The google presidential debate petition

[A Black Falcon]

There's really no point, though. The Democratic and Republican party primary debates allow in everyone, and they're quite chaotic until they narrow things down in the later debates as people quit... of course that makes sense, as you're never sure who will emerge as the winner (how many predicted Obama would win at the time of the first Democratic debate? Not many people!), but in the general election? There are only two possible winners, the Republican or the Democrat. Because of our political system, all other candidates are completely irrelevant except perhaps as spoilers. Voting for them doesn't change that fact, it just wastes your vote.

As a result, I have no problem with only having people in the main presidental debates who actually have a chance to win. This is why it was right to include Perot in 1992, who was a serious candidate who did very, very well popular vote wise (he had an honest shot...), but including a Nader, now? No. It would just distract from the candidates who could win.

Argue for a change to our political system to one with coalition governments or runoffs or something like that, but including minor, irrelevant candidates in the few, time-limited debates that the parties agree to (three with the presidential candidates and one with the VPs is the normal thing)? It would just encourage more people to waste their votes on people like Nader... and it's exactly that kind of thing that put Bush in office. A couple hundred fewer Nader voters in Florida in 2000 and Bush never would have been close enough to steal the election...