In this exclusive clip from this week’s episode of “The Weekly Show With With Jon Stewart” podcast, the host talks with presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and Politico White House correspondent Eugene Daniels about revolutionizing the U.S. election cycle.
“We are such a convoluted mess when it comes to our election systems … from the financing to the rules to ubiquity to the fact that it doesn’t ever end, which means we are always at each other’s throats and never have time for makeup electoral sex in the country, we are a mess,” Stewart said.
He pointed out that people who were opposed to President Biden dropping out of the presidential race argued that there “wasn’t enough time” to get another candidate up to speed before Election Day in November.
“Meanwhile, in France, they did two elections in six weeks. England did it in eight weeks. Those systems can be applied here,” the “Daily Show” host added. “We have an electoral industrial complex that needs to be broken up. It is monopolistic and the FTC needs to [fix it.]”
Although, Daniels didn’t agree that such an enormous overhaul could be possible any time soon, saying, “As someone who’s in D.C. a lot, and I’m not going to prognosticate, but I have seen enough of the kind of excitement from you and Doris about these kinds of things big enough to see changes actually happen.”
He did agree, however, that both Republicans and Democrats are saying they want money out of politics. “There’s a world in which they do come together. This could be one of those moments where maybe the parties are looking around, depending what happens in November,” Daniels noted.
Goodwin, meanwhile, was fully on board. “Just think of how much better our lives would be if we only had to focus on these presidential elections over a six-week period or a 10-week period. We have to think about them day after day after day. We just have to believe that we can do it,” she said, also mentioning landmark shifts in the election process that finally allowed Black people and women to vote.
“We have to change the system as it is now. You’ve gotten me really riled up right now. I want to be part of this,” Goodwin added.
Daniels then said that a shorter election cycle would also lead to less hate speech. “It [also] helps to solve the hatred in the country, right? The amount of attacks that we all receive come from this, the length of time at which they are hitting each other to the attack ads … There’s a lot of things that if we fix this one thing that could work better in this country.”
Ultimately, Daniels and Stewart agreed that getting that to happen is, possibly, as unlikely as getting Republicans to make the largely Democratic Washington, D.C., its own state with its own senators.
Watch the discussion in the video, above. The full podcast episode and additional content will be available Thursday across social media accounts including YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and X.
