NBC News political director Chuck Todd has blocked Democratic hopeful Mike Gravel from participating in the next televised presidential debate. The Democratic debate is scheduled to take place in Philadelphia on Oct 30.
Todd stated that Gravel has not met the fundraising and polling requirements in order to participate in the debate. Though the requirements have not been published, Gravel is the only Democratic candidate being excluded. That’s not a very good sign for Gravel.
Astute readers will recall that I have predicted that Mike Gravel will be the next presidential candidate to drop out of the race. According to both campaign contributions and polls, Gravel is not popular with the people. At the end of the last quarter, Gravel’s accounts had $17k of cash on hand. Compare that with Hillary’s $35M and you begin to understand the difference. With such little capital available, how will Gravel keep up when the political process takes off next year?
Gravel supporters may accuse NBC of tampering with the elections. Their standards aren’t unreasonable in my estimation. Apart from Gravel the trailing Democrat is Dennis Kucinich, who is tied with Gravel at 1% in the polls. Kucinich, however, had $300k on hand at the end of the quarter. You’ll note that’s more than Gravel raised altogether in the 3rd quarter. They’re just exercising good judgment.
Its time for Mike Gravel to make his Hail Mary play or find something else to devote himself to, because his presidential bid is running out of steam.
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