Kennedy Won’t Qualify for Debate
That's some catch, that Catch-22.
WaPo (“RFK Jr. won’t meet CNN debate requirement for ballot access“):
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly claimed that he appears on enough statewide ballots to qualify for next week’s debate between President Biden and Donald Trump and has threatened to sue CNN for not letting him on the stage.
But a Washington Post survey of state election officials found Kennedy is not on the ballot in several states where he has claimed he is — and he will not reach the requirement by Thursday’s deadline to qualify for the debate. The rules of CNN’s debate indicate candidates must appear on enough ballots nationwide to earn the requisite 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency, along with earning 15 percent support in four national polls.
Election officials in Utah, Delaware, Oklahoma, Michigan and Tennessee have confirmed Kennedy will be on the ballot. Additionally, CNN has counted California and Hawaii, where Kennedy is the presumptive nominee of minor parties where the states have either not certified him or received paperwork. Those states add up to 100 electoral votes. Kennedy also has not yet met the polling requirement for the debate, though could if a qualifying poll is released before Thursday.
Kennedy intended to get on all 50 states’ ballots quickly as he sought to gain national attention that would come from sharing a debate stage with the two major-party candidates. Kennedy has pointed to his exclusion as evidence that he has been treated unfairly by the parties and the media.
His campaign has spent months gathering the signatures that states require for independent candidates — those not affiliated with a political party — to appear on the ballot in November. Those signatures are then verified by state election officials before the candidate is certified to appear. Kennedy can also appear on states’ ballots if he’s nominated by a minor political party that has already petitioned for ballot access. But many election officials told The Post they won’t certify those petitions or green-light minor party nominees for several weeks, making it impossible for Kennedy to check off the requirement in time for the debate.
Kennedy’s campaign has argued that Biden and Trump similarly should not qualify for the stage under CNN’s rules because they have not yet officially been selected as the presidential nominee by their respective parties. The Republican and Democratic nominating conventions are in July and August, respectively. But CNN has said that because Trump and Biden are their respective parties’ presumptive nominees, and major-party candidates don’t have to petition states for ballot access, both satisfy the electoral college criteria for the debate, according to CNN.
Given the realities of our political system, this is a good outcome. Kennedy has zero shot of winning the election and his presence in the debates and on the ballot would simply take away exposure from the two plausible candidates.
That said, Kennedy is polling somewhere around 10 percent nationally in surveys that include his name. He’s far and away the most serious third-party candidate in almost three decades. (Ross Perot was included in the 1992 debates but failed to meet the threshold in 1996; he nonetheless got 8 million votes, 8.4% of all voters.) Given how unpopular Biden and Trump are, it’s quite likely that he could considerably improve his standing were he allowed to go toe-to-toe with them on the debate stage.
Further, his camp is right to complain that the rules are stacked. He has to be officially approved for the ballot in enough states to win the contest before the states approve candidates for ballot access. It’s literally impossible. Meanwhile, even though Biden and Trump are technically not yet their parties’ nominees, they’re given a pass because everyone knows they will be. And, of course, they don’t have to jump through any hoops to qualify for ballot access because the Democratic and Republican nominees automatically qualify.
It’s actually kind of appropriate, since there’s also no way he qualifies for the presidency…
His brain worm may qualify for the Vice Presidential debate though.
I don’t know whether holding general-election debates before the candidates are officially nominated is a violation of any prior rules (though it is certainly unprecedented), but I can see how it automatically disadvantages third-party candidates further. At the end of the day, the commission makes its own rules, and yes, it is rigged in favor of the two major parties.
I do recall Perot challenged his exclusion from the 1996 debates in court.
I’m not saying this out of any sympathy toward Kennedy as a candidate or public figure. Indeed, I think the fact that third-party candidates are typically nutcases like Kennedy is itself a symptom of the two-party duopoly, as nobody sane usually wants to bother. It’s a self-reinforcing loop.
Junior is finding out his name is too big for him.
Isn’t this primarily due to Trump/Biden agreeing to debate far earlier than usual?
According to a Forbes article an offshore crypto platform is saying there is a 1 in 20 chance the debate won’t happen. Any takers?
@Mr. Prosser: It would not surprise me if Trump were to back out while simultaneously gaslighting his followers by saying that it was Biden who canceled because he was afraid to face Trump and to reveal his obvious cognitive decline to the world.
The fascinating question is how the media would report on that…
@DrDaveT:
My vote is for “shape of the earth differs” stories.
@Mr. Prosser:
I suspect this is off James Carville predicting Trump would pull a no-show.
Darn! It’s about the numbers. I was hoping it was because someone actually paid attention to what he is saying and that is what disqualified him.
Steve
@DrDaveT: Most media readers will contextualize the reports in whatever manner their bias dictates.
Well, he is not qualified to be president either. I guess every now and again the universe gets it right.
“Well, he is not qualified to be president either.”
And Trump is? But they let him debate so your argument holds no water.
And the real catch 22 is a 3rd party isn’t taken seriously because when they are taken seriously (like the real threat Jr.poses to BOTH the 2party candidates) the pundits (and many commentators here) don’t take them seriously.
So we go back to the two corporate choices. Biden never lifted Trump’s tariffs and income tax cuts set to expire next year. Some progressive.
Is completely incapable of once and for all cleaning up the border. Is totally tone deaf to folks that don’t think “the economy is doing great.”
Just look at a house payment now or the Monthly interest charges of 20% – 30% piling up on the 10k you owe on your credit card bills.
Trump? Execution would be fine by me. Biggest threat to America since Stalin.
So make fun of RFK’s worm or some of his more outlandish statements and then ask yourself why so many HATE these two candidates and why the two parties wouldn’t have it any other way.
@The Q: The “real threat” that he poses to both candidates is only destructive, though. He doesn’t present a threat to either in the sense of being able to win, only to throw the result into the House. Color me skeptical about the value of such a threat.
@just nutha:
To throw the result into the House he’d have to win at least one state, something he doesn’t appear close to achieving anywhere. His only “threat” is as a spoiler.
His “threat” is that he MIGHT be a threat so that “threat” must be muted.
Just as Perot in 1992 either helped or hurt Clinton or Bush 1 is still debated, the two parties do not want to take a chance of history repeating. This also falls into the lib Dem trait of telling people how to live, think, behave, in short the condescending “we know what’s best for you” so let us decide how you vote.
Let the voters/viewers decide if Jr is an ignorant hack. Not CNN or the LOWV. If he can poll at 15% he at least has some credibility and it’s not the anti vax shite that keeps him off, it’s his very real critique of crony capitalism, big tech/finance hijacking the Dem Party and the incredible wealth imbalance the Dems have zero interest in correcting.
Hey Biden, outlaw stock buybacks like they were prior to 1982 or let them be used in certain limited circumstances.
And who can forget it was Clinton/Rubin who stabbed true progressives by gutting the cornerstone of the New Deal banking reforms -Glass Steagall.
So let’s all feel good we kept a “kook” off the stage while we watch the truly demented kook – Trump – spew his poison.
@The Q:
People who flog 3rd parties seem unserious because, like RFK Jr., their views are incoherent and all over the place.
In one breath, sneering “some progressive” at Biden over taxes, in the next parroting the border fearmongering of the rightwingers who killed a bipartisan border bill.
Seems 3rd partiers don’t know what they want and will never satisfied. Not unlike the many Americans who’ve found reasons to hate every Democrat or Republican nominee. And would have found reasons to complain about and hate any potential Trump and Biden replacements.
Yep, those horrible lib Dems: expanding Medicaid, decriminalizing marijuana, investing in infrastructure, and reducing the health care uninsured rate to historic lows while banning books, passing voter suppression laws, banning black history, banning abortion, and trying to ban Gay Pride.
This is why America is on the verge of Hungarian- or Belarusian-style authoritarian theocracy. Americans, especially white men, have an endless capacity for falling for bullshit lies about liberals and Democrats. Stupid stupid stupid. The black voters voting Democratic at a 90% clip seem to be the last demographic left with any collective common sense.
Lol yeah right. RFK Jr. is simping for Vladimir Putin, the greediest most venal oligarch on the planet. RFK Jr. is throwing Twitter buzzwords at the wall, he’s not critiquing capitalism. He does not give a damn about the poor — and he has done far less to uplift the poor and working class than Democrats, who’s labor policies under Joe Biden have been fantastic. And if his last name Will Walker he be pulling at 0.15%. Ain’t nobody crying because this frog-voiced fraud is being kept off the stage.
@DK:
Well said.
@Michael Reynolds:
We are in so much trouble, dude. How have you survived? Give me advice.
@DK:
Well, I am trying to recover my sense of humor about things. I realized that I have decathected, disconnected from everything but my wife, my kids and my country. I’ve moved too much to be loyal to a city or state. But even when I lived in France or Italy or Portugal, I knew I was an American. And now that’s in doubt. We may come to the Groucho point: I wouldn’t want to be a member of any country stupid enough to destroy itself over this piece of garbage.
I traveled overseas during Watergate and Vietnam, but this is the first time I am genuinely ashamed of my country. In the past it was this issue or that. This policy or that policy. We’ve had some lousy presidents. Now it’s not about the government, or a policy, it’s the people who are failing. It’s the Americans.
So: whiskey (Bourbon and/or Scotch), weed, Wellbutrin, cigars, and Househunters International.
RFK is a clown and it’s telling that a clown is getting more support as a third-party candidate than anyone since Perot. Much of this stems from running the two most unpopular major-party candidates in the history of polling. One wonders what the support of 2016’s Gary Johnson (who was not a clown) would be.
I have no desire to see RFK succeed, but if “democracy” means anything it should mean a set of fair rules that apply to every candidate, even RFK.
@Andy:
The polls don’t support that assertion. Biden and Trump are indeed both very unpopular right now, but Clinton and Trump were even less liked at this point in 2016.
Here’s RCP’s current favorable/unfavorable:
Biden: 41.0 to 55.5 (-14.5)
Trump: 42.5 to 54.3 (-11.8)
Now, here’s what RCP said on June 17, 2016 (the closest date I could find):
Clinton: 39.4 to 55.4 (-16.0)
Trump: 33.7 to 61.2 (-27.5)
@Andy: “One wonders what the support of 2016’s Gary Johnson (who was not a clown) would be.”
I don’t think Jr.’s fans are supporting him despite the fact that he’s a clown. I suspect they support him BECAUSE he’s a clown.
Got to remember that one of the main reasons for supporting Trump is that he’s “fun.”
@Kylopod:
Interesting, thanks. IIRC it was different a month or two ago – I wonder what the averages are over a longer period.
@Andy: To add a little nuance to it, what stuck out to me was that Biden’s numbers are more or less the same as Hillary’s; slightly better but not by much. Trump, on the other hand, has vastly improved in his popularity since 2016.
Another point to consider is the “double-haters”–voters who express an unfavorable opinion of both major-party candidates. I don’t recall hearing that term before this year, but it was definitely a factor in 2016. That year, the double-haters ended up breaking heavily for Trump. Right now, polls on double-haters suggest they lean toward Biden.
I think also that you’re failing to take into account what DK alluded to before, the element of name recognition. If Gary Johnson’s name were Robert F. Kennedy–or vice versa–I think the comparative strength of their poll numbers would have been different.