I just don't get this sneer (at whom?). No one, so far as I know, has seen Dennis Kucinich as the second coming of Huey Long, nor Ron Paul as the second coming of Bill Langer. But it would be a sign of mental vitality, rather than of brain death, for leftists to imagine the impact of a Paul/Kucinich "Third Party" campaign. How would McCain and Clinton *have* to react to a campaign emphatically based on opposition to war and militarism and support for civil liberties and constitutional government? Wouldn't their demagogy be dragged to the left on the only issues of importance before the country in this election? And if Paul/Kucinich could get or exceed the kind of vote that that idiot Ross Perot got in '92, wouldn't that be great? Whoever of the three got to the White House would arrive with a weak, minority, administration confronting an overwhelmingly Democratic (antiwar voters just aren't going to vote for no Republican candidates nohow) Congress. Wouldn't that be lively (as well as the most favorable outcome conceivable for the presently irrelevant Left)?
Come on now, A Paul/Kucinich campaign would be waaay coool, nicht wahr? Not gonna happen, I know. But, as Len__n said, Imagine!
Shane Mage
"Mortals immortals, immortals mortals,
living their deaths, dying their lives"
Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 62