After weeks of watching media rehash Clinton and Trump campaign talking points of the day, Americans can be forgiven for wanting to see some ideas injected into coverage of the presidential election. For some, debates are a natural opportunity to possibly pull candidates off script, force them to answer questions they didn’t write themselves. But, activists are saying, debates that include only the two major party candidates are far less likely to do that.
As FAIR founder Jeff Cohen notes in a recent column, the Commission for Presidential Debates that runs the show, though sometimes mistakenly described as “nonpartisan,” is in fact vehemently bipartisan—really a sort of corporation run by the two major parties, and funded by powerful interests like oil and gas, pharmaceuticals and finance. CPD rules, Cohen says, don’t aim so much at eliminating “nonviable” candidates as preventing outsiders from ever becoming viable.
In charge of debates since the 1980s, the CPD makes no bones about its intent to use its role to secure a Republican/Democrat duopoly. So much so that when they took over fully in 1988, the League of Women Voters, which had been running debates, pulled its sponsorship, saying, “The demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter.”
Describing the deal that party chairs Frank Fahrenkopf and Paul Kirk had worked out as a “closed-door masterpiece,” League President Nancy Neuman said,
It has become clear to us that the candidates’ organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and honest answers to tough questions. The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public.
Contrast that statement with that of Paul Kirk, now CPD chairman emeritus. Asked about broadening debates beyond the two major party candidates—to include, perhaps, Green Party’s Jill Stein and Libertarian Gary Johnson, who will be on the ballot in nearly every state—Kirk scoffed, “It’s a matter of entertainment vs. the serious question of who would you prefer to be president of the United States.”
Just recently, the Commission announced that the threshold for inclusion is based on public opinion—that’s to say, public opinion polls. Candidates must get 15 percent in polls conducted by five national organizations the group names. But there again, as journalist and activist Sam Husseini pointed out, the polls themselves have a way of tamping down interest in independent and third-party candidates.
The question they ask is generally a variant of “if the election were held today, for whom would you vote?”—which is subtly, but importantly, different from asking people open-endedly who they want to be president. As it is, these polls sort of replicate the bind the voter is already in—especially at a time when record high numbers of people call themselves “independents,” and in a race in which many voters’ main reason for supporting one major party candidate is that they are not the other.
Of course, debates are only as enlightening as the questions—and the follow-ups to those questions—from moderators. And who will those be? That, too, is for the CPD for decide. An August 24 op-ed in the Washington Post, from Fusion‘s Alexis Madrigal and Dodai Stewart, notes that in 2012, all four moderators were white people over 55, and, well, that just isn’t what America looks like.
“Young adults between 18 and 33 are the most racially diverse generation in American history,” they write:
Forty-three percent are non-white. Large numbers…date outside their race. They believe in a gender spectrum. About 68 percent of those young, non-white people believe government should provide healthcare for all.
Young people are also less likely to vote. “Could it be because they don’t see themselves as important to the electoral process? Could it be because they’re not included in the important conversations?”
Opening up presidential debates is by no means a solution to an electoral process that leaves many people feeling frustrated, angry and voiceless. Keeping those debates narrow and insular—and then pretending they reflected public concerns—is, however, most certainly part of the problem.
Janine Jackson is FAIR’s program director and the producer and host of CounterSpin.
Why the obsession with ‘representative’ questionners? To my experience, youth or gender or other criteria, while perhaps more representative of the population, is hardly any guarantee of intelligent interest or enquiry. The partisan and unspoken sponsorship of the individuals asking the questions should be more relevant. I can live with a 55 year old white male Marxist asking questions. But a young, ethnic, woman who is yet another conservative front (that hits THREE markers) would seem to be visually pleasing, but intellectually pointless and more of the same.
Great reporting FAIR. Bravo! I think the point of the call for diversity representative of the wider population is precisely so that a wider diversity of voices has impact. It’s one thing to hypotheticalize a progressive, even radical white middle aged Marxist man. Another to realize him. Nothwithstanding that no less than Gabriel Kolko would call into question a Marxist at all.
There’s no way a third party candidate has a chance to get into the debates using the 5 polls “approved” by the CPD.. The names of Jill Stein and Gary Johnson aren’t even on any of the 5 polls.
I tried to look at the candidates included or the questions asked in the polls that are “acceptable” to The Commission on Presidential Debates. I FIND THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION VERY DISTURBING! MY QUESTION IS: HOW CAN THE CPD DETERMINE THE POLLING NUMBERS OF ANYONE OTHER THAN THE 2 MAJOR PARTY CANDIDATES IF THEY ARE NOT INCLUDED IN THE QUESTION “IF THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION WERE HELD TODAY, WHO WOULD YOU VOTE FOR?”:
ABC-Washington Post – ONLY CLINTON AND TRUMP AS CHOICES ON POLL
CBS-New York Times – NO COPY OF THE ACTUAL POLL CHOICES BUT COMMENTS INDICATE ONLY CLINTON AND TRUMP
CNN-Opinion Research Corporation – NO COPY OF THE ACTUAL POLL CHOICES BUT COMMENTS INDICATE ONLY CLINTON AND TRUMP
Fox News – NO COPY OF THE ACTUAL POLL CHOICES BUT COMMENTS INDICATE ONLY CLINTON AND TRUMP
NBC-Wall Street Journal – NO COPY OF THE ACTUAL POLL CHOICES BUT COMMENTS INDICATE ONLY CLINTON AND TRUMP
The CPD’s nonpartisan criteria for selecting candidates to participate in the 2016 general election presidential debates are listed below (all 4 candidates qualify under the criteria “Evidence of Constitutional Eligibiliy” and “Evidence of Ballot Access,” but only 2 qualify under “Indicators of Electoral Support” – does that surprise anyone given the disturbing information given above?
Evidence of Constitutional Eligibility
The CPD’s first criterion requires satisfaction of the eligibility requirements of Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution. The requirements are satisfied if the candidate:
is at least 35 years of age;
is a Natural Born Citizen of the United States and a resident of the United States for fourteen years; and
is otherwise eligible under the Constitution.
Evidence of Ballot Access
The CPD’s second criterion requires that the candidate qualify to have his/her name appear on enough state ballots to have at least a mathematical chance of securing an Electoral College majority in the 2016 general election. Under the Constitution, the candidate who receives a majority of votes in the Electoral College, at least 270 votes, is elected President regardless of the popular vote.
Indicators of Electoral Support
The CPD’s third criterion requires that the candidate have a level of support of at least 15% (fifteen percent) of the national electorate as determined by five national public opinion polling organizations selected by CPD, using the average of those organizations’ most recent publicly-reported results at the time of the determination.
Joe Beaver’s assessment is quite correct. Of course it is based off the what is for the most part, Corporate-Controlled Media. Which, in turn, caters not to a two-party system, but a single major party arrangement. For Democrats and Republicans are merely denominations of the single major party which exists, the Corporate State. Leaving concerted political action to get candidates such as Jill Stein and Gary Johnson in debates with Clinton and Trump.
EMPIRE DEMOCRACY — A BRAND NEW GAME
Our impoverished laboring-class never votes, it being the 50% of voters that never go to the polls. So, all of the land and wealth is owned by the upper-half of society and politics is the 25% rich ruling-class hoarding 75% of the wealth.
And so, the purpose of mainstream media is to brainwash the 25% middle-class. Not that the middle-class is unhappy about it, as our brutal imperialism has made them the richest middle-class the world has ever known.
All 5 polls are run by corporate media outlets. What’s wrong with that picture? Sadly, not many people could answer that question. Why not Gallup? Why not Pew? The entire system is a farce. It’s embarrassing.
I don’t believe that any state in the USA could currently meet OSCE qualifications for a “free and fair election.” Campaign funding and media bias are at least as big a problem as is lack of transparency or disenfranchisement of the poor and people of color.