Well, the greatest country in the world is back at it with some Grade A nonsense. On Friday, September 16th, The Committee for Presidential Debates (CPD) announced that Libertarian Candidate Gary Johnson will not be allowed to participate in the first debate.
The CPD is a private organization that hosts the presidential debates and has hosted them since 1988. The CPD claims to be non-partisan, but the board of directors is made up of mostly former politicians and prominent business people who clearly have a direct vested interest in the outcome of the election. Each member of the CPD is actually a registered member of one of the two major political parties. There are no third party members involved in the CPD.
The justification was that their polls showed Johnson was at only 8.2% of the required 15%, while most national polls have been showing him at 14% with a margin of error large enough to justify including him in the debates. So why is he not included in the debates?
In 1992, the CPD allowed a third party candidate, Ross Perot, to participate in the debates. In that election, Perot took an astonishing 20% of the popular vote. The CPD is worried that someone like Johnson, who has already been gaining major traction in an election season where people are truly upset over the two main party options, might actually speed ahead, leaving the Democratic and Republican parties in the dust. Johnson also has the economic track record that blows Clinton and Trump clear out of the water.
The CPD is suppressing third party candidates in their first opportunity in over twenty years to have an impact on the election. And that should make all of us really mad.
How is it legal for a private, non-governmental organization to have this significant of an impact on the election? Without the debates, Gary Johnson is far less likely to be successful in his pursuit of the White House, and the bipartisan control of our national politics.
What the CPD is telling us, what the rest of this election season has told us, is that unless you’re a Republican or a Democrat, your opinion doesn’t matter. When are we going to stand up to the politicians and the billionaires and push back? Because your opinion does matter. The principles that this country was founded on, what we’ve been taught all our lives, is that we are all created equal and that we do deserve a say in our political process!
When only 17% of eligible voters participated in the primaries nationwide, can we actually say that either Trump or Clinton have met the actual requisite 15%? Isn’t enough, enough? Don’t we deserve better as a nation?
#letgarydebate
