It was not a good night for Gary Johnson and his Libertarian Party campaign for president, but that could be good news for Hillary Clinton.
In front of a televised town hall on MSNBC Wednesday night, the former New Mexico governor was unable to come up with the name of a single leader of another country whom he admired.
After struggling with the softball from Hardball’s Chris Matthews, the triathlon-competing, pot-smoking Johnson did the heavy lifting for headline writers everywhere by declaring that he was having a bit of an “Aleppo moment,” a reference to his previous unfamiliarity with the war-torn Syrian city. There was something refreshing about the good cheer and honesty with which Johnson handled his latest foreign policy flub, but it also underscored something probably not helpful to his cause: The man looks positively unprepared to become president.
On the face of it, that doesn’t matter too much because, unlike one other contender who shows a similarly astonishing level of ignorance when it comes to substantive matters of state, Johnson stands no chance of becoming the most powerful political leader in the world. But he could yet have a decisive role in determining who that leader is, which is why Wednesday’s memory meltdown matters.
Support for the two third-party candidates in the race — Johnson and Jill Stein of the Green Party — seems to be coming more at Hillary Clinton’s expense than Donald Trump’s. If the third-party hopefuls were drawing equally from the major party contenders, their impact would be a wash. But most polls suggest that’s not the case, setting up the possibility that they could play the spoiler role Ralph Nader did in 2000 and hand the election to Trump.
In a two-way match-up, Clinton still has about a three- to four-point lead over Trump in recent national polls, writes the Globe’s Evan Horowitz. Among voters under 30, her advantage is a whopping 55-34. But when Johnson and Stein are included in polls, her lead among younger voters all but disappears, with her 30 percent support similar to the backing enjoyed by Johnson.
Bloomberg Politics reports that Clinton has a “millennial math” problem in whiter, northern states that Bernie Sanders did well in, with his younger supporters not moving into her column in the numbers that she needs.
There was some evidence of that yesterday as Clinton campaigned in New Hampshire, a state whose four electoral votes could be pivotal in a close race. A rally held at the University of New Hampshire campus specifically to try to energize millennials was instead filled with lots of “gray hair and bald-spots,” reports the Herald’s Chris Cassidy.
Third party support tends to fade closer to Election Day, a pattern Clinton desperately hopes will hold in this year’s very unpatterned presidential contest. Horowitz says there are some early indications that Monday’s debate began to swing some young voters toward Clinton (they have no interest in Trump).
She better hope that continues — and hope for few more “Aleppo moments” for Johnson, which probably wouldn’t hurt, either.
–MICHAEL JONAS
BEACON HILL
Jay Ash, the state secretary of housing and economic development, takes himself out of the running for the city manager’s job in Cambridge, saying the post was “not the right fit for me.” (State House News) Ash scored third out of three finalists in initial screening by the city. (Cambridge Day)
A Globe editorial warns that without action by Beacon Hill leaders, a recent Connecticut court ruling could foreshadow a similar showdown here, where education funding has become wildly unequal in the more than two decades since the state’s 1993 education reform law sought to correct past wrongs.
Gov. Charlie Baker plans a trade mission to Israel. (MassLive)
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
The effort to recall Lawrence Mayor Daniel Rivera suffers what appears to be a fatal blow. (Eagle-Tribune)
Guy Glodis, the former Worcester county sheriff and state lawmaker, plans to open a politically themed bar in the city’s Kelley Square. (Telegram & Gazette)
Springfield city councilors protest the decision to temporarily suspend a police official accused of threatening to kill and plant evidence on two juvenile suspects. (Masslive)
Brockton’s Board of Health is drafting new regulations that would restrict how homeowners could use their land to raise chickens and other farm animals, similar to a proposal in nearby Bridgewater that drew loud protests from residents. (The Enterprise)
The Walmart employee who allegedly set fires in the Sturbridge store is in custody. (Telegram & Gazette)
A Boston nonprofit focused on ending homelessness among the elderly wants to build a 54-unit rental development in the Four Corners section of Dorchester. (Boston Herald)
WASHINGTON/NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL
Nathan Carman says he did everything he could to find and save his mother when their boat sank 100 miles off Martha’s Vineyard. (Boston Herald)
The Massachusetts congressional delegation calls Sweden’s push for a ban on American lobsters “an excessive and unscientific response.” (Gloucester Times)
The National Review takes “left wing state attorneys general,” including Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, to the woodshed for what it says are partisan political agendas. There are no conservative attorneys general who have political agendas, apparently.
ELECTIONS
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders campaign together in New Hampshire on college affordability. (WBUR)
Farming groups and retailers have formed a political organization to muster opposition to the ballot question that would change how farm animals are housed and require eggs sold in the state to be from hens with room to move, a referendum they say amounts to a “food tax.” (State House News Service)
The Bay State Banner, the mainstay newspaper of Boston’s black community, backs a “yes” vote on Question 2, which would allow more charter schools. Joan Vennochi mulls Elizabeth Warren’s declaration that she’ll vote against the measure, saying she hopes it’s based on conviction and not just “caving in to union pressure.” (Boston Globe) CommonWealth recently examined Warren’s long history of support for school choice.
Opponents of the state’s new transgender rights law say they have enough signatures to put a repeal measure on the 2018 ballot. (State House News)
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
The Big Y, a mainstay supermarket chain in Western Mass., is expanding east after acquiring eight former Hannaford store locations. (Boston Globe)
EDUCATION
A group of students at Newton North High School drove through the school parking lot waving a Confederate flag from a car, prompting a police investigation and talk about the racial climate at the school. (Boston Globe)
The newly expanded Collegiate Charter School of Lowell satisfies a number of state concerns but still lags in enrollment of English language learners, special ed students, and economically disadvantaged children. (Lowell Sun)
Two former students are suing a Boston University music professor, charging him with sexual harassment. (Boston Globe)
Georgia Tech, with one of the nation’s leading computer science departments, has developed an online master’s degree program in computer science with a cost of just $7,000, a breakthrough that could begin to address the rising costs of college. (New York Times)
A study released by Yale University finds that young black boys face bias as early as preschool. (U.S. News & World Report)
HEALTH/HEALTH CARE
The Brentwood Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center in Danvers has murky finances and a poor record on care. (Salem News)
Donald Trump has been lavished with a variety of grandiose honorary titles at recent Dana-Farber Cancer Institute fundraisers, despite not actually donating any of his own money to the center in years. (STAT)
Federal officials have issued new regulations barring nursing homes from including mandatory arbitration clauses in contracts that were designed to prevent patients and families from going to court. (New York Times)
TRANSPORTATION
Sparks are flying between the MBTA and the Carmen’s Union, which says replacement workers for the agency’s “money room” must be union members, a claim the T is vigorously disputing. (Boston Herald)
A group of Woods Hole residents has filed an appeal with the Department of Environmental Protection seeking to overturn its decision to issue a permit to the Steamship Authority to overhaul its terminal. (Cape Cod Times)
CRIMINAL JUSTICE/COURTS
The Supreme Judicial Court significantly expanded privacy rights related to cellphones, saying police cannot seize them without “particularized evidence” connecting them to a crime. (Boston Globe)
A Quincy couple say they had no clue why 18 FBI agents broke down the door to their townhouse and ripped apart their home for more than three hours before leaving without arresting them or finding drugs they said they were looking for. (Patriot Ledger)
Weymouth police found an 18-year-old woman in a ravine in the woods gagged with her hands and legs bound with duct tape but officials say she has been “vague” about how she ended up there. (Patriot Ledger)
In the wake of allegations against Bill Cosby, California has eliminated the statute of limitations on sex crimes such as rape and sexual assault. (Los Angeles Times)
MEDIA
An Eagle-Tribune editorial defends the newspaper’s decision to air a video showing a mother passed out on the floor of a Family Dollar store from an apparent overdose and her toddler daughter trying to revive her.
Pittsburgh becomes a one-newspaper town as the Tribune-Review prepares to close.
SPORTS
The Red Sox celebrated their walk-off grand slam loss to the Yankees Wednesday with champagne. (Boston Globe)
The Collegiate Charter School of Lowell’s has student demographics at 13% English Language Learners, 6% students with disabilities and 39.1% economically disadvantaged but Lowell Public Schools students are 25% ELL, 15.5% students with disabilities and 50.4% economically disadvantaged.” That means Collegiate Charter gets the money based on Lowell’s average student but takes far fewer of those average students leaving Lowell with a higher number of higher cost students but less funding. That’s working out great for Collegiate’s private, for-profit management company but not so well for Lowell’s schools. VOTE NO on Question 2.
The Globe’s editorial on this state’s public education funding pointed out the formula set up in the 1993 Education Reform Act has remained unchanged for 23 years and a report identifying a $1 billion shortfall in education funding has been collecting dust for one year thanks to inaction by the state legislature. The editorial mentioned the landmark court case 23 years ago, McDuffy v. Secretary of Education, when the state’s highest court ruled that Massachusetts had “failed to meet its constitutional obligation of educating all its children, rich and poor. Only a few days after that ruling, the far-reaching Education Reform Act was signed into law.” Besides not being fully funded local public school districts have charter schools draining their limited funds. VOTE NO on Question 2.