Vice President Biden has already qualified for next month’s CNN debate, the network confirmed Monday.
Now all he has to do is jump in the race.
{mosads}CNN confirmed that any candidate who has averaged 1 percent in at least three credible polls would be able to participate in the debate. Since most recent polls have tested Biden and found he would have double-digit support, he meets the threshold easily.
With that main hurdle past, Biden wouldn’t even have to file official paperwork by the debate — the criteria says that a simple public declaration will suffice.
The loose criteria also allows for every declared Democratic candidate — former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), former Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee — to take the stage on Oct. 13 in Las Vegas.
O’Malley has struggled to gain traction as the party’s progressive alternative to Clinton, a space that’s solidly occupied by Sanders. Although he has reached 1 percent in enough polls to qualify for the debate, he’s tied with Webb at 0.8 percent in a RealClearPolitics average of recent national polling. However, he has sole hold of third place in Iowa and New Hampshire in the low single digits.
Webb and Chafee, both hardly a fixture on the national campaign trail, have similar struggles in the polls. Chafee has failed to register above 0 in each of the last five national polls. Despite that, CNN’s debate criteria uses polls dating back to Aug. 1, so Chafee qualifies.