Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Civility and pleas to be heard mark ‘debate’ among 18 marginal candidates

Libertarian Dan Behrman,  Libertarian Arvin Vohra and Life and Liberty Party member J.R. Myers.

Among the 18 participants in the debate: (from left) Libertarian Dan Behrman, Libertarian Arvin Vohra and Life and Liberty Party member J.R. Myers.

Shawn Griffiths

Griffiths is a contributing writer.

While the Democratic contest was quickly condensing into a two-man race, 18 minimally known presidential aspirants were convening for a sprawling discussion on Wednesday.

Though billed as a debate among independents, organizers said the gathering was really more an intervention on a broken system — a moment to give candidates on the margins an opportunity to rail against the Republican and Democratic duopoly, and to show how rivals can discuss policies more civilly than the polarized shouting that marks so much political discourse.

"One thing that's clear is that the political system we have right now is not serving us well. Worst of all, it doesn't even allow for straightforward solutions to be part of the conversation. That's why we're creating this platform for a new national dialogue," said Christina Tobin, who created the Free and Equal Elections Foundation, which staged the livestreamed event at a hotel in downtown Chicago.


To create a more comprehensive discussion and a more thoughtful tone, where sound bites were not necessary for candidates unspooling views that stretched across the ideological spectrum, Tobin moderated a pair of debates among nine candidates each – both of them lasting three and a half hours.

"There's a large and growing political reform wave that is slowly but surely winning transformational changes at the local level, but you wouldn't know it from listening to the mainstream political coverage. It's past time for democracy itself to be part of the national conversation," said Eli Beckerman, founder of Open The Debates, the debate's co-host.

Though the debate included topics that ranged from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to mandatory vaccinations, the conversation largely focused on political reform and the obstacles third-party and independent candidates face nationwide -- starting with the fall presidential debates.

"Democrats and Republicans will stop at nothing to squash any other voice from being heard," said Libertarian Jo Jorgensen. "It's how they stay in power. What most Americans don't realize is that the debate commission is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican and Democratic parties."

While venting frustration at rules that restrict access to the nationally televised debates, candidates also deliberated the finer points of an array of other proposals for making the political process more democratic and representative of the national will: ranked-choice voting, the rival alternative called approval voting, efforts to make it easier for partisan outsiders to get on the ballot, public financing of campaigns, regulating money in politics and various plans for altering the rules of the Electoral College.

"Our country is in crisis. But it's not the first time we've ever been in crisis. I've spent my career teaching American history. And every time that we have a period of crisis we also have a period of creativity, where lots of new ideas pop up, and many of those ideas pop up from third parties," said American Solidarity Party nominee Brian Carroll.

"I think we need more transparency in our current system first, and more options to be used at the local level. We need to really think this through," Libertarian Erik Gerhardt said in urging a go-slow approach to a nationwide refashioning of the election system,.

The debate was notable for how infrequently the candidates talked beyond their two-minute limits, interrupted one another, spoke out of turn or made a disparaging comment about somebody else on stage.

Organizers made an effort to exclude dozens of people who say they're running for president on the true margins of reality. More than two-dozen people qualified for an invitation because they are seeking the nominations of one of the five parties that have primaries and are on the ballot in at least two states — Republican, Democratic, Libertarian, Green and Constitution — or are independents running the bureaucratic traps to get on the ballots of at least two states.

The candidates with hope of gaining some traction for their cause often point to a recent USA Today survey in which 65 percent said they support"making it easier for third-party and independent candidates to run for office."

Independent Mark Charles, a member of the Navajo Nation, said he thought the event provided "a dialogue that our nation's simplistic two-party system does not know how to have."

Tobin said she hopes the event is the beginning of a tour of open presidential debates that are inclusive and focused on solutions. FEEF has not announced when or where a second event might take place.


www.youtube.com


www.youtube.com

Read More

Poll: 82% of Americans Want Redistricting Done by Independent Commission, Not Politicians

Capitol building, Washington, DC

Unsplash/Getty Images

Poll: 82% of Americans Want Redistricting Done by Independent Commission, Not Politicians

There may be no greater indication that voters are not being listened to in the escalating redistricting war between the Republican and Democratic Parties than a new poll from NBC News that shows 8-in-10 Americans want the parties to stop.

It’s what they call an "80-20 issue," and yet neither party is standing up for the 80% as they prioritize control of Congress.

Keep ReadingShow less
Nationalization by Stealth: Trump’s New Industrial Playbook

The White House and money

AI generated image

Nationalization by Stealth: Trump’s New Industrial Playbook

In the United States, where the free market has long been exalted as the supreme engine of prosperity, a peculiar irony is taking shape. On August 22, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced that the federal government had acquired a stake of just under 10% in Intel, instantly making itself the company’s largest shareholder. The stake - roughly 433 million shares, valued at about $8.9 billion, purchased at $20.47 each - was carved out of the Biden-era CHIPS Act subsidies and repackaged as equity. Formally, it is a passive, non-voting stake, with no board seat or governance rights. Yet symbolism matters: Washington now sits, however discreetly, in Intel’s shareholder register. Soon afterward, reports emerged that Samsung, South Korea’s industrial giant, had also been considered for similar treatment. What once would have been denounced as creeping socialism in Washington is now unfolding under Donald Trump, a president who boasts of his devotion to private enterprise but increasingly embraces tactics that blur the line between capitalism and state control.

The word “nationalization,” for decades associated with postwar Britain, Latin American populists, or Arab strongmen, is suddenly back in circulation - but this time applied to the citadel of capitalism itself. Trump justifies the intervention as a matter of national security and economic patriotism. Subsidies, he argues, are wasteful. Tariffs, in his view, are a stronger tool for forcing corporations to relocate factories to U.S. soil. Yet the CHIPS Act, that bipartisan legacy of the Biden years, remains in force and politically untouchable, funneling billions of dollars into domestic semiconductor projects. Rather than scrap it, Trump has chosen to alter the terms: companies that benefit from taxpayer largesse must now cede equity to the state. Intel, heavily reliant on those funds, has become the test case for this new model of American industrial policy.

Keep ReadingShow less