Is Gary Johnson At The Second Debate?

When Democratic contender and favorite among independents and millennials alike, Bernie Sanders, officially got nudged out of the race, it was a good day for Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson. Johnson started gaining traction as a third-party, "outsider" candidate. But even though he's become more recognizable, he hadn't gained enough support be invited to duke it out with the two major party candidates at the first presidential debate — leaving many to wonder if Johnson will be at second the debate that will take place on Sunday.

To get that official invite, a candidate needs to be polling at at least 15 percent with the national electorate. Johnson's only at about 7 percent, meaning he didn't poll high enough to make it to the second debate, either, according to the Commission on Presidential Debates, a non-partisan, nonprofit organization that determines the official numbers:

With the assistance of Dr. Newport, the Board determined that the polling averages called for in the third criterion are as follows: Hillary Clinton (44.8%), Donald Trump (40.8%), Gary Johnson (7.4%) and Jill Stein (2.6%). Accordingly, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump qualify to participate in the October 9 debate. No other candidates satisfied the criteria for inclusion in the October 9. The criteria will be reapplied to all candidates in advance of the third presidential debate.

He might be bummed — when it came to the first debate, Johnson told MSNBC that if he could just get on the stage, he could pull even with the two front-runners. But all told, in Johnson's case, his absence might be for the best — in that same interview, he literally bit his tongue in a creepy attempt to show his performance wouldn't even matter, just being on the stage would be a solid PR move. And that wasn't the former governor of New Mexico's only palm-to-face moment of late, he's had some major gaffes recently that would encourage anyone stray from a national spotlight for the time being.

Theoretically, someone like Johnson was attractive to voters considering the perception of flawed candidates leading the charge at the moment, but the more airtime he's gotten, the more incompetent he's proven himself. It started with not knowing what Aleppo is, a major component of the current Syrian civil war tragedy, asking in an interview on Morning Joe, "What is a Leppo?" And from there, the disappointing Johnson blunders continued to unravel, from not being able to name a single foreign leader to uncovering his 2011 statement, excusing climate change because the sun will swallow up the Earth anyway. Seriously. He said that.

But, in his defense, according to him, he doesn't know much about anything. So there.:

Now, with his finger on the pulse on what the American people need, he's bringing on Sabrina the Teenage Witch to work her magic and head up his campaign efforts in Connecticut.