Poll for Jill and Get Her Into the Debates

The two party system in American politics is a problem. The duopoly doesn’t allow for any dissension outside of the mutually defined parameters of debate.

As linguist Noam Chomsky famously said in his 1998 book, The Common Good:

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

Of course, it wouldn’t do to be too forward with that point of view, so the US electoral system has devised a way of keeping dissent at a minimum during the circus that is the quadrennial presidential election — they institute arbitrary rules for inclusion in debates.

The Commission on Presidential Debates, which is the non-profit made up of Democratic and Republican party hacks that determines debate rules, has stated that nobody polling under 15 percent nationally can join the televised debates that reach millions across the nation. It’s a clever way of limiting any actual discussion of the issues.

The standard was adopted in 2000, which tells you all you need to know about the reasons behind its genesis. Alternet:

One of the smoldering issues in Nader’s campaign is his fight to be included in the nationally televised presidential debates. With his remarkable grasp of facts and history, Nader is a formidable debater who’s eager to do battle with Bush and Gore. But the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), the custodian of the debates, has decreed that to participate, a candidate must have at least 15 percent support in 6 specific polls. Nader is already polling between 7 and 10 percent in California, and close to that in several other states, but getting to a full 15 percent in the next few months may prove impossible. In light of this, many observers feel that the CPD — which is controlled by the Democratic and Republican parties — has unfairly stacked the deck against political insurgents.

Nader would sue (unsuccessfully) the CPD for accepting corporate funding:

The suit, which the plaintiffs say could affect this fall’s presidential debates, says that corporate financing of the debates amounts to an illegal corporate campaign contribution. It asks the court to strike down the F.E.C. regulations that allow corporations — like Anheuser-Busch, the maker of Budweiser and a sponsor of this fall’s debates — to contribute millions of dollars to the staging of the debates.

In short, the CPD has been a farce for decades. But we can take some of the power back.

This year, I’m asking every single one of those liberal Democrats who are clinging to Clinton because they are, once again, buying the fear mongering hype positioning the latest Republican as the Worst Threat to Democracy There Has Ever Been or Shall Be to take a moment and act for their country.

Sure, you can still vote for Hillary Clinton. Sure, you can still support her and put out yard signs and harangue your friends on Facebook. But the next time a pollster calls, tell them you support Jill Stein.

Get her into the debates.

We don’t need an endless runaround of Trump screaming disjointed garbling at Clinton and Clinton coolly telling the world that she’s calmly thought out the policies that will decimate the national and global underclass and continue the world’s march towards the inequities and repression of late stage capitalism.

What we do need is another voice in the debate- maybe not a voice you agree with, maybe not your first pick, maybe you believe that Stein’s positions are not serious, or safe, or realistic- another voice that will actually offer an alternative.

Dr. Jill Stein is the closest that we have to a left alternative that can poll high enough to effect some change by her candidacy alone. Let’s put her over the top so she can sit at the table with the two major parties and force them to explain their positions as more than “not the lesser evil.”

All it takes is answering a pollster with her name.

The Clinton campaign is already sweating, putting out hit pieces deliberately misconstruing Stein’s positions on medical science in an attempt to deflect from a lack of positive message. This Clintonian paranoia is more than enough of a reason to want Stein on the stage!