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SR 1170 – Trump Won’t Debate Without 3rd Party Candidates

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• published: 05 Sep 2016
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Good Labor Day afternoon, I’m still reporting on Trump. According to yesterday’s Santa Monica Observer, Donald Trump will not participate in the 1st scheduled presidential debate on Sept. 26th unless the two leading 3rd party candidates are included, Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party and Jill Stein of the Green Party. The Commission on Presidential Debates says that for a candidate to be included in the debates, they have to have at least 15% in an average of 5 national polls – an impossible barrier for third party candidates in this country. Yesterday morning, Sen. Bernie Sanders said that the 15% threshold is “probably too high.” This year the Republicans had no trouble holding debates with as many as 10 candidates on stage at a time, so four candidates should not be seen as a problem. Typically, it is the lead holder in the polls that tries to dodge debates, and that would be Clinton. But Clinton is the one pushing for the debates now because of the perceived depth of her policy knowledge. However, at the rate the polls are going as of today, it will soon be Trump who takes the lead and debates are really the only way Clinton can blunt his even-growing momentum. In taking yet another bold new stand, Trump is empowering 3rd party candidacies like never before. The Libertarian Party has never received over 1% of the vote in a presidential election since its inception in 1972, and has never won a single electoral vote. Gaining access to the presidential ballot is very difficult. The Libertarians have achieved it in all 50 states on only 4 occasions, 1980, 1992, 1996 and 2000 despite massive outputs of time and money. This cycle, states have made it even more difficult for 3rd party candidates to qualify, and the LP is only on 36 state ballots and DC – a record low since the 1976 election. The Green Party was put on the map by Ralph Nader when he headed their ticket in 1996 and 2000. In the 2000 presidential race, Nader won a surprising 2.64% of the popular vote. Subsequently, no Green Party presidential candidate has won over .36% of the vote. Greens had better luck getting ballot access this cycle. They are on the ballot in 38 states and DC, with 6 other states said to be “in process.” I was a candidate in the 2012 Libertarian primaries and came in second to Gary Johnson in several state primaries, so I’m familiar with just how important this ballot access issue is to the suppression of new ideas. Our campaign looked at the cost of running as a monetary reform party, but the cost of getting barely-sufficient ballot access would have been in excess of a million dollars. So I ran as a Libertarian candidate despite extreme reservations to parts of their platform, especially their support for so-called “free trade”, which I consistently referred to as a system of perpetrating “slave- wage trade”. We raised only about $5,000 and that money ran out about one month short of the national convention. Consequently, my name did not appear on the official LP convention ballot. But what I learned during the process was the travesty of the state committees of both the Republicans and Democrats continually trying to make ballot access nearly impossible, for 3rd party candidates to get any piece of the presidential limelight. Other democracies have no problems putting smaller parties on their presidential ballots. It’s high time that the U.S. loosen up and return to its democratic roots. The U.S. should be the nation that enthusiastically welcomes these innovative ideas carried by 3rd party candidates. Suppressing them will always lead to disaster. Once again, President Trump is leading the way, despite knowing that he will be branded by the Clintonista Crime Syndicate as a coward for not wanting to debate Clinton one-on-one. No matter what, for decades into the future, he will go down as the man who helped open up the 3rd party process. I’m still reporting from Washington. Good day.