Kucinich Watch: Presidential Candidate Who Can't Win Keeps Winning

Is Dennis Kucinich lagging in the presidential race? Not by much, according to a number of recent polls. In an ongoing Internet political "blind taste test", as of this writing, 79,911 respondents out of 138,563 have placed Kucinich on top, by ranking specific issues of importance to voters, not the candidates themselves. Gravel comes in a distant second at 9680, Paul at 9413, Romney at 6167, and Clinton rates fourth at 5143.

Kucinich also won the online ABC news poll after the Des Moines debate with 10,000 votes as the most frequent answer to the question "Who do you think won the Democratic debate?" Obama came in second at 8,000 and Hillary third at 5,000. Even after ABC inexplicably pulled this poll and replaced it with a second poll posing a different question-"Who do you think is winning the Democratic debates?"-Kucinich finished neck-in-neck with Hillary Clinton. Interestingly, ABC failed to announce the results of the poll, and even cut Kucinich out of an online Democratic presidential candidate group photo, with no explanation offered.

Kucinich came in second in a poll after the HRC/LOGO presidential forum with 25% of the votes, behind Obama at 46%. Clinton came in third with only 14%. As well, after the AFL-CIO presidential forum in Chicago shown on MSNBC, to the question "Which Democrat will best represent labor?" Kucinich ranked second at 22% (with Edwards) after Obama at 24%, with Clinton fourth at 17%. And at the Howard University forum, he was rated third behind Clinton and Obama by a number of political analysts based on his responses.

All in all, these are excellent showings for a so-called "third-tier" candidate. Why is he ranking so highly? Part of it is undoubtedly Kucinich's consistently courageous, cogent and informed responses to questions. Voters know exactly where he stands on the issues. The other part is that he's just plain witty and adds sparkle to often dull proceedings. Even career conservative Pat Buchanan somewhat patronizingly declared recently on "The McLaughlin Report" that Kucinich shouldn't be excluded from the Democratic forums because "he's a great little debater".