On October 15, President Obama signed S.3196, the bill that authorizes the federal government to provide transition briefing and resources to any presidential candidate who is considered to be a possible winner. Thanks to Political Activity Law blog for this news. S.3196 mentions the Commission on Presidential Debates and seems to assume that the Commission will forever into the future limit access to the presidential general election debates to candidates who have a likelihood of winning the election. Federal officials are to be guided, in deciding which presidential candidates to include in the transition assistance, by whether the Commission has invited the candidate into its debates.
One more step towards a Prez-Emperor ???
A mere 10 weeks currently before a new Prez takes over.
Totally unknown on Election Day night who a new Prez might be — even in 2000 ???
I.E. one more MORON law by the New Age MORON party hacks.
And exactly who decides which candidates are possible winners? This typically falls to the media. Heck, why even have elections at all? We could just allow the Associated Press, Fox News, CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS to decide who should run the country. Think of the billions of dollars we would save on primaries, elections, boards of canvassers, and the Electoral College.
How disappointing.
With all of the debates that the 2 largest parties held during 2007 before the 2008 primaries started where all or virtually all of the DECLARED candidates participated, it will prove interesting to see what excuse is used to exclude minor candiates. If I recall correctly there was around a dozen debates where at least 7 people were on the dias.
So the only truly reasonable measure of a candidate should be how many states they’re on the ballot. Even if it is a very unlikely possibility, if they have a theoretical chance of winning 270 Electoral votes, that person should NOT be summarily excluded from ANY general election debate. Two thousand eight should once and for all time put to death, the lie about not wanting to clutter a stage with irrelavant candidates who can’t possibly win anything of consequence.
This is repulsive.