Democracy Now. debates The good, the bad and the silly.

[No Elephants]

Democracy Now streamed the debate between the President and Romney, but it paused after each question and allowed Dr. Jill Stein and Rocky Anderson to answer.

I think this was an exercise in futility.

First, I doubt anyone knew about it. Second, even people who knew about it were still likely to watch Obama and Romney in real time.

Second, it was as exclusionary as the debates between the two major Parties.

My suggestion would have been a panel of all third party candidates who had qualified for federal matching funds, held on a different night with its own questions, although on the same general topics, like Medicare, affordable health, etc. I would also invite Romney and Obama, but, obviously, neither would show up.

I would also have held it after last night's debate. Pretending we have to grill these candidates at exactly the same time as Romney and Obama lest the third party candidates gain some unfair advantage is silly.

Each of them is running on well under 1 million dollars and each of Romney and Obama is running on about a billion dollars. Moreover, the feds have not yet released matching funds, apparently, even though early voting in several states began a while ago.

Democracy Now's election coverage http://www.democracynow.org/topics/election_2012

[No Elephants]

1. P.S. The good, of course, is that DN provided some kind of forum for

a couple of third party candidates.

They won't win a single state, but they do deserve to be heard.

[Enthusiast]

2. They do deserve to be heard.

If we are interested in true democracy that is.

[No Elephants]

3. I am not sure I want true democracy.

In ancient Athens, supposedly the birthplace of democracy, citizens voted on everything.

Shall we raise taxes? Shall we go to war? And so on.

With the internet, we could probably approach that.

But, the Presidential Debate Commission--and the networks, though they keep blaming solely the Commission with Pilate-like statements--goes to another extreme.

It's as though they believe the election belongs to plutonomy or Republicans and Democrats and the networks, as opposed to belonging to the people. Then again, we allow it. So, maybe they're correct.

We've ceded the nation.