So I am watching the debate (accidentally, I turned the tv on, and MSNBC was on), and looking at the candidates from the Democrats on stage tonight, and looking at the candidates from the Republicans, my first inclination is to treat the 2008 election like a Browns/Cowboys Superbowl- to root for injuries.
I have only caught the tail end, and I feel fortunate. There is some crazy gray-haired guy who seems to be mixing things up, and Dennis Kucinich is waving around a Constitution, and Edwards just seems so slick. Hillary Clinton is just terrible at this format. I have seen her do town hall things where she seemed downright likable, empathetic, and Presidential. Tonight, she has the forced stridency to her voice, and she appears stiff. Joe Biden seems to think he is at a cocktail party, and the way he is talking, he may very well have had a cocktail or too. He just laid he smack down on Kucinich, in fact- something about happy talk. Obama didn’t seem overly impressive, but it may be that is the impression I am getting simply because it seems like everyone is attacking him.
From the 20 minutes I have watched, the person who seemed most impressive was Chris Dodd.
*** Update ***
I am now watching the post-game wrap-up, and Chris Matthews is paining me. He is reminding me of Harry Caray, to be honest. Olberman talks about something, and Matthews just interrupts him with some random babble. A sample:
Olberman: What do you think of-
Matthews: There is a good looking couple there.
Olberman:- the way that the candid-
Matthews: And there is Mrs. Obama.
Duane
I’m partial to Edwards and Richardson but Obama was very impressive in this debate. He definitely has his shit together.
jnfr
I also was surprised that Obama sounded so uninteresting. Not how I think of him at all. (I am watching on TiVo, so I’m about half an hour behind.)
I often think that women’s voices don’t sound good on TV. I notice that a lot when there are women on the talking head shows (not that you often see women on those shows).
I really like Dodd. I like his defense of the Constitution, and his defense of habeas corpus in the Senate. Too bad he doesn’t have a chance at the nomination.
jnfr
Duane slipped :) Mileage obviously varies.
Paul L.
What nonsense was Kucinich spouting that caused Biden to smack him down? Anyone know of a transcript?
Charity
I feel like Obama must be holding back so that he doesn’t overexpose himself in this loooooooong campaign.
Thanks for your comments on Matthews. I completely concur. (Idiot. Let Keith speak, for God’s sake.)
Tsulagi
Indeed. Who is that guy? Must be before my time.
Saw pieces of the debate. Apparently the crazy gray-haired guy is a former senator from Alaska, Mike Gravel. He seemed to be trying to out-Kucinich Kucinich. Missed how he set it up, but I think I heard he wanted to make it a felony to continue the Iraq War? Then bust Bush for the crime? Ooookay.
Other than crazy dude and the dweeb, Kucinich, not too bad a debate. Actually, looking more forward to the Pub debate. Want to see how much distance they put between themselves and Bush, see if they rely on the “The Dems are worse” meme, and see how much they suck on the Dobson tit. Go Brownback!
Pb
Gravel was hilarious, I heartily enjoyed his contribution to the debate.
And yes, John, Chris Matthews is a moron, Olbermann is a million times quicker on his feet and smarter than him — but Chris Matthews is a moron with a bit of seniority, so he’s special in that respect. I occasionally find it somewhat amusing when Matthews just has to take a minute to admire the clever things that (only) other people say (like, often, Olbermann) — but then of course he has to repeat them until it no longer seems all that clever. And that’s not even going into his signature crazy laugh (HA!).
sglover
I think Cole’s assessment is off-base. The three leading candidates dealt their share of bromides, Biden was his usual annoying self, and Dodd — why the hell is Dodd even trying?. But Kucinich, Richardson, and ex-Senator Gravel did well, I thought. Gravel excelled by bringing up precisely the sorts of issues that Dems are afraid to even hint at, let alone discuss. He threw some bombs, true — I don’t think any Dem really wants to launch a nuclear war. But it was damn good to hear somebody point out that all the talk about the “menace” of Iran is hysteria and fear-mongering. I also appreciated his point that as long as we have our wildly overbuilt nuclear arsenal, it’s a little hard for us to persuade other states to sign on to nonproliferation measures.
By the way, Biden’s “happy talk” attack was the typical tough-guy pose that the blowhard from Delaware is so famous for. He was saying that refusing to use force won’t solve problems in Darfur, among other places. No doubt things in Darfur are awful. Does Biden have any clue about what, exactly, American troops are going to do there, after the militias have been (temporarily) dispersed?
The Other Steve
I didn’t watch it. I canceled cable a while ago.
I’m not sure I even care. Any of those 8, including Kucinich, would be better than what we got now and what the Republicans have been offering us.
Thus far, Tommy Thompson has been the only Republican I’ve heard anything from that sounded sane. Which means he’s automatically disqualified and will never get the nomination.
John Cole
sglover, like I said, I only saw the lats twenty minutes.
Ron Beasley
John
You should have switched over to the Weather Channel.
MNPundit
Gore/Clark please.
Thanks.
Jon H
“but Chris Matthews is a moron with a bit of seniority”
And, I’d bet, a much higher salary.
Matthews was probably trying to pull rank on Olberman, show him who’s boss by trying to upstage him.
tBone
He’s special, all right. Of all the idiotic gasbags that clog the news airwaves, Matthews stands out from the pack with his special blend of cluelessness, bombast, and shameless brownnosing.
Between the size of his ego, the emptiness of his freakishly large head, and the amount of hot air he produces, it’s amazing that he doesn’t float right off the planet. I’m betting that his anchor chair is just that – a chair with a cunningly designed system of tethers that anchor him to the ground.
Pixie
LOL @ Harry Caray
Olbermann : I thought that the format of tonig —
Matthews: Hey Keith! If the moon were made of spare ribs, wouldja eat em??
lmao
mrmobi
What the fuck, why are you guys picking on Tweety?
He’s just doing what they want him to do, you know, talk about pearl necklaces and clothes and being shrill. I love him, he was in the Peace Corps, don’t ya know?
And what’s up with Olbermann not being able to get in a word edge-wise? I did not see any of the debate, only a little of the the “analysis.”
I’m with you John C., this campaign is going to be too fucking long.
Personally, I spent the evening drinking most of a bottle of Cotes Du Rhone and watching the excellent “Millers’ Crossing,” a marvelous Ethan Cohen gangster film with Gabriel Byrne, Marcia Gay Harden, John Turturro and Albert Finney. It even has Steve Buscemi in it as a (murdered) character named “Mink.”
Gabriel Byrne is fabulous, one of the very best. And Marcia Gay Harden is just, well, smokin’.
Who won the debate? Who gives a damn, there’s almost two years of this shit left!
DougJ
John, you sound like a fucking jack ass. Drink some scotch, eat some of that faggy Hola sherbet, whack off to Colin Farrel or whatever it is you do, shower, and get back to us.
Pb
Yeah, but he was about right as well. The crazy guy was Gravel, he was mixing things up. Kucinich was waving around a Constitution, and Edwards… well, it’s the haircut, and it looked fabulous. Really, though, worth every penny, I think his hair looks a lot better now.
sglover
Ah, OK, point taken.
I guess I should emphasize that I don’t think any the Dems will be a bad choice, by the standards of our tottering democracy. They all offer the traditional (but sadly under-rated) Democratic virtue of competent technocratic management. But it’s very frustrating watching almost all of them run away from discussing root problems, like our military-centric foreign policy, and our petroleum habit. (Some of the candidates did almost verge on mentioning a carbon tax, though.)
I expect the Republican debate will be lots more entertaining, in a scumbags vs. nutcase tag team kind of way. Incidentally, one of the weirdest questions of the night way, “So-and-so says that if the Democratic Party loses another election, it’ll go belly-up. Discuss.” About as idiotic and stone ignorant as a journalist can get — by pretty much any measure, the GOP is going to have to pull a miraculous turn-around to avoid a 1932-scale stomping.
mrmobi
OT and all, but this exchange, from Miller’s Crossing:
BTW, was it Gravel who said “the United States doesn’t have any enemies?”
I guess there’s a reason we have debates, to separate out the idiots.
mrmobi
Thanks, SGlover, you just reminded me why I conveniently forgot to watch tonight. I’ve had my fill of ass-covering and equivocation for this month.
May is a wet and muddy month, though, and I should be ready to subject myself to any number of true idiots, including, I hope, Newt Gingrich. Run, Newt, Run!
Captain Avatar
I liked Gravel a lot. I really don’t care how loopy the guy is – he could be drinking buddies with Toucan Sam for all I care – what counts is that he comes off like an actual person. After all the Imus absurdity (which is merely the latest manifestation of the 24/7 absurdity which has crammed down our throats for the last 30 years) I am very pleased to see a guy out there who is a real person and not a soundbite robot.
Probably the one thing I liked about Imus – and I’d be the first to admit that there isn’t much to like about the guy – is that he seemed genuine. I know plenty of white dudes who make fun of blacks and Mexicans. I know plenty of blacks and Mexicans who trash white people. It’s how real people are. Someone decided at some point that white people aren’t allowed to make those jokes, just like it decided that we needed a War on Drugs, and then a War on Terror… and this one really gets me scratching my head… exactly when did it become weird for a dude to be attracted to hot teenage girls. Like, is there any evidence that this is in any way deviant? No. I know I’m going way off topic here, but it’s worth pointing out because this particular bit of conventional wisdom, which a recent phenomenon, is especially bizarre to me. I mean, Scarlett Johansson is so obviously smoking, and has been for some time. She was smoking at 16 and you all damned well know it. So, you know, does not compute. I digress…
Back to Gravel, he makes alot of sense. Not because he’s left wing (is he actually that much of a lefty?) but he’s a sensible fucking human being. Nuking Iran is insane. In the worst case, they get the bomb and gain leverage against Israel. How exactly is that our problem? No one should want to leave themselves open to criticism on thi point, yet they do. And military spending is out of control. I’m no raving liberal. In fact, I despise Kucinich. He’s a total flake. He’s a knee-jerk ideologue. I doubt he even believes half the shit he says. I’d be even more turned off by him if he did.
I heard Gravel talking about tax policy on teevee at some point and he seemed to have some pretty wild ideas about balancing the budget. But considering the last 30 years of Reaganomics, maybe it’s time for some radical ideas to fix the mess. Or not. Whatever. I’m not saying Gravel is the Savior of America, I’m just saying he really exposed the other candidates for the lying, phony retards that they are.
Pixie
I agree with you 100% Cap’n
I think Gravel was spot on. He calls a spade a spade, and well you know we just can’t have that kind of quality in a President!
sglover
Gravel was making the eminently reasonable and level-headed observation that all the hyperventilation about “threats” and “enemies” is a lot like watching an elephant stampede at the sight of a termite. Our latest deadly enemy, Iran, has an economy maybe about a tenth the size of ours — in a good year. Fear-mongering keeps us distracted, anxious, weak. It’s also the tool of choice of a whole galaxy of scumbags, angling to make us “secure”.
sglover
Gravel was making the eminently reasonable and level-headed observation that all the hyperventilation about “threats” and “enemies” is a lot like watching an elephant stampede at the sight of a termite. Our latest deadly enemy, Iran, has an economy maybe about a tenth the size of ours — in a good year. Fear-mongering keeps us distracted, anxious, weak. It’s also the tool of choice of a whole galaxy of scumbags, angling to make us “secure”.
John Cole
A.) Drinking scotch turns me into a jackass.
B.) Why do you have to attack my ice cream?
C.) I didn’t think I was unfair. I just reported what I saw,I thought it was a fiar assessment. I am kinda hoping Gavel goes to some more debates. Hell, I wish Al Sharpton would announce again. From a blogging/entertainment standpoint, I am kinda sour I missed the Perot era.
ThymeZone
What Pb said at 8:58 pm.
sglover
Ran across this at another site — One very good point that Obama made was about the Iraq war funding bill, “one signature or sixteen [Republican] votes from being over.”
DougJ
John, you’re such a good sport now that when I try to bate you for no reason, I just don’t get anywhere.
DougJ
John, you’re such a good sport now that when I try to bait you for no reason, I don’t even get a reaction. I miss the good old days.
Pb
Oh, and… props to the Edwards campaign, for being the first to run to Daily Kos and tell them what they want to hear (that he didn’t say at the debate). Of course, as usual, it’s easy for him to say what the Congress should do now that he’s no longer in it (and note that the other two front-runners are both Senators as well, hmm…), but I do appreciate the sentiment nonetheless, for what it’s worth.
DougJ
Pb — since I see you over at Kos, I’m going to ask: is Kos as bad as it seems to be? I love the idea of it but the commenters…I think you know what I mean, no?
Pb
DougJ,
Yes, but like most other partisan blogs, you get used to it after a while–by and large, you learn where the imaginary soft and hard boundaries of ‘free’ discourse are. Of course, I’ve been hanging out there for years, so it’s pretty easy for me to say that… it has its own ingrown culture, of course, they all have our pet issues and pet peeves, and there are some users out there with an authoritarian bent, and others that are just plain nutty, but what else is new.
I love the sheer amount of commenters and diarists, and the variety. Some things do slip through the cracks, but by and large Daily Kos does manage to catch a lot of what goes on in politics, and ends up discussing it and pondering it fairly well. However, it also has its fair share of nonsense, internal flame-wars, and other such ‘inefficiencies’. But it’s a great reference, and a pretty decent forum apart from my pet peeve that the reclist is limited to only eight slots, total, which is one reason why I don’t bother trying to write diaries much any more.
tBone
I’m glad you corrected the spelling on this. Idiocracy flashback.
The word “clusterfuck” comes to mind.
Krista
I’m disappointed that he corrected the spelling — I found it to be quite amusing.
Buck
I switched on the set and saw that it was on. All I could think of was “Dear Baby Jesus” and “power outages” and “release the locusts”.
I turned to Seinfeld.
Rusty Shackleford
I watched the debate but no pre- or post- commentary. Here’s an idiot’s rundown of the candidates:
Hillary Clinton – tried to show she’s “tough enough”, her voice is an easy mark for unserious people to complain about
Barack Obama – not as smooth as he usually appears, also tried to show he was a tough guy
John Edwards – not “slick”, but intelligent and compassionate. Will never, ever get past unserious people obsessed with his hair
Bill Richardson – He’s a governor, in case you missed it the first 7 times. Always looks like he has indigestion.
Joe Biden – I imagine Biden having to listen to the little angel and little devil that are always sitting on his shoulders. “Go long-winded, Joe” the little devil urges. “And make sure you smile a lot” the little angel counsels.
Chris Dodd – Vanilla. I’ll bet the Republicans wish they had a candidate half as good as him, though.
Dennis Kucinich – I guess he serves a purpose. Actually thought he did a good job with his response to the Cheney impeachment question, even though I don’t agree with him.
Mike Gravel – Like Kucinich, he serves a purpose. Keeps things interesting. Doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.
zzyzx
You say that like that’s something new. I don’t remember the last time I voted for someone:
2004: Bush/Kerry
2000: Bush/Gore
1996: Dole/Clinton
1992: Bush/Clinton
1988: Bush/Dukakis
Those were all of the elections I could vote in and I don’t remember one time where I actually liked a candidate. Our system isn’t set up so we vote for the person we like, rather we vote for the person we hate the least. It’s something I guess…
Rusty Shackleford
Who cares if you “like” a candidate? That’s childish and what got the nation into trouble the last 6 plus years (remember all the dipshits who’d rather have a beer with the recovering alcoholic currently in the WH?). Vote for the candidate who is most qualified to be POTUS.
zzyzx
I meant “like” as in agreed with their beliefs and thought they were competent, not “like” as in I’d like to hang out with them.
Rusty Shackleford
I was thrown by the use of the word “hate” (as opposed to “like”). “Our system isn’t set up so we vote for the person we agree with, rather we vote for the person we disagree with the least.”
You’ve been voting for the lesser of the evils, but haven’t we always been voting that way?
Buck
What qualifications do you look for?
zzyzx
“You’ve been voting for the lesser of the evils, but haven’t we always been voting that way?”
That was my point to John. There’s nothing special about 2008 to make it particularly bad.
Baby Jane
The person with whom you would most like to share a joint.
mrmobi
Exactly.
I didn’t watch last night, but I already know I’d vote for any of the Dems on that stage over any of the Republican candidates, declared or undeclared.
I’m still pulling for Newt Gingrich to be the Republican candidate, though. Next to Biden, no one puts his foot in his mouth more consistently.
Come to think of it, Biden vs Gingrich would be a comedy goldmine, material for the Daily Show for decades. Long shot, though.
LarryB
A little perspective here. Each and every one of the candidates in this debate would be so much better than Bush & Co it’s not funny. They aren’t crazy and they do not believe that good government is an oxymoron. I will *happily* vote for anyone on that stage in the general. That said, I like Hillary because she’s a stone-cold b***h.
mrmobi
Me, too, my wife tells me.
All due respect, Baby Jane, but NO.
I am so done with the idea that we should somehow feel comfortable enough with a Presidential candidate that we’d want to “have a beer” with him/her or “share a joint.”
We have now elected (twice, by some counts) a true idiot to be President, some say because people felt he was a “regular guy.”
Fuck that shit. I want editors of the Harvard Law Review, Rhodes Scholars and stone-fucking wizards. Give me people who can find their own asses without needing a map. Give me people who can pronounce words and form thoughts.
After six and a half years of incompetence, isn’t it about time we elected an over-achiever to the job?
Obama, Clinton, Edwards, Richardson, Dodd. Let’s decide which one and get this show on the road. Time to show the country what a real leader looks like.
Dreggas
I used to diary at Kos but started spending time elsewhere. Whatever you do don’t point out that Hugo Chavez is just another dictator in liberators clothing or you’ll get flamed hard. Seem’s he’s a sacred cow over there despite reports that sure the poor are getting some help in Venezuela but it’s still the upper class benefiting from the Oil and wealth.
Evinfuilt
Someone who isn’t running for President, but someone we need as President.
Richardson is the most qualified for the position, but I think he may want it a bit too much, he still has my strongest support.
Gravel now has my interest, as he also shows strong Liberal Libertarian leanings, at least with taxes. And thats a very good note in my book. We need someone radical to shake things up. You know, someone who hasn’t spent the last 20 years preparing for their Presidency.
Rusty Shackleford
I don’t want an “accidental” President. That’s fine for Dave Kovic and Tom Dobbs, but not so good for the real world.
ThymeZone
In which case, what we really need is a constitutional provision for having the election result be: “Fuck it, we really don’t need a president that badly.”
So we don’t have one for four years. Can that be worse than what we have now?
I don’t think so.
Baby Jane
Eat me. :)
Pooh
To bang my favored drum, the milquetoast nature of most of the candidates (including Obama, sadly, from the reports I’ve read…though if everyone is going after him it means one thing – they are scared. Of the field of possibilities, I think Gore would be the best President, by a good margin, but of the current choices, Obama is my pick at the moment, but I digress) serves as object lesson in the desirability of public financing. As it is, even the Dem candidates have to do too much sucking up to ‘corporate’ interests, and AIPAC, and so on. The GOP candidates are similar – Romney is probably nowhere near the wingnut he is trying to be (he was elected governor in Massachusetts for f’s sake…), but their donor base makes every single one of them have to turn into ne-plus-ultra Dobsonite warmonger.
I strongly believe that with public financing we’d see a much broader variety of opinions, and, additionally, the people who did get elected would be less ‘beholden’ to insular groups, and almost by definition more responsive to their constituents.
Of course, it will never happen, because the present system is so protective of incumbents that who is going to make the effort to change it?
neil
Gravel was dynamite, the only politician on that stage that I was inspired by. I wonder what the Malkinites’ reaction to seeing him was? “Wow, I only see one America-hating moonbat on this stage.. those other guys are OK!”
Probably, “The rest of them would be saying that too if they weren’t liars.”
CalD
You really have to admire Chris Mathews for his tolerance of other people. The way people are always interupting him when he’s trying to answer a question he just asked them must be truly infuriating for him. I think he would be entirely justified if he stopped allowing other people to be on TV with him at all and just interviewed himself every night.
ConservativelyLiberal
Since it appears that the Dems will hold the House and Senate in 2008, I may end up voting for the my first Republican for Prez ever. I do not want one party to have absolute control of our government, but that is just my opinion. With the Repubs holding all of the strings, we get one flavor of hell. We get another flavor of hell with the Dems in full control. I want tension in government, not a one way street. Neither side represents all of my views, and both represent threats to what I view as good for our nation. Both parties combined cover more of the bases I am interested in.
The last thing I want is a gun free, PC nanny state, and I feel that this is what would be foisted on us if the Dems get absolute control. Maybe that is a bit strong, but I feel that is the direction in which the Dems would move.
I did not watch the debates, and judging from what I have read I did not miss much. Instead, I changed to the comedy channel (Faux Noise). Billo was a riot about Moyers taking him apart, but what was really interesting was Insanity and Colmes. They had Bernard McGurk on (Of Imus infamy), and he was having a field day. He took Sharpton and MSNBC apart, and he did a good job of it IMO. Insanity and Colmes (and I) agree on something.
The world must be coming to an end…
DougJ
You’re an idiot. I’ll bet you find David Broder’s analsyses of issues to be wise, moderate, and insightful.
ConservativelyLiberal
Nope, Broder is an idiot.
Try again… ;)
John Cole
There is simply nothing Democrats could do between now and 2008 that would piss me off enough to vote Republican. And that includes Cindy Sheehan as VP- we survived Quayle, after all.
There needs to be a real bloodletting. The GOP needs to be out of the executive branch for at least 4-8 years, and they need to be about 35% of the Senate and 40% of the House and think long and fucking hard before they ever are in leadership again.
I simply will not vote for Republcians in 2008. Maybe if the Democratic Presidential candidate murders 100 cats and rapes a few newborns I will vote for Ron Paul. But I am not going to even pretend to be coy. There is no wooing me, at least for a while. I am not voting Republican in 2008. The rot runs deep, and no one with a brain would pretend otherwise.
Jon H
“I do not want one party to have absolute control of our government, but that is just my opinion. With the Repubs holding all of the strings, we get one flavor of hell. ”
I would suggest that you should vote for good, non-Rovian Republicans at the state and local levels. If there are any, that is. If they all suck at Rove’s malignant teat, find a Libertarian.
That’d improve the GOP’s national bench down the road.
Voting GOP for President in 2008 just rewards them for epically bad behavior and for squandering over 3,000 American lives.
ConservativelyLiberal
I would only vote for a ‘real’ Republican if I ever felt I had to. Out of the current crop, that is nearly impossible. Ron Paul would be a good choice, maybe Fred Thompson. But I have to admit that I know little about Thompson. Any of the others are no-go.
But on the Dem side, Hillary is unacceptable (no more Bush/Clintons, I am tired of them), as is Obama (little experience, and his move to stab Imus in the back after all of the support Imus threw him and Harold Ford Jr. turned me off). Edwards is ok, but nothing to get excited about. I like Biden, Dodd and Richardson too. But in the end, I do not want to participate in giving one party absolute control of the government. My wife and I are only two votes, but at least when things screw up (as they inevitably do with one party control) we can say ‘don’t blame us!’.
My high school history/American government teacher said one thing that has stayed with me all of my life. He was so right about it that I laugh about it to this day. It was something like:
‘American government is like the pendulum in a clock. It swings from extreme to extreme, spending very little time in the middle. As soon as the people get fed up with one side of the swing, they move it to the other side until that exhausts them and they move it again. While it moves through the center of its swing, things are pretty good for most people. But it will keep moving to either extreme, it will never stay in the middle.’
He had that one dead on, IMO. One other thing he said that he was right about was:
‘If something goes wrong, like planes crashing from the sky, trains derailing or some other public crisis that upsets the American people, those in power call for committees to study the problem and to show that they are doing something about it. Since these panels can take a year or longer to reach a conclusion, by the time they issue their report, people are no longer upset and they can pretty much move on without having really done much to solve the problem. It is a method that those in power use to calm and control the masses.’
Mr. Bryant was a good teacher, and he was one of the more honest ones I had.
Worst case scenario, we vote for Snoopy as a write in for Prez…
Jon H
“as is Obama (little experience”
More (and better) than Bush. And given his history and name, he’s probably the best guy to improve our relations with the Muslims who *aren’t* already signed up to strap on explosives, and can still be talked back from that line.
I’d think they’d *at least* give him a huge amount of slack, waiting to see what he does, rather than assuming hostility as is likely with any other candidate.
Seems to me that would be incredibly useful in getting us badly-needed traction in undoing the damage Bush has done to our position in the world.
(Obviously, the hard core would still have to be dealt with, but we really need to do a better job of limiting the hard core’s recruiting ability.)
kchiker
So politicians are supposed to give a journalist a pass if/when that journalist has given them access?
Um…..k. And that Obama did not…speaks volumes.
Chris
Off topic, and agree with JCole 110%. A prarie fire needs to burn out not just the leading figures but all the infrastructure, consultants, Hitler youth, etc, of the current republic party..
Btw, Kucinich might be kooky, but he can’t be that kooky. Have you seen his new 29 year old redhead vixen wife? Holy smokes is she gorgeous. That’s my vote for first lady.