Why We Need Fringe Candidates (The Nation)

[marmar]

Why We Need Fringe Candidates

Nicholas von Hoffman

Why do they run? Don't they know they do not have a snowball's chance in hell of getting the nomination? What are they in it for? The lecture fees? Or are they egomaniacs who accept the ridicule if that's the price of fifteen minute's worth of Secret Service protection?

Now that we are in the debate season, fringe candidates are placed on the wings of the line of podiums up on the stage. Mainstream candidates, the frontrunners, get the middle positions and are asked the most questions. As time passes and we move closer to actual voting, the fringies get shoved so far out on the margins you cannot see them anymore. They are gone with whatever it was they were peddling.

The studio analysts, those fanny-dragging voices of conventional banality, dismiss them with a light hand and the merest suggestion that they are political straight men on stage to offer themselves up for a laugh or two at their own expense. You must listen closely to recognize that what these overly sincere crackpots may be peddling is exactly what their parties say they believe in and stand for.

We had a small dose of that the other night at the CNN-sponsored debate in New Hampshire with Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Cleveland, where many years ago he was the mayor. He lost his job and got ridden out of town in part because he would not go along with privatizing the municipally owned electric utility. They cursed him then, and now, in the post-Enron age, they bless him. Today he is a sparse vegan of a man whom the big guys love to ignore, although he does not make it easy to be overlooked. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070618/howl

[RC]

1. These fringe people make more sense than any of the front runners

since Ike.