Obama Should Debate Barr and Nader
July 28th, 2008
That is not a competitive campaign. Including third-party options in polls right now clearly benefits Obama. An 11.5% victory for Obama would put him over 400 electoral votes, and put a whole swatch of red states either in play, or in his column. So, the question is, how can Obama go about raising the national numbers for third party candidates like Nader and Barr?
The answer, I think, is just to debate them. Next month, Obama should propose including Barr, Nader and McKinney in one of the presidential debates.
(Via Open Left.)
That’s an interesting idea, although I have to wonder how well it would play out for Obama. Although increasing the stature of the third-party candidates would seem to help Obama out in current polling, that benefit conceivably is contingent on their independence from the two major parties. If either major party is seen using the third-party candidates for tactical advantage, I think that could backfire for that major party in the minds of voters.
