I guess I'd want to see some sort of longterm analysis of the Daily Show before I would believe what you said. It doesn't square with my memory. If you tote up the numbers, I suspect Stewart has spent like 80 percent of his airtime mocking the Republican/Tea Party agenda. Ditto Fox News etc versus CNN. In any case, the point I wanted to make got a bit lost -- making fun of people at all is never going to fix the country. Teaching teens and young adults to scorn other points of view is a fucking shame. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Stewart will point out all the massive holes in Obama's "internet as utility" idea, while he's simultaneously mocking Ted Cruz (as he surely will). Maybe he'll have a real, scholarly discussion about the issue, and present all the options. We'll see.
I don't know, he's a comedian, he does comedy things. He's got 22 minutes to make people laugh. 22 minutes vs the 24 hours of fox/cnn/msnbc/etc. The writers on the show usually have a list of news stories, think about what is funny about them, then write a joke and hopefully they can find some old footage they can poke fun at too. I don't think they are even thinking about equal time, because that takes away from the funny. But he is known to have deep discussions with authors, politicians, and pundits which are available on comedy central's websites for interviews that run longer than the show. The ones with Bill O'Reilly are particularly good http://thedailyshow.cc.com/guests/bill-oreilly he's done these with Ron Paul and other Republican and Libertarians too.