump appeared onscreen:

“I’m honestly not saying it’s a mistake for the DNC to spend four days pointing out that Joe Biden’s not Donald Trump. It’s a very attractive quality. But, spending so much of their convention underscoring Trump’s unfitness for office may have been redundant given that Trump spent the entire week basically making that case for them, by continuing to sow distrust of voting by mail, calling for a boycott of an American company that employs over 60,000 workers, and refusing to disavow the QAnon conspiracy theory.”

Oliver ended the segment by saying that he hopes “the DNC’s strategy this week of wooing undecided voters with the star power of John Kasich and Meg Whitman pays off. Because if the Democrats just spent a week trying to appear to conservatives who ultimately end up voting Republican, then this will actually turn out to be a depressingly conventional convention.” You can watch the full episode here.