"Dear RFK Jr,
When I told you to ‘Eat shit and die’, I didn’t mean it literally…"
RFK Jr. is defying the odds — against getting on ballots around the country
But balance this against:
RFK Jr. becomes presidential debate X factor
I think it is up to Shanahan. If she’s up for blowing, say, $50 million, on television advertising, in the next couple weeks, he’ll qualify. But I’m guessing she’s too thrifty for that.
P.S. I compliment CNN on apparently keeping to the normal Commission on President Debates inclusion criteria. It was wrong of the candidates to ditch normal procedures.
In the end, though, it’s always up to the candidates what terms they agree to.
Normal according to who? There’s no laws governing these debates. All the televised debates happened in my lifetime and the rules were set up arbitrarily. It’s not some kind of grand tradition well thought out and honed in practice over time.
Yep, it is mostly his NAME, and then a few morons who have bought into the Kremlin & GOP propaganda line that both candidates are just as bad.
Letting the Commission on Presidential Debates set the rules became a democratic norm. As for “honed in practice over time,” that’s exactly what has occurred. So when Trump kept interrupting Biden in the first 2020 debate, they honed the rules to have a mike cutoff in the next debate.
Normally, Trump is the chief violator of democratic norms. Here Biden joined in.
To judge by its stance on RFK Jr, CNN will try to limit the damage by following most of those long-honed rules.
No, it became a plain norm. And not much of one. The Commission has only been running debates since '88 - 36 years, of which the last third hasn’t been all that useful. So, let’s not rewrite history.
It was organized by the Republicans and the Democrats in the first place. Granted, they were asked to organize the Commission, but they also stacked the rules for debate participants against third parties from its inception, and third parties have been complaining about it ever since.
Before that debates were haphazardly organized by whoever could get the major candidates to agree to take part, which they did not always do.
So, it’s a “democratic” norm in no real sense, except the pragmatic. And that’s the same pragmatism that now sees the same 2 major parties deciding it is no longer serving its purpose and doing what they did the first go around - setting rules that make sense for the current era.
The prior setup where the League of Women Voters ran thr debates had the same 15 percent polling requirement adopted by the Commission, and now by CNN:
The rules cannot help but have a cutoff determining who makes the debates. A consistent rule is the opposite of being stacked. The people who wanted to stack things, against Kennedy, by changing a long-standing democratic norm, are Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
I don’t care if RFK Jr debates, but whether he does should be determined by an objective rule, not the whim of major party candidates.
The prior set up was only used for 3 debates, so not all that much longer.
And the League of Women Voters used a 15% cutoff (which effectively cut every third party out - why 15? why not 10% or some other number?) because they couldn’t get the major candidates/parties to take part otherwise - that’s partly why there were none (none!) after 1960 until 1976.
It’s always been stacked against third parties. Just because it’s stacked differently now is a bizarre criterion for claiming it’s uniquely anti-democratic rather than differently anti-democratic.
The Commission for Presidential Debates is not objective nor is it independent. It’s bipartisan, sure, but that’s another way of legislating bias against third parties and claiming impartiality. Those third parties were not fooled and have been complaining about it from the beginning.
It’s not a long standing democratic norm at all. Again, differently anti-democratic, not uniquely anti-democratic.
Just because something has gone on for a few decades doesn’t mean it’s somehow a good thing or that objective, independent thought went into it. “It’s been done this way as long as I can remember” is terrible as a primary justification for maintaining a poor status quo. It just means the bias has been so baked in that people forgot it was there in the first place.
It’s properly stacked in favor of candidates who have at least a slight chance of winning. Except – this is closer to common sense than stacking. If you allowed all the third party candidates into the debates, most of the time would be spent on candidates who the majority of swing/uncertain voters are not interested in. TV viewers, who are not political junkies, would tune out. And, until this year, that to-me common sense rule was followed in every presidential debate held since I became old enough to vote (I’m 69).
Biden hasn’t personally said he’s adverse to debating Kennedy, but his spokespeople repeatedly imply it. For example:
But (and I didn’t realize this when I posted previously in the thread) CNN and ABC have changed the Commission criteria so as to make it more possible that RFK Jr will be invited:
Here’s what it takes to qualify for the June 27 CNN presidential debate
So – just four 15 percent polls will do it, even if they seem to be outliers. By contrast, the Commission, I think more sensibly, went by the polling average.
See this Washington Post story:
The number of outlier polls where Kennedy hits fifteen percent is much harder to predict than the polling average. It’s the proverbial hold on your seat belts.
Now, Kennedy also has to get on the ballot in enough states to add up to 270 electoral votes. I’m not sure if there is, from an RFK Jr. standpoint, risk there.
Looking at the debate criteria again, I think I was a little misleading in my last post.
CNN requires that Kennedy be on the ballots of enough states to account for 270 electoral votes by June 20. While he will claim to have submitted signatures to enough states by then, states commonly take a while to check them, and have no normal reason to come to a decision so early. For example:
So, with very low confidence, I think RFK Jr will meet the CNN 15 percent standard on four outlier polls, but won’t hit the ballot access threshold by the June 20 deadline.
What about the ABC News criteria for the September debate? Their criteria is similar to CNN’s, except that we do not know the polling and ballot access deadlines. Kennedy will, I’m pretty sure, have met the ballot access criteria in time for ABC, but whether he’ll meet ABC’s polling criteria is impossible to say.
IMO, Biden should not participate in any debate that Kennedy is allowed to participate in. He’s not a serious candidate and to debate him would be to dignify him in a way he doesn’t deserve.
If he and Loser Donald want to yell at each other for 90 minutes, then so be it.
Maybe there should be more inclusivity of “third party” candidates if they actually represent a party. Even if he did eke out a win, he would enter his Presidency with no political capital and there would be even greater gridlock than there is today, amongst other downsides.
If he were part of an organized party that consistently polled and received votes in the low double digits in actual elections, I wouldn’t be sure what to feel about including him in the main debate, but I don’t think it fruitful to entertain an independent candidate which is both unpopular and without other political allies.
Due to having broken his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States by engaging in insurrection, Trump is disqualified from the presidency. Kennedy is more deserving than Trump, since he meets the constitutional qualifications for the presidency.
Trump says that if CNN and/or ABC invite Kennedy, he will still attend:
If RFK Jr fails to meet the CNN and ABC criteria for an invite, no biggie. But if RFK Jr is invited to one or both debates, and Biden refuses, Joe needs to donate all the money he has raised to Democratic congressional candidates. That’s because Biden would then have no chance of winning in November.
Right, just like the last time a major candidate refused to debate a third party candidate. Who was that again? (Checks notes) Ronald Reagan in 1980.
I wonder what happened to him?
Carter then backed down and attended with Anderson, just as Biden would back down and debate Kennedy should the TV networks invite RFK Jr.
Partisans love playing the ump (in the 1980 case, the League of Women Voters). Ronald Reagan did some ump playing in 1980, just not as much as Carter. I do not like it myself. For anyone on the fence between Kennedy and Biden, this is a plausible reason for them to lean towards Kennedy.
Anyone who’s “on the fence” re Kennedy is a lost cause.
When Democrats try to chase after independents and the far left, they lose. Democrats win when they focus on getting Democrats to vote. Obama understood this. Howard Dean understood it when he was DNC chair and delivered a filibuster-proof Senate majority. Biden understands it too.
A different comment on the line above. RFK isn’t an honest third party candidate. He’s a FAILED Democratic candidate who got a third party to endorse him after his failure. So, treating him as an example of a true “third party” candidate and encouraging the like is supporting someone who is operating in bad faith.
At best, he’s a terribly misled, unsane, and egotistic candidate.
At worst, he’s a flat out bad faith spoiler candidate, who by his stated positions on most things, SHOULD have been running in the Republican primary.
Personally, I think it’s a combination of the two.
No, after Kennedy tried to blame Covid on the Jews there are no plausible reasons to vote for him left (not that there were plausible reasons to begin with).