Oct 25 2008
Third Party Candidate’s Debate
For those who were paying attention the Third Party Candidates held a debate Thursday at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington D.C. The participants were Ralph Nader, Independent Party and Chuck Baldwin, Constitution Party. Bob Barr, Libertarian and Cynthia McKinney, Green Party could not make it. Journalist Chris Hedges moderated.
The debate was civil and informative. There was none of the nonsense witnessed in the Republican/Democratic debates. The candidates were respectful and refrained from the mud slinging and misdirection so prevalent in the Major Party debates. The United States Commission on Presidential Debates have done a great disservice to this country by not including these candidates in their broadcast debates. But after watching them you can understand why. Nader and Baldwin answered the questions asked and gave well thought out solutions to how to handle the many problems we face today.
For those of you who are interested the following video is the debate in its entirety.
This country has been dominated by the two major parties far to long. This system has been institutionalized by the Commission on Debates refusal to include viable third party candidates in their coverage. The loosers are the American people.
I have been advocating opening up the presidential debates to the top third party candidates since before the first debate. The two party system, like so much of our clumsy, unfair and inefficient system of selecting a United States President is no longer representing the choices of individual voters and, along with archaic electoral college and the super delegates, should go the way of the dodo bird. They simply don’t work and we all know the hackable electronic voting machines make a mockery of the Great American Election.
Anyone who dared to vote in 2000 for third party candidate, Ralph Nader, ran the risk of being labeled with a number of unflattering names. Nader, of course, was accused of siphoning off votes that belonged to Al Gore in the Great Florida Voting Fiasco. No amount of protesting that there is nothing sacred about the 2-party system or explaining that the founding fathers were against parties, anyway, was acceptable. And because third parties “never stand a chance,” they fail to be taken seriously, no matter how great the candidates or their platforms.
The inclusion of the most qualified of the third party candidates in the presidential debates of 2008 would have added enormously to the conversation. Some of the best and most creative ideas have come from third party candidates, but without public exposure, no one ever hears them.
So this election season we have been limited only to what the two parties’ anointed candidates were able to say in a tightly controlled format. Those who have listened to C-SPAN’s third party debate between intelligent, fully informed and highly qualified contenders can see what the rest of the country has missed. With Chris Hedges as monitor, the questions were serious ones that touched on the really important issues and the debaters were respectful of each other and their audience, well-prepared and each gave a brilliant performance. The country itself has been the loser.
The citizens of this Republic like to be spoon-fed, they like the political homogenization, they are frightened of change and challenge. We’re in for a rough ride and I wonder whether there are enough of us who are awake to deal with it. We can do more than hope, we must.