If you can still stand by Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, please give me a good reason why candidates on the ballot in all 50 states should not be allowed to compare platforms and ideas with them in debate.
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Johnson hopes to appeal to voters who are dissatisfied with both of the major party nominees.
Johnson and Stein were excluded because they did not reach an average of 15 percent support in the five national polls the commission used as a benchmark.
Johnson is polling at an average 8 percent nationally, the commission said.
If Johnson isn’t seated, it will be a disservice to the American electorate. Johnson and his running mate, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, have made a recent push for inclusion in the debates, including a full page ad in Wednesday’s New York Times.
In a national Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday, Clinton led Trump by 5 percentage points in a head-to-head matchup, 48 percent to 43 percent.
Though Johnson may draw some comparisons to the Green Party’s Ralph Nader, who some blame for costing Democrat Al Gore the 2000 election by pulling votes in Florida and New Hampshire, Johnson’s effect on Clinton’s numbers is less lopsided.
Even spookier is that Johnson isn’t just pulling voters from Trump.
Polls consistently show that almost half of voters are backing either Clinton or Trump not because they support them, but because they vehemently oppose the other candidate.
Her campaign recognizes the problem.
If she gets arrested this time around, perhaps people will finally be able to realistically visualize her on the debate stage the next time Dr. Jill Stein vows to debate the candidates, so that Americans can have her as an option.
The Guardian reported Johnson and Stein filed a lawsuit against the CPD in September 2015, in which they argued they should be included in the debates if they were on the ballot in enough states to have a chance of securing 270 electoral college votes and are eligible to serve. There is a gray area in which the irrational confidence of a campaign can be chalked up to exuberance, but it is safe to say that both the Libertarian and Green presidential candidates are nowhere near it.
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After accepting that electoral victory is not possible, two distinct types of victory can be sought: victory for principle and victory for party.
