People can and will debate whether the Iowa caucus system is a good or legitimate method of determining our presidential nominees. And people can and will disagree about what it means to be a political activist. But I think you can say that anyone that goes out in the cold at 7pm on a worknight to spend three hours debating the fate of the free world is at least minimally ‘active’ in politics. Add to this that Iowa’s Democratic electorate is famously anti-war, and you’ve got the perfect constituency for Dennis Kucinich. If Dennis Kucinich is going to do well anywhere, he’s going to do well among anti-war political activists that pay more than average attention to politics. Compare that electorate to New Hampshire, where independents and other low information voters are allowed to vote in the Democratic primary.
So, it’s understandable that the Kucinich campaign is angry that they have been excluded from Thursday’s Des Moines Register debate.
Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D) is being excluded from this week’s Iowa presidential debate because he has not rented office space in the Hawkeye State, his campaign said Wednesday.
The Des Moines Register informed the campaign that Kucinich is not invited because the newspaper determined “that a person working out of his home did not meet our criteria for a campaign office and full-time paid staff in Iowa,” the campaign said…
…“The Iowa caucuses have been portrayed as having national implications, and if the Register has decided to use hair-splitting technicalities to exclude the leading voice of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, then the entire process is suspect,” the campaign said in a statement about the “arbitrary and unreasonable exclusion.”
Now, before you go getting all indignant, keep in mind that this is Kucinich’s own fault. Iowa is a state where he might expect to do well. It’s certainly more favorable to him than New Hampshire, South Carolina, or Florida. If he can’t even open an office in Iowa then his campaign is not serious. He basically is pretending to run for president for the specific purpose of having a voice in the debates.
There has to be some logical criteria for excluding some people from debates, and evidence of office space is better than position in the polls.
This is emblematic of my problem with Kucinich in general. He is saying many things I agree with, including on health care and impeachment. But I would much rather some other candidate would make those arguments…maybe a candidate with a headquarters in Iowa. And, I don’t think this is a new or unannounced policy by the Des Moines Register. So Kucinich knew, or should have known, that the price of being in this debate was the price of office space in the state of Iowa.
If you have been supporting Kucinich because of his positions on the issues, I suggest you take a look at some other candidate that is at least saying some of the right things…like Chris Dodd, for example. Dodd has enough respect for the process and for Iowans that he is practically living in the state and has plenty of office space.
