Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will face each other alone at this year’s first USA presidential debate, after the Commission on Presidential Debates announced that third party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein had failed to qualify for the 26 September face-off. Gary Johnson and Bill Weld, we supported their inclusion in this fall’s presidential debates.
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Vice Presidential candidates Tim Kaine and Mike Pence also subsequently qualified for the vice presidential debate on October 4th.
Johnson, once a Republican governor of New Mexico, has pinned his hopes on taking part in the debates.
Johnson said he and his running mate, former MA governor Bill Weld, could win in November since the 2016 election cycle might produce an unexpected result, adding they wouldn’t be running if they didn’t see victory as a possibility.
When that question is asked, 76 percent of Americans respond that they would like to see Johnson in the debate.
Johnson has said that if he doesn’t make it onto the debate stage, it’s “game over” for his campaign.
Both Stein and Johnson succeeded in the first two criteria, but fell short on the third, according to a statement from the commission. Only candidates polling above 15% ten days before the debate, may participate in it.
The debate on September 26 will feature only two candidates.
Both campaigns have railed against the commission’s criteria, saying that it unfairly limited voters’ options in an election cycle where the two major-party nominees are both historically disliked.
Clinton was at 43 percent and Trump at 40.4 percent.
It’s the second damaging TV clip for Johnson who previously said “What is Allepo?” on MSNBC during a discussion about the war-torn Syrian city.
The right to vote means little unless we have the right to know who we can vote for. “Yet, the Republicans and Democrats are choosing to silence the candidate preferred by those millions of Americans”, he said in a statement.
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The last time a third-party candidate was allowed to participate in the televised debates was in 1992, when Ross Perot met the requirements running as an independent.
