Suppose they gave a (political) party and nobody came?

Just how many parties does it take to make a two party system?

There was another debate the other day, and you missed it.

That's not a reproach; I missed it too. I think that nearly everyone missed it. I only heard about it a day or so after it happened. No network carried it. No analysts analyzed it. No biased news organizations hyperbolized about it. No pundits...well, no pundits did whateverthehell pundits do with regard to this debate. And I couldn't tell you who won. (I couldn't even watch it on-line and after the fact, since the only places with it archived have it in a version of Flash that this old Mac can't handle.)

This was the Third Party Debate, a misnomer if ever I heard one since there were four "third" parties involved. It basically involved four people you probably never heard of from parties that you never cared about. The four parties involved were the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, the Justice Party and the Constitution Party.

It's not surprising that the event went ignored by America, as it lacked star power; the only "star" involved was moderator Larry King. But even if no one was watching King still did his job, asking questions on topics that neither the Democrat Obama nor the Republican Romney (nor their minions Biden and Ryan) seemed to want to get anywhere near.

Topics like the War on Drugs. It's interesting to note that three out of the four "third" party candidates favored the legalization of marijuana (only the staunchly conservative Virgil Goode of the Constitution Party was against it).

Topics like the National Defense Authorization Act, which (among other things) allows for the indefinite detention of American citizens without due process and which Barack Obama not only signed into law but fought for in the courts. (Not Obama's most shining moment, in my opinion, and not one that either candidate wants you to look too closely at. Obama doesn't want to have to defend what he's done, and Romney doesn't want to attack him for doing something that he himself would certainly have done.) To their credit, all four of the "third" party candidates came out strongly against the National Defense Authorization Act.

Now, I'd really like to go into this debate in more detail, but as I said I never saw it. I'm working from published news reports from other sources, and that's really no way to do this, but that's what I have to work with. And, as I said, almost no one else has seen it either. A pity, because a vigorous debate on subjects ignored/overlooked/deliberately avoided by the major candidates is something I'd really like to see and something noticeably lacking in any of the "major" party debates.

And it's in the airing of things that the Republicrats want kept out of sight that the "third" parties perform their best, most truely useful function. What a shame no one was watching...we need that kind of political dialogue in this country. We don't get it. We need to ask for it, insist upon it, else we stay in the uninformed dark.

Can I stop putting "third" in quotation marks now?

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Here's a link to the actual debate; I hope you can play it. I can't.
http://www.c-span.org/Events/Third-Party-Presidential-Debate/10737435220/

Here's a couple of news stories on the event:
http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/the-third-party-debate/
http://www.wtvm.com/story/19899099/third-party-debate-offers-ideas-not-talked-about-by-major-candidates