A new poll puts Donald Trump's unfavorable rating at 70 percent. This, coupled with Hillary Clinton's disapproval rating hovering in the mid-50s equals one thing: a race to see which unpopular candidate can win.
Co-creator of the survey ABC News states that this, "cements (Clinton and Trump's) position as the two most unpopular presumptive major party nominees for president in ABC News/Washington Post polling dating to 1984."
What's to blame for this?
Party rules and party politics: rules that allowed a non-majority plurality winner (Trump) to rack up a huge lead in electoral votes in early contests, superdelegate rules that gave Clinton an overwhelming head start from the beginning, coupled with party politics that worked in almost opposite ways this election, with the Republicans fleeing from their leader's choices, while most of the rank-and-file Democrats just accepted the party crowning Clinton as their nominee.
America wants better, but time is running short.
According to Ballotpedia, the deadlines have not passed for independents to get on the ballot, but are very close. There seems to be a lot of conflicting information on these deadlines. But surveying a half-dozen of the states on Ballotpedia's list, then looking at the corresponding state's secretary of state website seemed to confirm the accuracy of their dates.
But in some states, it's going to be very hard to get on the ballot. For instance, in California, the deadline is August 12, but you need to have a petition with 178,039 verified registered voters signatures.
Most states require at least 1,000 signatures, but many require 10,000 or more.
Getting on the ballot in all 50-states would be a minor miracle if these dates are in fact correct for all 50 states: all but two have deadlines expiring in July or August.
Is there really any candidate out there with enough clout to get on the ballot in all 50 states that fast?
That's the major issue, because a ground-work game is everything in campaigning -- a 10,000 signature requirement means you usually have to collect at least 20,000 signatures to ensure you have enough verifiable registered voters.
Ideally, the time to act for any independent candidate would have been months ago, but today it is a "now or never" prospect. One thing is for certain: we now have a lesser-of-two-evils election ahead of us.