Johnson and Stein claim the commission and its rules are flawed to begin with, because the group was established by the major parties and has no incentive to give third-party candidates a platform. Before it formalized qualifying criteria in 2000, the commission selected participants in a more subjective way, and a third-party candidate hasn’t appeared alongside Democrats and Republicans on the stage since 1992.

This year, with unpopular Clinton and divisive Trump at the helm of the major parties, Johnson, Stein, and their sympathizers have argued that voters deserve to hear alternative voices. Just this week the Johnson campaign took out a full-page ad in The New York Times to an attempt to persuade the commission. He’s had some high-profile people in his corner, too: Former Republican nominee Mitt Romney, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and various newspaper editorial boards have called for him to debate.

The Clinton and Trump campaigns, meanwhile, have kept mum on his and Stein’s exclusion. Clinton in particular has little reason to be sympathetic: As my colleague Russell Berman reported this week, she’s losing chunks of young voters to the third-party candidates, and needs the debate to show them and others she’s the only alternative to Trump.

But while it might seem like a victory for her and Trump to have others out of the way, this year’s debate drama isn’t over yet: The commission plans to reevaluate which candidates qualify before every contest this fall. Until it’s all over, Johnson, at least, will never say die—or at least he won’t say so publicly: “There are more polls and more debates, and we plan to be on the debate stage in October,” he said Friday.