Too big to fail; too small to matter

The official reasons for not including third-party candidates in national and local political debates are based solely on those parties’ small size. This idea of too-small-to-matter has become too much of a cliché these days (and not just in politics either).

I, for one, am curious about what these smaller third parties have to say. Do they have platforms? How are their goals and objectives different than the too-big-to-fail parties? Are their ideas in common with or opposed to the big party machines? Might they have solutions to problems that the big machines have been unable or unwilling to solve? Is it possible that those candidates have something worthwhile to say?

It’s bad enough that the voices of the small are drowned out by the boisterous shouting of the giants, but to deny the smaller parties a seat at the political roundtable in a government by the people seems, well, a bit authoritarian.

Perhaps if the other political parties were given the same opportunity to tell their stories and share their ideas as the two behemoths, they...

could gain the support necessary to grow. Or maybe that’s precisely why the small are denied access. Are their ideas so good that they pose a threat to the ruling parties? Or are their ideas so bad that they’re not even worth sharing the stage with the party superstars? Whichever the case may be, it seems that we, the people, could have the opportunity to make that decision for ourselves.

Western Colorado’s Club 20 candidate debates a few weeks ago. I was surprised to learn in the news that the third-party candidates were not invited to participate in the debates because their parties are too small.

How is it that third-party representatives aren’t allowed to participate in the debates because their parties are too small, but Club 20, the voice of western Colorado, allowed several unaffiliated candidate to participate? The official response, as reported in the Daily Sentinel was, “because unaffiliated voters constitute 31 percent of our state’s voters.”

This makes no sense to me. There is no such thing as an “unaffiliated” party; the unaffiliated, by definition, are without a party. And they are without a party because, for the most part, on one or more levels, they no longer connect with or relate to either of the ruling parties.

Knowing that all politics are local, and knowing that we have such a large population of unaffiliated voters, I assumed the club, as the leading voice for western Colorado, would be the first to recognize the timeliness and value in giving voice to the small as well as to the large-party candidates. I wasn’t at all surprised that other organizations that host debates excluded the third parties, but Club 20’s decision was truly unexpected.

There was a time when IBM thought Microsoft and Apple were too small to matter. There was a time when the Wright brothers’ tinkering with manned flight was dismissed as too small to matter. There was a time when the front range saw the western slope as too small, too unsophisticated, too independent to sit at the state’s table — until tenacious folks like those in Club 20 helped to change that.

Since its inception, the club has been fearless when it comes to breaking through barriers, forwarding game-changing state policies, and standing up to and working with the larger front-range powers in the interest of western Coloradans. So I’m surprised that it chose not to revisit its own policy that excludes the smaller parties from the debates.

I have a lot of respect for Club 20 — for its historical accomplishments, its diverse membership, its guts — and it is precisely because of that respect that exclusion of the third party candidates at the debates caught me off guard. The because-we’ve-always-done-it-this-way doctrine ignores the market, disregards evolving viewpoints and stifles growth and innovation.  Inviting an unaffiliated candidate with no party whatsoever, while denying participation by small third parties who are registered with formal parties, is baffling at best.

All politics are local. A full third of the electorate is unaffiliated. Two very loud voices have polarized the political arena. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to invite other teams to the playing field. Oh sure, they may lose, but why not let them play — if for no other reason than to remind us that all voices, big and small, really do matter. Who knows? We just might hear a few new and viable ideas. Or better yet, the two ruling-party candidates might hear some new and viable ideas. Or not. Either way, isn’t it time to find out?

At the last minute, Club 20 allowed a Libertarian to speak when the Republican candidate refused to participate in the debate. There was no Democrat candidate running for that office. They have not changed their policy. This post was one of my weekly columns in the Daily Sentinel as published in the Sunday, September 9, 2012, edition of the newspaper.