Quote (thundercock @ Jan 13 2022 07:34pm)
The Libertarian party isn't organized that well though. I think if the right moves are made, you could force the RNC to make concessions.
They are only blatantly biased against third parties in the sense that third parties don't have enough support. Do you really want to waste time with Jimmy McMillan talking about how the rent is too damn high? Do you want Vermin Supreme to be promising ponies? I'd support lowering the threshold to 10% but anything lower than that is a waste.
I'm not sure what it means to be "blatantly biased in favor of the establishment." Is Jim Jordan a member of the establishment? Is Matt Gaetz? Is there a list of establishment members? This is too vague of a statement to be considered.
I don't think it's unreasonable because people aren't going to vote until the debates happen if they are undecided. If Bernie were the nominee, do you really expect me to listen to the least successful Jew of all time yell in my ear for hours before I get to cast my vote? THAT'S unreasonable.
I don't think its fair to say that the CPD is directly biased against republicans, but its clear they were biased against Trump because Trump was anti-establishment and the CPD represents the most engrained beltway insider interests. They went all-out on opposing Trump, in debate structure choices and moderator choices and question choices. They didn't have any pretense of neutrality, its like the RNC said, the board of the CPD was openly hostile to Trump. They weren't that way against the Bushs. The RNC isn't saying the quiet part out loud, but the CPD is clearly establishment biased and the RNC has embraced the anti-establishment with Trump, and the CPD just went all out anti-Trump.
The bias against third parties hit a critical mass after Nader (and I should mention Ventura) broke the system. Until that point, 3rd parties were allowed reasonable participation on the debate stages, even if they couldn't win. It would be the greens and libertarians or whatever other were the #3 and #4. They didn't need to flood the stage with complete nobodies with no polling threshold, but they did allow the most notable 3rd parties on stage so it wasn't just a two-party system.
Sure there hasn't been a 3rd party on the national stage with a real chance, but Ventura showed how dangerous it was during the 1998 gubernatorial race. They put an alpha personality with reasonable policies and good articulation on stage next to two fucking clowns running for the RNC and DFL, and he won purely based on that debate. After that, they started suppressing 3rd parties
hard and both parties were happy to agree with it. That's what the two-party system used to be, they were willing to collude for their mutual benefit. Now with the extreme strain of TDS, they've broken their dark bond.