Poor Dennis

Rep. Kucinich has made his abject exit from the presidential campaign, well after he was consigned to the wilderness by MSNBC, in order to save his strength for his re-election to Congress. I'm sure he'll serve his country better there, because he never had a chance to be president.

Some people will say that Kucinich's poor performance is further proof that the primary system needs to be reformed. So convinced are these people of their hero's virtue and the justice of his views that they can only blame his failures on an inefficient system. We can make a case that there needs to be a better system, but not for Kucinich's sake. The long debating season gave him a fair chance to catch people's imagination, as Huckabee did among many Republicans, but Kucinich couldn't exploit the opportunity. This can't be blamed solely on money or celebrity, or Kucinich's lack of either. Democratic voters didn't want what he was selling, and I doubt that any further shifting of the rules would help him much.

I'd like to argue that Kucinich could best help himself by forming an independent party and trying his luck in the general election, where in the current climate his earning even 2% of the vote might make a decisive difference. But if he ran as an independent from the start, he would have been denied a place at the debates from the start under current rules. The debate process took a step in the right direction this cycle by giving an insurgent like Huckabee a chance, but the process needs to become even more inclusive. Ideally, there should be a series of non-partisan debates, not necessarily with every single candidate at every single debate, but a rotating cast in a round-robin format that assures every sane candidate a minimum of public exposure. Such a system would enable someone like Kucinich to reach a broader audience that might offer him more support than the Democratic rank and file, but it still wouldn't guarantee him mass support. In a democracy, like it or not, that's still up to the American people.