Melissa Etheridge Objects on Kucinich's Behalfhttp://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20080106/cm_thenation/45266583Sat Jan 5, 6:01 PM ET
The Nation -- MANCHESTER, NH --
The decision of ABC News to exclude Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich from tonight's Democratic presidential debate in New Hampshire has Kucinich hopping mad.
He's filed an appropriate complaint with the Federal Communications Commission about the decision of ABC to sponsor a pre-primary debate featuring only the four Democratic candidates -- Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Bill Richardson -- who have accepted campaign contributions from its parent corporation, Walt Disney Co.
It's not just a heavy-handed move by a communications giant, suggests Kucinich, it's a violation of equal-time provisions.
That's a legitimate complaint. Even the debate's cosponsor -- WMUR-TV in Manchester -- would appear to agree. WMUR has reportedly offered Kucinich five minutes of free airtime after tonight's debate to make his case.
The exclusion of Kucinich is an egregious enough act by ABC to have drawn complaints from outside the usual political and media circles.
Singer Melissa Etheridge actually called the New York Times to register her objection.
"This just sent me over the top," she told the times. "I think that this ABC debate is nothing but an infomercial now."
Etheridge is right.
The criterion ABC is using to exclude Kucinich is a joke.
The network says that, to get a place on the stage, a candidate must have finished in the top four in Iowa or poll least 5 percent in a national or New Hampshire poll.
Kucinich was not in the top four in Iowa, but there was no top four in Iowa. There was a top three -- Obama, Edwards and Clinton. Richardson finished with a marginal two percent, and because of the arcane rules of the caucuses -- which involve trading of support -- there is no reason to believe that he brought more voters out on caucus night than Delaware Senator Joe Biden, Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd or Kucinich.
At the caucus I attended in Dubuque, for instance, Biden had significantly more supporters than Richardson, while Dodd and Kucinich had roughly equal crowds.
As for the 5 percent in New Hampshire, Kucinich has polled over the level during the course of the current campaign. A Rasmussen survey in the fall had him at 7 percent. He is polls below that level now. But ABC's "standard" would appear to be awfully convenient for a network that has made little secret of its desire to reduce the field of debaters.
This all leads to the reasonable conclusion, made by Etheridge that the network designed its criteria with a conscious intent to exclude Kucinich. The singer suggests that the "corporate interests that have infiltrated the Democratic Party" prefer to marginalize Kucinich.
But if it is true that corporate interests have infiltrated the Democratic Party, it is even more true that they define the television networks. That's Etheridge is right to be grumbling, and why everyone else should be doing the same.
As Kucinich argues in his FCC complaint, "ABC should not be the first primary."
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