Voices Which Should Be Heard

I've said before that I'm really getting tired of choosing between the lesser of two evils when it comes to elections.  It should be painfully apparent by now that one of our nations dominant political parties is pretty much damaged, maybe not beyond repair, but seriously damaged.  The other one is really not that far away from sliding off the edge of madness either.  Bernie Sanders was, at least for me, a refreshing blast of hope in what seems like a bitter bog of political pessimism.  Alas, superdelegates, alas, the Clinton machine, alas Bernie himself being too fixated on one sort of issue (domestic economics) and failing to account for the fact that 'Merica, including Democrats, is terrified of the instability of the international geopolitical milieu.
Bernie is gone, subsumed in the growing avalanche of Hillary, but there are still other voices in this election other than Trump and Clinton.  Gary Johnson, the Libertarian, is polling at 13% in a recent CNN poll, and the magic number to be included in the presidential debates is 15%.  Jill Stein is representing what amounts to one of the only other seriously organized alternative political parties, the Green Party. I am not sold on the Libertarian dogma of live and let live, I think human sin needs a few more checks and balances than the traditional laissez-faire approach generally provides.  However, given the rise of fascism (or at least authoritarianism, if you think fascism is too harsh) in the form of Trump, or the inveterate politicking of Clinton, which leaves me with a pragmatic, but sour taste in my mouth, I'm willing to give Johnson a day in court.  My hopes would ride higher with a principled, honestly liberal candidate like Stein (or Sanders, I just can't let go of my Bernie).
The point to make now, however, is that I would like to see them included in the debates.  I still feel like actually voting third party would be a waste of my vote.  I might feel better at having thumbed my nose at the establishment, but the memory of Ralph Nader haunts my dreams.  In the 2000 election, between George W. Bush and Al Gore, Nader was the Green Party candidate, and he had a bit of a groundswell from people, like me now (but not then), who thought that the Clinton/Gore tenure had been a disaster for liberal ideals.  Bill Clinton, like Hillary, is a master politician, flexible both morally and politically, the perfect centrist.  Gore was his dull reflection, only slightly more crunchy on things environmental (see Gore's book Earth in the Balance).  Nader had name recognition and a certain smartest-guy-in-the-room aura, and he was the perfect candidate to rob Al Gore of what turned out to be a fairly crucial block of voters: environmentalists.  Remember, this was the election where Gore actually beat Bush in the popular vote, this was the hanging chad election, this was the one that eventually had to be decided by the Supreme Court, it was that close.  Nader voters spent the next eight years kicking themselves.
At the end of the last book of C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia, in The Last Battle, a group of dwarves is sitting in what they think is a stable full of manure, chanting, "we won't be duped again."  They can't open their eyes and see that they are actually on the very threshold of Aslan's country.  These dwarves are not generally considered a group to be imitated, but I have to admit, getting my hopes up for Johnson or Stein to even be invited on stage at the carnival of the absurd that has become our electoral process seems like a naive hope.
I think maybe it's time to open up the stable door and let some other ideas and voices be heard.  Maybe the choke hold of the Democrat/Republican system can't be broken by this November, but I think it's high time that we start trying to pry a couple fingers off our throat.  There is nothing in the Constitution that says we can only have two parties, in fact, I would say that the presence of more voices at the table would only strengthen our process.  I do understand why we have rules, because otherwise you have this:

or this: 

sort of thing happening in your national politics, but honestly, how much worse would that be at this point?