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Johnson, Stein, McMullin Locked Out of Presidential Debates
The system is rigged. The Commission on Presidential Debates announced today that the only candidates to be invited to the first scheduled debate are Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. While claiming to be non-partisan, the CPD has again demonstrated that it is instead bipartisan — a racket designed to protect the interests of the Democratic and Republican parties against the threat of other options.
CPD’s official selection criteria are as follows:
- Candidate is constitutionally eligible to hold the office of President of the United States.
- Candidate has achieved ballot access in a sufficient number of states to win a theoretical Electoral College majority in the general election.
- Candidate has demonstrated a level of support of at least 15 percent of the national electorate, as determined by five selected national public opinion polling organizations, using the average of those organizations’ most recent publicly-reported results. These polls are from ABC-Washington Post; CBS-New York Times; CNN-Opinion Research Corporation; Fox News; and NBC-Wall Street Journal.
Libertarian Gary Johnson has been endorsed by four major newspapers and is on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. This means he obviously meets the first two tests but fails to achieve the arbitrary third test. The banning also applies to his running mate Bill Weld who will not be allowed to attend the first vice presidential debate. Johnson expected this result, but remained disappointed:
I would say I am surprised that the CPD has chosen to exclude me from the first debate, but I’m not. After all, the Commission is a private organization created 30 years ago by the Republican and Democratic parties for the clear purpose of taking control of the only nationally-televised presidential debates voters will see. At the time of its creation, the leaders of those two parties made no effort to hide the fact that they didn’t want any third party intrusions into their shows.
The only time a third candidate has been allowed on the stage was 1992, when both parties wanted him on the stage for their own purposes. It should be noted that, when Perot was allowed on the stage, polls showed his support to be in single digits, below where Johnson and Weld are currently polling.
Green Party Candidate Jill Stein is polling at less than half of Johnson’s numbers, but has qualified to appear on 45 state ballots and DC. For his part, upstart Evan McMullin has invited Stein and Johnson to join him for a debate, even if it is unapproved by CPD:
The Commission on Presidential Debates will never let anyone but the two major party nominees into the debate. Why? Because the “Commission” for Presidential Debates isn’t a public commission at all — it’s a corporation owned and operated by the two major parties.
The Commission on Presidential Debates is not an honest broker, and it doesn’t serve the public interest. It exists to protect Hillary and Trump — not to look out for the American people.
The debates are a rigged game. @GovGaryJohnson and @DrJillStein, let’s have our own & share our ideas with America. https://t.co/JCBcUKdxHB
— Evan McMullin (@Evan_McMullin) September 16, 2016
What do you think, Ricochetti: Should Johnson, Stein, and/or McMullin be allowed into the official debates or did CPD make the right call?
Published in General
There is a clear standard for the first two rules. They are minimum requirements so that it is possible to win. 15% polling has no such basis.
This, however is a very good point.
That’s nothing but guess work, and assumptions. They have no more of an idea how much of an impact a positive debate could have on Johnson’s campaign then anyone else does. That the entire point. Johnson is an option for every citizen in the Republic who can vote, but the citizens are being denied exposure to him on a national stage, because he maybe a threat to both Clinton and Trump.
Are you suggesting that the debates will have the same audience size as a random episode of Colbert, or a night on CNN’s Town Hall? Because unless that is your argument you aren’t making much of a point. The entire idea is that he is a candidate that can be voted on by any citizen, people should have a right to hear him.
By the DNC and the RNC in order to protect the DNC and the RNC from any outside challengers.
Well yeah. It’s a system set up by the two political parties, to promote the two parties. The older system setup by the League of Women Voters was not controlled by either the RNC or DNC. Which is why the League of Women Voters eventually quit, because both the RNC and DNC continued to fight to gain power over the process. Which they have now, and which they use to make it difficult for anyone outsider their power structure to get access.
The only rapping by old white people I ever liked are these two delightful videos. They have been shared from time to time at Ricochet, but they are now five years old and people forget about them.
http://hayekcenter.org/?page_id=4879
The problem is that it’s the wrong “they” doing this. The CPD has an inherent conflict of interests when it comes to who is allowed in debates.
Exactly. Also, why keep Johnson out in 2016 with 10% support when they let in Perot in 1992 with 6%? It looks like they deliberately raised the bar just high enough to keep Johnson out. https://www.amstat.org/sections/srms/proceedings/papers/1993_208.pdf
The system is not “rigged.” The system is a two party system, and has been since Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson defeated Federalist John Adams in the election of 1800. If you look at the results of our two-party system, I think you would have to concede that it has produced a pretty good country and some pretty impressive leaders. Along with some total idiots, to be sure. I’m really tired of this meme where anyone who doesn’t get their way on anything yells “the system is rigged.” That phrase is meaningless, and anyone who says it should be ignored, if not ridiculed.
No third party candidate has ever been elected President, and none will in the foreseeable future. The only impact of third party candidates has been to change the outcome as between the two viable candidates by siphoning off votes from one or the other. Perot elected Clinton. Nader elected Bush. Is that a good thing? I can’t see an argument that it is. In collective choice theory it is known as the impact of the “irrelevant alternative.” And it leads to some really perverse results.
This is not to say that we shouldn’t have a third choice on the ballot. We should be able to vote for “none of the above,” and thereby force a re-do of the nominating process. I’m not going to get my way on that, but I’m not going to say “the system is rigged” either.
Just like to say, good to see you MBF. It has been awhile.
@tylerboliver,
There is no use conversing with @jamesofengland about anything Gary Johnson related.
You can’t know anything about the CPD and/or ballot access rules and honestly believe that.
“The American people” didn’t make this decision. The two major parties colluding with eachother did.
Actually, Fred, it precisely because everyone knows everything about the CPD and the ballot access rules that the system is not rigged. Yes, there are rules. The rules are out in the open, and anyone can play by them. Or anyone can whine about them, and call them “rigged.” You know, when Johnson and Weld were serious about winning an election, in New Mexico and Massachusetts, they both ran as major party candidates. As Libertarians, they are not serious and they have no right to complain if they are not taken seriously.
The rules of blackjack favor the house, and everyone knows it. That doesn’t mean that the game is “rigged.” The game is only “rigged” if the dealer is dealing from the bottom of the deck.
I have never been a supporter of debates, for the simple reason that the correct argument almost never wins. The best debater may win, the most photogenic may win, or the best speaker may win: But none of those guarantee that the correct argument wins (whatever you choose for “win” to mean). Furthermore, as @Tyler Bolivar observed, these election events aren’t debates anyway – but I wouldn’t mind them doing away with the moderator! (I would like to see a Lincoln-Douglas style debate but can you conceive of Hillary ever endorsing such a thing?)
At the same time, I am wondering what would happen if there WERE no CPD. Since debates are a product of radio and television, I am quite confident we’d still have them. Would third party candidates be included? More likely than in our current system! Shades of free-market capitalism. @larry3435 is correct – the current system is not “rigged”, but I still don’t like it.
I chuckled at your phrasing here, as it suggests that, deep down, you know there are only two parties. Two parties that matter, at least. As has been noted elsewhere and numerous times in other threads, the only effect third parties have ever had in American presidential elections is to siphon votes away from the major party closest to their own ideology. Stated another way, when viewed from the perspective of advancing your personal ideals in politics, voting third party is always a self-inflicted wound.
Given that our elections are decided by plurality, not majority, I think rule #3 should reflect that. I would only accept the top two parties in the polls. I would make an exception for multiple polls showing 2nd place ties within the margin or error, or multiple polls disagreeing on 2nd vs. 3rd place.
You can win through a House of Representative selection and/ or through write-ins. If you don’t feel bound by “is this likely to happen” testing, the number of Americans who could be the next President still numbers in nine figures.
That’s true, but educated guesswork and assumptions are the only reasons we can know more or less anything.
Sure; it’s possible that without a real electoral base, without a GOTV operation, without real funding, without talent, without coherent positions, and without a record he can be honest about, Johnson might nonetheless turn things around. So could Castle. So could Stein, and any number of potential write-ins.
No, they’re being denied it because they don’t want it; the commission said that they were considering a proposal that would have reduced the criteria for the first debate to 10%, but Johnson didn’t even make that. Single digit support as early voting is about to start is not the sort of position that campaigns win from. The voting public has been asked by many, many, polling companies what they want, and they’ve replied. Johnson isn’t like Ross Perot, Strom Thurmond, or George Wallace, and this isn’t his first shot at a widly watched debate. When he got one, in 2012, the nation looked at him and decided that Huntsman was just a much more impressive figure, as was everyone else.
I’m suggesting that that’s relevant data for assessing how much help he’d get from further exposure. It’s also worth remembering that there has been almost no investigation into the links between, eg., his construction company and the massive increase in construction spending when he took office, or into the circumstances of his abandonment of his wife, or into how he would hike Social Security contributions (which he says aren’t a tax because they’re a retirement plan) while replacing payroll taxes (and other taxes) with a 39% sales tax. People haven’t been asking Johnson hard questions because Johnson doesn’t give interviews to people he isn’t confident will be gentle. We haven’t been able to get him on Ricochet, for instance.
They set the criteria at points where any plausible challenger (Perot, for instance), would be able to take part, but the debates are for the parties to make their case to the people, not for Amici Curae. If the LP had nominated Penn Jillette, they’d have been libertarian, entertaining, and widely recognized, as it is, the best chance of getting into the debates is having the bar lowered this cycle and getting in next time on the back of ridiculous amounts to spending. Assuming the 2020 campaign is publicly funded, they’ll get there easily next time. 15% isn’t an impossible figure, 10% is even less impossible. That they failed does not mean that it could not have been done.
Alternatively, if Johnson were serious about implementing libertarian policy, something he did not do in his first two terms as governor, he could run for governor again. He’ll have a stack of money (more than anyone else in NM, which is not an expensive state), Martinez is term limited, and the NM term limits are only a problem for consecutive runs. Having an LP office holder would make a genuine difference. The problem for Johnson is that the difference it would make is that people would have an example to look at, and that’s not the sort of scrutiny that he could withstand.
If you look deep into the the techniques employed by the major polling companies, you will discover that they ask the American people, rather than the employees of the major parties, and that it was the American people who decided that Johnson not get 15%, or even 10% support.
Is it your understanding that in 2000, when they introduced the rule, they had a precise forecast for the numbers that Johnson would be pulling in 2016 and that they crafted the rule to keep him out?
7% of american’s believe we faked the moon landing.
Hey, all you NeverTrumpers,
If you cannot be persuaded to vote for Trump,
then at least cast your vote for Jill Stein.
http://ricochet.com/373648/an-american-stein-hoist/
No there are multiple parties, not two. The system is set up to defend the two party status quo though. If we go strictly by who’s on every state ballot there are 3 major parties right now. With many more smaller parties beyond that.
Ross Perot drew evenly from the left, right, and the remainder from the middle. With moderates being his biggest base of support at 53%. 2/3rds of his supporters were either Democrats or Independents. Yet somehow Bill Clinton won the White House.
What really happens is more of the electorate gets to express their principles, and people who defend the two party system become afraid that people won’t just “settle” for one of the two system candidates. Which is also how the system is built up, it’s created to defend the status quo, setting up every election as having to choose between a Giant Douche, or a Turd Sandwich.
If a ticket is on every state, and is therefor an option for every citizen to vote for, they should get air time in the debate.
Yes it is possible, if a candidate has their message given out to more citizens their base expands, or shrinks. Which is the entire point of the debates in the first pace, and why the system is set up to protect the two majors parties.
They are being denied it, because it’s in the interest of the DNC and RNC to present an image to the American people that there are only two “realistic” options. Completely ignoring the fact that Trump, Clinton, and Johnson are all options for every citizen of the Republic.
The “relevant data” is arbitrary, setup the way it is largely to protect the two party system..
Exactly, the two parties that control the process create the system to defend the status quo.
Regarding Ross Perot in 1992, I think he did swing the election to W.J. Clinton. The best exit polling I saw showed Ross Perot drawing 4% from Clinton, 8% from G.H.W. Bush, and 6% from voters who would not have voted for either Clinton or Bush. Using this to look at the returns, Clinton still would have won.
Perot cost Bush the following states: Ohio, Wisconsin, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Nevada, Montana, Kentucky, Georgia and Colorado with a total of 87 electoral votes. Mr. Clinton still would have won in the Electoral College, but his margin there shrinks to 283 to 255.
However, if Perot had not run, the national debt would never have become an issue in that race. Leftist mass media used Perot to bash Bush. They trumpeted James Carville’s “It’s the economy, stupid” wisecrack. Media reports on the state of the economy turned out to be duplicitous. It was in 1992 that the legacy media first entered the fight as partizans.
So? Each of those votes drawn to Perot subtracted from the two candidates who actually could win, one or the other of which was closer to that voter’s ideals.
Perot actually “could win” he was on the ballot on every state. He was a national option for the citizenry.
Bush would of had to have won 66% of Perot’s voters to defeat Clinton. Since well over 2/3rds of Perot’s support came from Democrats and Independents this was unlikely to have happened.
Perot didn’t “cost” Bush a thing. Bush simply did not win the appeal to the citizens in those states, they were not “owned” by Bush or the RNC.
Bush’s weakness started when he raised taxes. The economy would have always been an issue.
And if you look at the polls that asked about their unfavorability, the Trump and Clinton are both hated.
And if you look at the polls that asked if they wanted Johnson in the debate, majorities said yes.
Is Evan McMullin’s vice presidential candidate going to debate Deez Nuts?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deez_Nuts_(politician)
Do you have an underlying rationale for why that is? Is there a fundamental difference between a candidate being on 50 ballots or 48 (Greens)? If Trump had gotten onto 49 because his Minnesota team messed up, would that have meant that it was impossible for him to become President, or even unlikely, such that the debates should not have featured him? When William Henry Harrison failed to make ballots in 1836 or Lincoln failed to make them in 1860, did that mean that they weren’t serious candidates? In 1856, the Know Nothings were on every ballot, but did not do well in the election. Republicans were not on any Southern ballots, nor were they on some ballots in states that ended up being staunch union states (Kentucky), but if the outcome had flipped in Pennsylvania and there had been a 2% swing from Democrats to Republicans in Illinois, we’d have had a different election. The question doesn’t arise since then because there’s never again been an actual candidate has failed to be on the ballot. There’s no intrinsic issue with being a fifty state party, though,which is why the CPD does not demand that, but does demand that there are some actual American voters supporting you (15%).
The DNC and RNC have no ability to control what people answer to pollsters; the fact that the American people have, even as Johnson’s name recognition has soared, not become more likely to support him is not because Priebus is an evil genius mind controlling the lot of them. If you talk to people in the RNC, you’ll find most of them relatively friendly to Johnson. Michael Steele has him on his radio show and has helped him with fundraising. To my mind that’s a reason that he should never get a party role again in his life, but he’s definitely not organizing to exclude Johnson. Likewise, just about no RNC folks look back on Nader with horror. He deserves our gratitude. Johnson’s failing to get 15%, or 10%, not because of a conspiracy, but because of reality. There are two realistic options, and that would also be the case if Johnson were in the debates; he doesn’t have the fundraising, talent, support, or base of a real candidate.
Again, it’s genuinely your believe that in 2000 the people running the CPD thought that we might switch to a new party system with someone else joining the Rs and Ds as a permanent third party? And that they had some incentive to stop that from happening? What do you think the anticipated third party was? The Reform Party? The Constitution Party? The Greens? The Libertarians? Someone else? How many of them do you think were genuinely sweating the chance that we’d have a President Ventura and that the political system as we know it would be up-ended?
The status quo isn’t defended; as Trump reminds us, if you have 30% of a party behind you, with a bit of luck you can become a nominee, at which point you have a roughly 50% chance of becoming the President. When Johnson ran in the GOP primary, he didn’t struggle to get into the single digits in polling because of some conspiracy, but that would have been the way to become President. Ron Paul showed that there was a substantial number of people who would back a libertarian, although he also showed that it wasn’t enough to elect a President, even if your name recognition was pretty impressive.