US Presidential Elections 2016: Whatever Happened To Candidates Jill Stein and Gary Johnson?
As the entire world sat riveted to the highly anticipated 2016 presidential debates, many others wondered about the two other candidates who weren't present: Green Party nominee Dr. Jill Stein and Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. The two third-party candidates had to watch from the sidelines as Hillary Clinton and Donald sparred over a diverse range of issues, from offshore employment to the correct "presidential temperament."
It was previously reported that the two candidates were excluded from the first presidential debate. Both failed to reach the 15 percent polling threshold set by the Commission of Presidential Debates. Stein had 3.2 percent, while Johnson had 8.4.
Escorted off campus
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But that did not stop them from participating in the fray. Jill Stein, for one, arranged for media interviews at the Hofstra University where the debates were held, only to be escorted out by campus and Nassau County police.
In an interview with MSNBC, Jill Stein said she had been on campus to get on the stage to "open up the debates." She claimed that American voters needed to know "who [they] can vote for," especially at a time where the two dominating party nominees are rejected by voters at record levels.
#OccupyTheDebates
But her failed attempt to occupy the 2016 presidential debates had not been in vain, as DemocracyNow.org, an independent global news program, initiated a debate format that interjected Jill Stein's opinion in between Clinton-Trump segments. This format sought to expand the debates to include more viewpoints, particularly from the third-party candidates.
Stein talked about the "Green New Deal," an emergency jobs program that will create 20 million living wage jobs by solving climate change. She also discussed cutting down predatory student debts by having government bail out students from loans the same way the US government bailed out Wall Street during the 2008 housing crash.
Stein had also criticized Hillary Clinton for suppressing minimum wage and for voting to support the Iraq War under former US president George Bush. Trump did not escape her scathing words as she pointed out that the "offshoring" of national jobs that Trump strongly argued against had been a practice of his many businesses.
Lambasting the candidates
While Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson did not attend DemocracyNow.org's debates, he took to Twitter to lambast the two establishment nominees during the 2016 presidential debates. For the most part, he was critical of how Clinton and Trump preferred to attack each other rather than talk about real issues at hand. He also took advantage of the din to air his platform, as he talked about #FAIRTax, which forwarded the idea of federal consumption tax over income and corporate tax.
He did, however, shared Clinton and Trump's sentiment about each other: not to vote either one of them.
I agree with @HillaryClinton - don't vote for @realDonaldTrump. #debates
— Gov. Gary Johnson (@GovGaryJohnson) September 27, 2016
I agree with @realdonaldtrump - don't vote for @HillaryClinton. #debates — Gov. Gary Johnson (@GovGaryJohnson) September 27, 2016
