Let's hear it for and from candidates at the 'bottom'

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/4999776.html

July 25, 2007, 7:50PM
Let's hear it for and from candidates at the 'bottom'
This isn't time to muzzle challengers to the 'top tier'

By DOUGLAS MacKINNON
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

As I watched the CNN-YouTube debate featuring the Democratic candidates running for president, I saw it as a welcome rebuke to the whispered — turned public — conversation by John Edwards and Hillary Clinton regarding gaming the system to exclude the "bottom-tier" candidates. Regardless of party, voters are desperate for honest answers and real solutions. Knowing that, since when did unvarnished, thought-provoking dialogue become "bottom-tier?"

To be sure, a few of the candidates in my party — the Republican Party — might harbor thoughts about jettisoning some of the "bottom-tier" candidates in their debates. But in former Govs. Mike Huckabee and Tommy Thompson, Sen. Sam Brownback, and Reps. Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo and Ron Paul, there is more than 100 years of varied and valuable experience. It would be the height of arrogance and irresponsibility to deny the voters an opportunity to hear such accumulated knowledge.

Going back to the Democrats and the YouTube debate, no impartial observer could say that the "bottom tier" of Rep. Dennis Kucinich, former Sen. Mike Gravel, Gov. Bill Richardson, Sen. Joe Biden and Sen. Chris Dodd did not bring as much substance, passion and experience to the debate as the "top tier" of Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards. If anything, an impartial observer may have come away from the debate strongly believing that the "bottom tier" brought much more to the process than those ranked higher than them in early and subjective polls.

Who exactly delegates one candidate to the "top tier" and another to the "bottom tier?" Usually it's equal parts reality, party and media that create a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. One example being Obama. Though he has relatively little political experience, many of the power brokers fell in love with him during the 2004 Democratic convention. Before he was even a sitting U.S. senator, he gave the keynote address at the convention and wowed much of the audience. A star was born that night, and talk of a presidential run started the next morning.

So why is Obama "top tier" and someone like Dodd "bottom tier?" How does someone who has not even served one term in the Senate, leap-frog someone with a distinguished, decades-long career of public service? Because many in the party and the media almost arbitrarily determined that Obama was the "new new" thing and represented the energy and ideas of the future — as well as the charisma to deliver higher ratings. Experience fell victim to polish, youth and advertising rates.

As much as I may disagree with most of the positions of Kucinich, there can be no doubt that he is a person who brings strong convictions to the table and is more than capable of not only defending his ideas, but going after those he perceives as pandering to the voters. One such example being when a YouTube questioner, whose son was being sent back to Iraq for a second tour, asked, "I would like to know if the perception is true that the Democrats are putting politics before conscience is the reason why we are still in Iraq and seemingly will be for some time due to the Democrats' fear that blame for the loss of the war will be placed on them by the Republican spin machine?"

FULL story at link.

I wish we actually knew which pundit coined the words "top tier" to define this political race.

I don't remember it being used back in '04.

In December of 2003, he was almost 30% behind Dean.

Things can change quickly.

they all have a right to be heard.

Who is to decide who is "top tier?"

:rofl:

in the words of the great sage Bugs Bunny, "What a maroon!"

No wonder he doesn't like Obama and Kucinich.