Aleppo

Presidential candidate from the Libertarian Party, Gary Johnson, had a great opportunity this morning on MSNBC to get his name in front of the American people and, unfortunately, he did ... but not necessarily in a good way. Mike Barnicle, a chattering classless member on the Morning Joe show, asked him what he thought of Aleppo and Johnson asked, "What is Aleppo?" To which Barnicle replied, "You're kidding?" and then lectured Johnson that Aleppo was the epicenter of the refugee crisis in Syria. Candidate Johnson then picked up on the Syria reference and gave some boilerplate answer about how bad things were there.

This serious blunder on Johnson's part then became the topic of many smug comments from the many participants on this show ... basically saying that Johnson had just destroyed any chance even to get on the stage for the upcoming first presidential debate (needing 15% approval in national polling.) And they might be right. However, we are living in strange times and the fact that Johnson's brain-fart will cause his name to be now mentioned repeatedly on network news programs might just paradoxically improve his chances ... since probably 95% of Americans also don't know Aleppo from Alpo ... and many voters have had their fill of the media's belief that it is the final arbiter of a candidate's worth. We'll see in the next few days.

However, I have a few observations of my own about this event:

- I'm reasonably sure that Gary Johnson has seen Aleppo mentioned in print many times, but may not have heard it said enough to connect things ... particularly under the pressure of the TV lights.

- Recent polling suggests that Johnson's popularity (around 8%) might be pulling more from Hellary than from Trump. This might have been Barnicle's motivation to ask his gotcha question ... to help Clinton ever so slightly.

- If Johnson's polling numbers are not destroyed by this gaffe, then it might also be because Americans often love to root for the underdog. The more feral the media becomes regarding this matter, the more this may elicit such a response.