Podium
Podium
[Cueball is speaking at a lectern standing on a podium.] Cueball: The American people are tired of politics as usual. Cueball: They're tired of- Cueball: Okay, brief tangent: is this thing a podium or a lectern? People say "podium" is wrong, but I also see it used that way in pretty formal contexts. Is usage just changing? Cueball: If elected, I will get to the bottom of this for once and for all.

A " podium " is a small platform like the one Cueball is standing on . This word originates from Greek podion meaning foot .
A " lectern " is a stand for holding notes, like the one Cueball standing behind . In American English this stand may be also called a podium , which is not backed up by etymology. See podium and lectern in Oxford Learners Dictionaries. In medieval universities, the "lecturer" was not someone who gave talks, but literally one who read from the lectern, the latin root meaning "To read" - Lectio.
The comic is playing on a stereotypical politician, without any real beliefs, here represented by Cueball, but they want to appear to stand for something.  Alternatively, this is what might happen if someone like Cueball (or the strip's author Randall ), who tend to think literally and who get interested in and distracted by tangents, were running.
Thus, Cueball picks up what is, in some American circles, an argument: whether the standing desk used by public speakers should be called a "podium" or a "lectern." This argument is actually common among members of Toastmasters International (see more here ), though it would usually not rise to the level of needing to be part of a national discourse. And it is not only the Toastmasters that care about this .
The fact is, though the etymological definition is clear - the lectern is the desk that stands on the podium - and the difference might be important if you were setting up an auditorium, in common American usage it really doesn't matter.
The title text is presented as a breaking news that implies that a senator has taken a bold stand on the subject of podium vs. lectern (presumably Cueball, although it could also be someone else who has been rallied by Cueball's speech). The senator is pro- podium, meaning that he thinks the lectern should be called a podium.  This leads to the people who follow a prescriptivist position to organize and put forward a political candidate to challenge this senator in the primaries .
The prescriptivist position relies on rules rather than on usage. In this case a prescriptivist relies on etymology and would thus be pro-lectern. In the U.S., the primaries are used to select a single candidate from a particular party to represent that party at final election (whether national or on a state level). At the time of this comics release (2016-03-28) the United States presidential primary elections to determine the candidates for the United States presidential election, 2016 was in full progress and not at all determined yet.
The title text is also a pun, as 'stand' is another word for an object like a lectern (e.g. as used by musicians to hold sheet music), and 'base' a word for something a stand or lectern might be placed on, as is a podium.
It is unclear from this comic which position Randall favors. He likes that rules are followed, but he also likes that it is easy to talk with people, especially friends. This was recently displayed in 1643: Degrees , see especially the last "benefits" in the third panel.
[Cueball is speaking at a lectern standing on a podium.] Cueball: The American people are tired of politics as usual. Cueball: They're tired of- Cueball: Okay, brief tangent: is this thing a podium or a lectern? People say "podium" is wrong, but I also see it used that way in pretty formal contexts. Is usage just changing? Cueball: If elected, I will get to the bottom of this for once and for all.
