Why Can't Kucinich Run?

Dennis Kucinich announced he is running for President in 2008. The announcement has been met with indifference nationally and ridicule and anger locally. The prevailing attitude is that Kucinich should not run for President because he has no chance. Because he has no chance to win, running for President is wasting time he should be spending on representing the people in his district.

He Can't Win

How do we know Kucinich can't win? A few reasons come to mind.

• He lost badly in 2004.
• He's too crazy and liberal to get elected.
• He lacks necessities like money.
  

Kucinich's 2004 performance would be a strong argument for why he can't win. His 2004 performance is closely related to the too crazy and liberal reason; he did badly because people thought he was too crazy to get elected. But the political environment is different today than it was in 2004.

The mainstream Democratic position in 2004 was similar to the mainstream Republican position today. The Iraq war was a mistake but US troops have to stay because pulling out would cause chaos in Iraq. Kucinich's pull out of Iraq now position seemed crazy and ultra-liberal in 2004, but it doesn't sound so crazy now. If 100,000 troops are still in Iraq in 2008, Kucinich's position will be mainstream.

But the windbags on the 24-hour news networks will say Kucinich can't win because nobody knows who he is and he can't raise enough money. If nobody know who Kucinich is, that means the news networks aren't doing their jobs. Part of their job is to inform the people about candidates so they can make an informed decision when voting.

Television networks have a conflict of interest when they obsess about raising money. Where does most of the money go that candidates raise? To television networks for air time to show commercials. The networks have a financial incentive to give the most news coverage to candidates who raise the most money. Why cover a candidate who can't afford TV ads when you can cover one who will buy lots of commercial time on your network?


He's Hurting His District

People who oppose Kucinich's candidacy say the time he spends running for President is time he doesn't spend representing his congressional district, which hurts the people in his district. By this logic nobody who holds elective office should run for President, which would eliminate most potential candidates: Hilary Clinton, John McCain, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Tom Vilsack, Mike Huckabee, and Mitt Romney. John Edwards and Al Gore would fight for the Democratic nomination while Rudolph Giuliani, Colin Powell, and Newt Gingrich fight for the Republican nomination.

Why does Kucinich running hurt his district but Hilary Clinton and John McCain running doesn't hurt the people of New York and Arizona?

MySpam

I have heard many people refer to MySpace as the Internet equivalent of crack cocaine. I don't see how anyone can stand to be on the site. If I'm signed on for more than 2 minutes, I get flooded with phony friend requests from spammers. Since I have no reason to sign on (My MySpace experience has been negative. I'll have to write about it in the future), I rarely do. I shudder to think what it must be like for people who are signed on for longer periods of time. It doesn't sound like an addictive experience for those people.

Suicide Vs. Homicide Bombings

It has been a while since the Bush administration tried to classify suicide bombings as homicide bindings, so you might be wondering why I am writing about it. I read a post on a programming message board where someone mentioned suicide bombings. Another poster corrected the person, using the term homicide bombing. I think the term homicide bombing is idiotic, which is what triggered me to write this.

In Iraq bombers have been responsible for the majority of deaths. There are three types of bombings that can occur.

• Suicide. The bomber dies, and nobody else. The Bush administration wants this to be a definition of a suicide bombing.
• Suicide bombing. The bomber dies as well as other people. Suicide bombings are the common method of killing Iraqi civilians.
  
• Homicide bombing, better known as just a bombing. The bomber lives, but other people die. Roadside bombs that kill American soldiers are a common example of homicide bombings.
  

When the bomber kills himself (or herself) and a bunch of other people, it's a suicide bombing. The bomber dying makes it a suicide. For it to be a homicide bombing, the bomber has to survive the blast.

Athletes Perform a Valuable Service

One thing middle-aged men like to complain about is the amount of money athletes make, especially athletes in team sports. Middle-aged men complain because athletes get paid millions of dollars to play a game. Some people will complain that our society's priorities are screwed up. Athletes make millions of dollars a year while people who do important work (teachers, scientists, firefighters, police officers, etc.) are underpaid.

But what these people fail to see is that athletes do important work. Imagine you're a very wealthy person, someone with a net worth of hundreds of millions of dollars. With that amount of wealth, you're set financially for hundreds of years. The only thing that could destroy your financial security is a revolution that overturns the current economic system and renders your money worthless.

Who would lead such a revolution? It wouldn't be the rich and powerful because they're rich and powerful under the current economic system. They have no reason to overturn the current system. Lower and middle income people would be the people with a reason to start a revolution, but lots of people would have to be enraged by the current economic system in order for a revolution to take place.

How do you keep people happy enough so they won't revolt? One way is entertainment: television, movies, music, and sports. Good entertainment makes people forget about their problems and provides momentary pleasure. Sports has an advantage over other forms of entertainment. A movie entertains people for about 2 hours. A network television show provides 30-60 minutes of entertainment once a week, 22 times a year. But sports provides year-round entertainment. You can watch baseball almost every day from April through October, watch basketball almost every day from November through June, and watch football every weekend from September through January.

Athletes are the people who provide the year-round entertainment. Paying an athlete $5 million or $10 million a year is a good investment because they allow corporations to continue making billions of dollars without having to worry about a revolution. The next time someone complains about athletes' salaries, remember the service they provide to keep the rich and powerful in power.