The media has handled the large number of Democratic presidential candidates badly.
The Washington Post‘s David Broder declared (4/27/07) that “six of the eight declared candidates” at the Democrats’ debate in South Carolina “showed themselves to be both substantive and direct in their responses.”
The other two he’s talking about are Kucinich and Gavel, who happen to represent the many many many Americans who are opposed to the war.
And the media thinks it can make decisions for the American people about who we should take seriously.
Describing the Democratic debate, the Los Angeles Times argued (4/27/07) that the wide debate format “allowed each candidate a total of 11 minutes to talk—giving Kucinich and Gravel, both of whom have a negligible showing in polls, equal time with the front-runners, which they used to take aggressive hits at [New York Sen. Hillary] Clinton and Obama.” At this point, more than half a year before the first actual voters have a chance to weigh in, poll numbers should not be the prime determiner of who gets to participate in a debate; even so, Kucinich and Gravel are in what amounts to a statistical dead heat in many polls with candidates treated more seriously by the corporate media, like Biden and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.