I voted No, mostly because Jill Stein in no way deserves to be included.
Gary Johnson I can see a couple of reasons to include him.
[ol]
[li]Chances are he will attack Trump more than he will be effective against HRC.[/li]
[li]Plus, as affable as he initially comes across, after about 15 or 20 minutes Johnson’s nutso Libertarian side comes out and most people will end up remembering him as the charming kook.[/ol][/li]
I realize the rules this cycle say 15% but I will admit 10% is a decent benchmark. Plus, if the Libs manage to get 7% in this election they will get Federal matching funds in 2020. Of course, for that to mean anything they’ll have to toss some of the more kooky ideas and find a nominee with decent name recognition.
(And I will add, if William Weld were the Lib nominee for POTUS rather than VP I would be afraid he would cause more damage to HRC in head to head debate. Johnson is too much of a pothead.)
I’m not at all sure which way my principles point! I ended up voting yes, include them, just for the broadest diversity of viewpoints…but I’m far from sure this is a good idea.
This makes pretty good sense.
Also, it would make the debates more entertaining, and more people would watch, and (since I expect Clinton to present herself well) this would be a good thing.
Also, since I’m pretending to have principles, a more entertaining and more watched debate would probably be good for the overall political process and the health of our democracy. More people would feel as if “their guy” had a voice and made a difference. It might increase overall voter turnout in November.
In another election year you might have a point but I’m dubious Clinton and Trump could negotiate and organize a closet together let alone a national debate.
No, one because they haven’t earned it, two because including them would help Trump. He doesn’t want to do a one on one debate with Clinton, opening the debate up would help play to his strengths.
One on one Clinton will demolish Trump and I’m looking forward to it.
If you can’t even achieve 15% in the polls by what’s nearly the end of the election cycle, then being included in the debate isn’t going to turn you into a winner.
This is the key, I think. Donald was able to throw bombs and then hide when on stage with 6-15 other people. Note that he dodged the last debate when the number of participants was getting to the point that everyone would actually have to answer questions. For some low bar definition of ‘question’.
I voted yes. Here in Maine, our Gubernatorial debates always include the independents. I think this is the correct way to do things. Most people are angry with the two-party system, and the debates should not set out to perpetuate it.
Yes they should be included. I get that the rule says 15%, but that also strikes me as fairly arbitrary at best, and more likely chosen to look fair while mostly intended to keep the two-party system status quo. The main point, as I see it, of third party or fringe candidates isn’t that they necessarily expect to win, but that they will raise issues that might not otherwise get raised or present alternative answers to major issues that might appeal to people better than the the major party’s platforms do. If a candidate is getting positive responses, maybe they’ll influence a major candidate to either address an issue they might not otherwise have or even reconsider an issue, at least give us a better idea of how that candidate might address an issue that could be important to certain people.
So my thought is that the rules should be reconsidered. Yeah, you don’t want to let ridiculous candidates in. So, I think one rule should be that a candidate needs to be on enough state ballots to at least theoretically have a shot at winning. If you’re only on one state’s ballot, even if you win that state, you can’t win; but if you could theoretically win a majority of electoral votes, fair enough. And 15% still strikes me as a little high, I’d rather see at 10% or maybe even a little lower. Hell, if you require some minimum number of theoretical electoral votes, you might not even need to rely on notoriously unreliable poll results. As it is, it’s hard to get a decent amount of support without the funding and press coverage of the major parties. I could theoretically see a candidate polling around the higher single digits and, between them kicking ass at the debates and the major party candidates floundering seeing a surge in their own polls.
Either way, I think getting an extra view point or two can only help political discourse. We need to make it easier to get some dissenting voices or nothing is going to change. And, again, I don’t think it’s necessarily about winning as much as it is at least getting some of those voices heard, otherwise we really are a tyranny of the majority or, maybe not even that much, a tyranny of the plurality.
The only way a third party candidate can appear on that stage is if the major party candidates think it will help them to have that candidate on stage.
Trump might think having a pack of idiots on stage will help him, he can deliver his zingers and step back to watch the fireworks as nobody can respond intelligently.
But Clinton isn’t going to think that.
There will be no third party candidates on the stage. Not going to happen.
If you don’t like the major party duopoly, maybe the presidency isn’t the best office to contest? Like, try getting some guys from your party elected to city councils, or mayor’s offices, or various local offices? And then step up to the big time of the state houses and statewide offices? If your party can’t even elect a single Congressman or Governor, how the fuck do you expect to win the presidency?
And the answer is, these third party presidential runs are simply a way to expand the mailing list for your two or three person “political party”. A political party exists to elect people to office. These third parties do not exist for that reason, they aren’t political parties, they are crank political advocacy groups.
So it’s your contention that Bush and Clinton both thought Perot was going to help them? I would say no, they didn’t. The commission just couldn’t backtrack on the 15% threshold without looking really bad.
And sticking with the Perot example, those saying that only candidates who have a chance to win should be invited, well then 15% is too low. Perot finished with 19% but got zero electoral votes. It should probably be 25 or 30% at least or maybe leading in some number of state polls.
I voted no as well. First, I agree with others who have posted that Johnson and Stein have zero chance of winning. Second, it isn’t a good idea to change the rules in the middle of the election. Third, including them would almost certainly benefit Trump.
Trump would benefit in two ways. First, the longer he speaks, the more he will demonstrate how unqualified he is to be president. If he only has 25% of the speaking time instead of 50%, that will only help him. Second, Stein would probably spend her time attacking Clinton exclusively and probably decrease Clinton’s support among former Sanders supporters.
A debate in September is not the point of the election to be making yourself known. They’ve each had months to mobilize, advertise, talk to people, and convince just one out of every 6 voters to vote for them. Neither has.
15% is a fairly low bar, if you can’t clear it, you’re just taking away time from actual contenders.
You could flip that around: isn’t 10% a significant part of the population? Imagine if all black Americans, and only them, abandoned the Dems for a BLM style independent. That independent would fail to make the grade. And if 15% is such a low bar, why does it happen so rarely? And of course, one of the two times it’s happened since televised debates began only one set of debates actually included three candidates.
That makes it sound like a pretty high bar. Persuading millions of people, before the first really wide-net platform that doesn’t cost the campaign huge money.