LOS ANGELES _ It rankles Gary Johnson he wasn't able to be onstage Wednesday night with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump for the final presidential debate.
"Really, really it just sucks _ no other way to put it," the Libertarian presidential nominee said prior to an event inside a chic Los Angeles nightclub where he was set to rally supporters. "I'm the only third-party candidate on the ballot in all 50 states."
Johnson, a former New Mexico governor, has been absent from the stage in all three presidential debates because he's unable to meet the national polling threshold of 15 percent in five major national polls. Johnson said if he were allowed to participate, he could, perhaps, force Clinton and Trump to focus solely on issues.
"Maybe we could actually talk about issues, instead of seeing them talk about how they're going to kill one another," Johnson said.
In recent months, Johnson, who in some polls has done well with millennial voters, has sought to shore up that support by reaching out to young people who backed Bernie Sanders throughout the Democratic primary.
This week Johnson released a campaign video attacking Clinton and highlighting issues on which he says he and Sanders share common ground _ among them, opposition to the Iraq War and marijuana legalization.
Sanders has endorsed Clinton and is one of her leading surrogates on the campaign trail.
