Over at MassPoliticsProfs, Peter Ubertaccio says independent candidate for governor Evan Falchuk should be allowed into debates.
Evan Falchuk is not going to be elected Governor in November. But that was never his goal and not a sufficient reason to ignore him or disinvite him from televised political forums.
Falchuk is hoping to galvanize just enough voters to give his political designation official party status. He’s thinking long term. But for reasons cultural and institutional, that is going to be difficult. It’s made more difficult when he and other candidates are kept out of forums during the last month of the campaign.
Keeping candidates who languish in the polls out of forums makes sense, many will argue, because they don’t have a chance of winning and it takes attention away from those who do. This is not an unreasonable claim. In our crowded public space, the more attention that we can devote to the policy preferences of those with a real shot of winning, the better off we will be.
