Quote (thundercock @ Jan 13 2022 10:01pm)
Again, I don't know what you mean by "establishment." I would characterize Mitch McConnell as part of the "establishment" but would Ted Cruz be part of it? I would say no but many would say yes. What about Josh Hawley? I don't think the CPD would be particularly biased against someone like Hawley or even Sanders. If you stick to your principles and are moderately truthful, I doubt you'd get much pushback from the moderators. Trump is a unique creature who was incredibly crass and most importantly, lied all the fucking time. Trump could have been the most establishment friendly candidate ever and he would have received the same amount of pushback I think. I think it's important to separate "Trump" from "anti-establishment" in this context.
For Presidential debates, I don't think there have been 3 on stage since Perot in 1992. I'm happy to lower the threshold to 10% because I think it's possible for a candidate to win a statewide race even if they are polling that low nationally. I don't think they are intentionally trying to screw over third parties...I just think they are trying to save everyone time.
Look at the 2016 election. At least for most candidates, I think its pretty easy to see who was 'establishment'. Remember that at the time, Ted Cruz
would be part of it. He only started emulating Trump after he won. It would be Clinton, Rubio, Kasich, Bush, Huckabee, Santorum, Christie as establishment candidates, Trump, Sanders, Stein, Paul and Johnson as anti-establishment. And who got screwed by the debate committees at the primary and general elections? Everyone had knives out for Trump and rigged it against Sanders and didn't even put Stein or Johnson on stage.
Yes the last debates to actually have third parties was 1992. In 1996 they just directly excluded Perot with no real criterion, just arguing he couldn't win without any rule to point to, after his supposed spoiler role in 1992. The committee for the debates
changed the criterion in 2000 specifically to exclude the third party candidates like Perot: Johnson and Stein had polled at 13% and 7% in 2016, but the CPD made the rules say it required an
average of at least 15% on 5+ ballots and on ballots in 270+ EV of states. Before 1996, we had third parties on stage with the major parties all the time, now the greens get arrested each year for protesting the CPD;
Can anyone really pretend that the CPD isn't a blatantly establishment biased commission? It was used by the two major parties to exclude the third parties as soon as the third parties started to threaten them. And when anti-establishment candidates started threatening them again in 2016, they went all-out and dropped any pretense of neutrality and tried to just stab Trump to death on stage. Except he used their momentum for a jiu jitsu suplex.