I think Johnson has a decent – but not overwhelming – claim to be on the stage. Stein does not. I voted no in the poll because I think including any candidate polling at less than 5 percent just isn’t credible.
I confess a strong conflict of interest: would adding them to the debates help Clinton…or hurt her? My vote would be solely strategic.
Since your vote in this poll will have zero effect on anything, why don’t you just go ahead and vote according to your principles.
As has been pointed out you have to have a threshold or else let every minor party in, which wuld be a disservice to the public that wants to determine which of the realistic candidates they want to choose between.
And you need to have the rule decided upon in advance, not changing it as the game is in progress.
For this election these rules. 15%.
You want to argue that for future ones it should be 10%? Or a standard of having gotten on the ballot in some minimal number, if not all, of the states plus D.C.? A fair discussion to have and maybe a good argument could be made … or maybe not. But for this cycle? No. The game is well underway and you cannot change the rules now.
There is a house in the neighborhood that has had a Bernie sign out for most of the cycle. After Bernie didn’t make it at the convention, they pasted a Jill Stein sign under Bernie’s name. A few weeks later, they scrawled under the Jill sign, “Don’t worry, we won’t do anything to undermine Hillary”. Pretty convincing convictions, wouldn’t you say? They don’t belong there at all.
Who now?? 
Let’s really rile this up. Is Ross Perot still alive? He may have his pie chart laying around someplace…
You know, you can’t force the major party candidates to show up to a debate with a bunch of crank vanity candidates.
The debate commission is run by the Republicans and Democrats because otherwise the major party candidates aren’t going to show up. What’s in it for them?
The major party candidates have an interest in debating each other, because each thinks they can show they’re the better candidate. If one of the candidates thought they’d bomb the debates, they would come up with some excuse not to show up. The only reason a slightly weaker debater agrees to show up is because they’re afraid to look like they’re ducking the debates. And if you duck the debates because you’ll get your ass handed to you, how can you expect to win the goddam election?
Point is, there’s no obligation for the debates to even occur. They only occur if the candidates agree to them. And they’re not going to agree to appear on stage with a bunch of cranks. The only reason to include a serious third party candidate is if they think inviting the third party candidate on stage will show how unprepared they are for the job.
The first debate is on September 26? Where do they think they are, Canada?
Good point. Your neighbors should definitely not be included in the debate.
I think it would “help” her in two ways:
Excluding Johnson and Stein plays into the narrative that the big parties are playing at being a exclusive duopoly. That hurts Clinton, possibly more than it hurts Trump, who is the Perot-style outsider in this race as well as the GOP nominee.
Including Johnson (who is a bit of a batty con artist) & Stein (who has no political experience & tends to rely on the same script repeatedly) allows Hillary to appear to be the one sane adult on the stage with three amateurs. She can run against the crowd.
Now, she probably would prefer to keep the focus on Trump and run as not-Trump. But I think running as “qualified grandma” while suggesting that Trump is no better than the other two clowns might pay off more and longer with public opinion.
Literally none of that is a legitimate argument. The Commission on Presidential Debates isn’t refereeing the World Cup and deciding to change the offside rule in the middle of a tournament. CPD don’t actually even run the election, and CPD can change their rules at any time, either in response to public demand or in spite of it.
Which, at least for Clinton, is probably a legitimate tactic at this point. People may not trust her, but she can make the other two look inept. Stein will easily look unprepared; and Clinton can either let Johnson bleed Trump (dangerous) or hammer him on his lack of realism, foreign policy knowledge, and understanding of how civilization even works.
Maybe that’s not a useful tactic for Trump, but then again, what does he care? Is he even trying to win this, really?
Well you are literally correct fools that this is not the World Cup. It is instead something potentially much more important. And playing the game fair and square is all the more important.
You of course are very wrong that the argument is not legitimate. Any changing of the rules would be seen as unfair favoring of whichever candidate who actually has a chance of winning would be perceived as aided as a result. And both candidates with real chances might have supporters that felt that it was unfair to them.
Maybe you’d better understand it in the converse. The rule going in is 15%. Johnson begins to poll at 15 to 17% consistently. Would it be fair to change the rule to 20%? (Even if the majority of the public expressed an interest in not having him on the stage?)
Changing the rules of a contest or game after a contest or game has begun in service of achieving a desired result is widely viewed as unfair at best and cheating more commonly. That much is true if it is rules for debates, for the World Cup, or for a game of Monopoly.
No kidding. The entire “Commission” (oooh, sounds official) is for the two major parties agreeing on ground rules. That is their only function. They will never make it easier for third parties to get in unless there is massive public outcry, not a discussion. Or maybe if the major networks demand it I suppose.
DSeid, You’re making a nonsensical argument. The CPD do not referee the election. Their rules for the debates mean nothing to the actual rules governing the election. To extend the metaphor, you’re confusing the behavior of pre-game and post-game reporters for the rules on the football field.
There’s no constitutional jeopardy in moving the threshold down.
What caused the birth of the Commision?
And everyone laughed and laughed when Trump said he would negotiate how the debates wpuld be run. Ha ha, what a silly idea.
To my read the reaction you express is very dense. No, they do not make the rules for the election; they made the rules for the debates including the criteria for who is allowed to participate. Those debates take place in the context of an election cycle and theoretically can impact the results of the election cycle. (Nevermind that they usually have little impact.)
Again, do you think it would be perceived as fair and appropriate to change the threshold to 20% in the weeks before the debate once it became clear that a third party candidate like Johnson was hitting a previously established 15% mark? Again inclusive of the circumstance that most likely voters/viewers wanted the change so that their preferred candidates did not have to share the stage.
If you agree that it would be unfair to change the rules just a few weeks before to keep him out, then why would you think it would be fair to change them then to let him in?
Perhaps you have the belief that the only rules that are fair are the ones that give the result you want?
FWIW I think Johnson on stage would help Clinton and hurt Trump. But he won’t get to 15% and he will not be of any meaningful impact in the election. I also doubt that he will hit the threshold to get matching funds next cycle.
How fair would people think the 15% rule is if they more honestly called it the “Republican-Democrat Presidential Debate Commission”?
There isn’t any legal requirement for candidates to participate in the debates, so the Candidates are only going to do so if its to their advantage. And its only to their advantage to debate people who might beat them. Having Hillary debate Jill Stein would be a massive boon to Stein, but could only hurt Hillary, so she isn’t going to do it.
If the Commission changed the threshold to 2%, the result wouldn’t be a four-way debate, it would be Trump and Hillary just organizing their own debates.
Of course, if at some point a third party candidate gets enough interest from the public, debating them becomes advantageous to the other two candidates (or dodging such a debate becomes damaging, anyways). Fifteen percent seems like a pretty decent cut-off, and its apparent that thats more or less what the candidates think as well.
Jill Stein is a joke/vanity candidate with exactly zero chance of winning.
Gary Johnson is a joke/vanity candidate with exactly zero chance of winning.
Why should the rules be changed to allow either of them on stage?