Dennis Kucinich is out.

I’ve always had a hard time disassociating Dennis Kucinich from the first supporter of his I met, back in 2003, outside of a Willie Nelson show in Austin. The dude was one of those Professional Austinites who makes a living being vaguely sleazy, the sort of person who cusses out Capitol Metro drivers for imagined sleights and votes for Jennifer Gale for mayor because Leslie Cochran is too mainstream a candidate. He was selling homemade merchandise- the profits from which, he promised, went in some meager percentage to the campaign- that had, emblazoned on the t-shirt or bumper sticker in question, i’m with koochie.

Yeah.

Of course Kucinich isn’t his supporters, and he’s occasionally a very courageous Congressman (and occasionally not- witness his vote to amend the constitution to make desecration of the flag of the united states illegal, or his invocation of the Department of Homeland Security to try and discredit a primary challenger) who can be forgiven for attracting a bizarre smattering of the disaffected of all stripes to his campaign. His presidential run is always lambasted as quixotic or worse, and it’s hard to decide if it’s fair or not. When he starts claiming that he dropped out of the race because there is a point at which you just realize that you, look, you accept it, that it isn’t going to happen and you move on, quixotic sounds like the right word- you mean it took you until now to realize and accept that it isn’t going to happen? If you combine the delusions that would allow the guy to believe, three primaries, fewer than 10,000 votes overall, and zero delegates into the campaign, that it might still happen, along with the perennial candidatude, the lobbying the state of New Hampshire’s single ladies for a date in ‘04, and the parading of a wife more than half his age in front of the media this time around- well, he starts to look like the Jennifer Gale of the Presidential campaign. He’s a novelty candidate with no chance of being elected, and that’s fine, under certain circumstances- his presence in the debates allowed the tone and subject to shift in a genuinely progressive direction from time-to-time (a fact that likely played into the decision to exclude him from later debates), and if his stated reason for campaigning was to keep those issues relevant, then I’m on his side. But he looks insane if you believe that he ever expected to win, and that is a fair thing about our democracy. A candidate like Dennis Kucinich can note walk onto the national political scene and expect to be the President, and quixotic is the right word to describe someone who thinks he can.

Dennis Kucinich can’t, and shouldn’t, be the President, because he’d be useless even if he were elected. This is not a fault of the corrupt nature of American politics- this is a fault of his supporters, and of the supporters of similar novelty and fringe candidates. Ron Paul would be a useless President; so would Ralph Nader or Michael Badnarik or whomever else the kids are into, because they never bothered to invest their time and effort into building an infrastructure that would empower these people. There’s no chance for a genuinely bold and different President because there isn’t a bold and different Congress, and there isn’t a bold and different Congress because everyone who complains about the corporate media locking their particular fringe candidate out hasn’t done the work to get such a Congress elected. A few dozen new Congresspeople with your candidate’s platform would change everything; a half-dozen Senators would similarly shift the face of the country’s political culture. But that’s a lot of boring work, and not as exciting and interesting as a Presidential campaign.

And this is where Kucinich loses me, because his campaign is all about ego, and it turns him into a Congressman of diminished influence. He introduced the first impeachment bill on Cheney, but when you’ve missed as many votes as Kucinich has, and when you’ve allowed yourself to appear as non-serious as he has (because it sometimes looks like he runs for President because it gets him on TV and helped him meet his hot wife), that doesn’t mean much- it won’t pass.

And now, it appears that it’s threatening his Congressional seat. Check out this commercial from Joe Cimperman, Kucinich’s primary challenger. It’s frankly hard to argue against, which is unfortunate.

To be certain, this would be a better country if there were several dozen other congresspeople who shared Kucinich’s politics. But it may end up one shy, instead. Ron Paul faces a similar primary challenger, though he’s got about $19million more than Kucinich in his campaign coffers, so he’s in less danger. Also, he’s insane.

And all of this, in its roundabout way, is why I support Obama. Because he’s not my progressive dream-date, but I’ve come to realize that I don’t want that person to be the President. There’s no margin in it. You’re not going to get an anarcho-socialist President, and it wouldn’t make sense to have one.

The best you can get is a candidate that represents change. That’s true of Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich just like it’s true of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. None of them are actually a vote for change, because none of them have the power to change things in bold ways. When you get a President who is genuinely radical about changing the way Washington works, you end up with George W Bush. So the question becomes, what sort of symbol for change do you want to see?

I want to see change that looks like Obama.

But it’s not just about race- he’s genuinely progressive in small ways that don’t grab headlines, but headline-grabbing is not the point, remember. His technology platform, his open-source government proposals, and parts of his energy plan are genuinely bold and exciting. It’s safe to expect that as President, as in his Senate career, he’ll be pragmatic and middle-of-the-road on most major issues, and progressive and forward-thinking on smaller issues.

And that’s the point. Anything else breeds apathy. If you’re sad because your candidate doesn’t get enough attention with their bold plans, or if you’re expecting that someone good will get in and then there’ll be big, genuine change on a policy level, then you’re going to be disappointed.

The things that the President can really do, and the ways in which it matters who it is, are: how we’re represented to the rest of the world; who gets appointed to which positions; how transparently the administration is run (and, by extension, how much dubious authority they take on); and whether or not troops are committed to police action somewhere.

That’s about it. A good President won’t repair the falling dollar, won’t get us out of Iraq, won’t create jobs, won’t do any of the really interesting or progressive things you’ve been hoping for, because that’s not the President’s job.

But the other things matter, and on those other things, Obama is as good as it gets, and it’s a damn sight better than anyone I’ve ever had the chance to vote for.