With rhetoric like that, he is unelectable.

I don't think I can disagree with you there. OTOH, I am guessing that many more Democrats with much blander rhetoric are unelectable, too!!

It wil be interesting to see what happens. Polls cited on the networks show support for the war (and maybe Bush, too) among US voters currently at 70%. Sure, I wonder how they are asking the question and who they are asking, but it is somehow believable on a "support our troops" basis. Everybody loves a winner. If, by this point, US tanks can drive around Baghdad, and if the US can prop up some military-sponsored interim government and the death rate among occupying troops subsides to a lower level, Democrats including Kucinich are facing a fait accompli. How do you run on an anti-war platform when the war is "over" (I put this in quotes just to indicate my skepticism of a narrow definition of "over").

What would be interesting to see is whether somebody like Kucinich, having failed to get the nomination, stands with whatever centrist, no-so-antiwar candidate the Democrats cook up. It's kind of sick, but I think the Democrats' only hope is if something around Iraq gets much worse in the next year and that 70 percent figure drops to 35 percent.

One small tangent off of Kucinich and his other positions and lifestyle is my own sometimes paralysis when it comes to political demonstrations. When looking at past WTO demonstrations and some but not all of recent anti-war protests, I feel like there's a whole melange of political viewpoints mixed up in there....fundamental pacifism along with other overlaid themes like animal rights. I looked at one march a week ago and tried to envision myself -- not a pacifist and a dyed-in-the-wool carnivore -- marching with the crowd. Oh, I guess I'm not a joiner anyhow! ...and to be fair, what I have seen of anti-war demos have tended to be pretty on message...fewer folks trying to leverage the situation for their own groups. End tangent. Time to catch a plane to "Oakland".