A few nights ago I was sitting in my hotel room flipping through the channels and I happened to catch the democratic presidential debate on CNN. It was a complete gong show in which Wolf Blitzer would continually try to cut off the candidates in mid-answer and the questions were framed in such a way to try and force them to boil everything down to simple yes or no answers. "Are you saying that human rights are more important than national security?" is one such gem he asked. While the question was valid, it over-simplifies everything far too much. The voting public is not comprised of 6 year olds, and so they deserve questions and answers a little more complicated than that, thank you very much. A presidential debate should be providing a forum for the candidates to discuss their opinions properly. To their credit, many of the candidates took exception to the questions and took the time necessary to really answer them while Wolf squirmed and bleated to try and shut them up. I enjoyed that part. Despite my misgivings with the debate I still feel that I gained some valuable insights from it. I was most impressed with Dennis Kucinich, and I hope that he gets to run as the democratic contender. Sadly, I do not think that will actually happen (the media seems to have decided that it will all come down to Hillary or Obama) With that said, these are the reasons that I would like to see Kucinich in the presidency:

1) He voted against the Iraq war

2) He voted against the patriot act

3) He is pro-union. In a country in which only 13% of the workforce is unionized, I would love to see more brothers and sisters join the ranks of organized labor. As a union man myself, this would make me happy.

4) He went against the wishes of the democratic party leadership and has introduced articles of impeachment against Cheney, with the reasoning that the VP played a critical role in manipulating intelligence and deceiving the good people of the USA into believing that Iraq had WMD's and posed a threat. While this will undoubtedly be killed or starved in endless committee, it is the right thing to do.

5) He is also for impeaching Bush. Although with Conyers going back on his word, he probably won't be able to get enough support to actually get the legislative ball rolling

6) He is for universal healthcare (that's right the evils of socialized medicine, run for the hills!!)

7) He has expressed his solidarity and support for Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who I personally admire a great deal.