Media Coverage of Third Parties is Non-existent

Jesse Booth said:

It's because you have to either be an idealist or a nutjob to join a third party - it's usually best to be both.

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Does that mean that one must be an amoral fool to join the Donkeys or Elephants? Or just a Donkey or an Elephant?

TobyOne said:

I'm not saying Libertarian's are crackpots, I swing that way myself. I'm saying that the media shouldn't be compelled to cover every candidate up to and including crackpot candidates that have no chance of having an impact. If you want libertarians to get attention, why not communists or satanists or the Brony candidate? There needs to be a bar to clear.

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Its pretty obvious libertarians have cleared it. They win elections, gets millions in funding, show up on ballots. Have debates and conventions.

When the debates roll around I am sure that the media outlets hosting the debates will find reason to include Garry Johnson and exclude Jill Stein because they know that Jill Stein can only hurt Hillary while Garry Johnson will draw mainly from conservative voters.

jmotivator said:

When the debates roll around I am sure that the media outlets hosting the debates will find reason to include Garry Johnson and exclude Jill Stein because they know that Jill Stein can only hurt Hillary while Garry Johnson will draw mainly from conservative voters.

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Well, to be fair, Jill Stein is a joke and is polling roughly a third of Johnson, with her high water mark around 5%, versus more than double that for Johnson.

And it appears that Johnson is drawing more support from Clinton than Trump, so the premise is wrong. Other than that, I agree!

Right now, pollsters that include Johnson and, less frequently, Stein are showing Clinton with a slightly smaller lead than pollsters that test only Trump and Clinton.

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Thoreau72 said:

Does that mean that one must be an amoral fool to join the Donkeys or Elephants? Or just a Donkey or an Elephant?

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Not at all, there are plenty of perfectly reasonable people in the two major parties (many of which I highly respect) - perfectly reasonable people who either accept or prefer the status quo, and go with the flow; though I disagree with their choice, I understand why they make it.

As for amoral fools, you can find them in every corner of the political map - they're the partisan hacks that believe that anyone who disagrees with them is an idiot, or possibly evil. They are the blind imbeciles who paint their fellow Americans as the enemy while our country is being led by incompetent, corrupt bureaucrats and figureheads who laugh at us off-screen. They are the simpletons who lock themselves in echo chambers and stifle opposing opinions, for fear of their ideology being contested. Those are the amoral fools, and they permeate every political party as a highly vocal and dangerous minority, which always seems to get more screen time than the reasonable people do.

jmotivator said:

When the debates roll around I am sure that the media outlets hosting the debates will find reason to include Garry Johnson and exclude Jill Stein because they know that Jill Stein can only hurt Hillary while Garry Johnson will draw mainly from conservative voters.

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Keep in mind that the debates are controlled by the two parties, not the media. The Commission on Presidential Debates was created and is run by reps of R and D. Nothing is stopping anyone from having debates outside of that framework except that the two candidates agreed to boycott any independent debates. Same as they did with primaries.

jonny5 said:

Found an interesting website charting tv news mentions. In the last 7 days for example, Trump was mentioned 24,000 times. Clinton 12,000 times. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein were mentioned 100 times. So, while Johnson gets 9% support in national polls, he receives .4% (4/10ths of a percent) of the coverage. Since that is where most people get their campaign news, it partially explains his inability to move beyond it. No one knows his name, much less his policies.

US Presidential Campaign 2016: Candidate Television Tracker

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I suspect that, if you were to ask them, and get an answer, they'd say they report what people want to hear.

Ok, but if so, the stuff I'm seeing on Facebook would clearly indicate that people want to hear about the third parties.

What am I missing?

jonny5 said:

Keep in mind that the debates are controlled by the two parties, not the media. The Commission on Presidential Debates was created and is run by reps of R and D. Nothing is stopping anyone from having debates outside of that framework except that the two candidates agreed to boycott any independent debates. Same as they did with primaries.

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For many years the debates were organized and run by the League of Women Voters. I cannot remember the exact sequence of events that put the D & R clowns in charge, but the process has gone waaayyy downhill since.

radcen said:

I suspect that, if you were to ask them, and get an answer, they'd say they report what people want to hear.

Ok, but if so, the stuff I'm seeing on Facebook would clearly indicate that people want to hear about the third parties.

What am I missing?

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Those people are a minority.

jonny5 said:

Found an interesting website charting tv news mentions. In the last 7 days for example, Trump was mentioned 24,000 times. Clinton 12,000 times. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein were mentioned 100 times. So, while Johnson gets 9% support in national polls, he receives .4% (4/10ths of a percent) of the coverage. Since that is where most people get their campaign news, it partially explains his inability to move beyond it. No one knows his name, much less his policies.

US Presidential Campaign 2016: Candidate Television Tracker

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I started a thread on the Libertarian Town Hall yesterday and got one response and only 90 read the post. The Clintonista and the Trumpkins do dominate. They have their faith and they aren't interested in anyone who isn't a liar, a huckster, a deadbeat, a liberal or a crook.

That's life.