There are plenty of articles and analyses available out there describing just how corrupt and propagandist the mainstream media has become. For a quick and dirty example of how the media’s attention shapes public awareness, consider how the media started off the primaries with a hierarchy of candidates. The top tier consisted of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards. In the bottom tier, of course, was Dennis Kucinich. Months later, who are the leading candidates? Clinton (recently and somewhat predictably endorsed by The New York Times), Obama and Edwards. Gov. Bill Richardson, a man with an impressive resume, has left the building, along with Chris Dodd and Joe Biden. Mike Gravel’s candidacy has been planted someplace where the media doesn’t shine. And now Kucinich joins the casualty list. I can only wonder how different the campaign would have been had Kucinich been allowed to participate in all of the debates and given a chance to truly challenge the “big tier” candidates on the issues. Regardless of whether people agree with him, his inclusion in the discussion surely would have been more intellectually stimulating than love-fests like the Nevada debate, and more mature than Clinton and Obama’s sniping in South Carolina.

Free the Bear?

Naturally, the loss of Kucinich, along with the other candidates, plays into California’s marginalization. New Hampshire and Iowa, with no reason to be at the start the primary season – other than a highly inflated sense of self-importance – and other early state primaries have deprived California voters from a broad and meaningful choice. It’s a persistent, if subdued, refrain: Despite being one of the world’s largest economies and despite being the most populated state, California gets no respect and no influence. The primary process has essentially told California, “You’re not important. You shouldn’t get the same choices as other states. And by the way, don’t let the continent hit you in the posterior as you fall into the ocean.” Throw in the energy crisis and the EPA’s interference in California legislation, and there are plenty of reasons to suggest, with perfect seriousness, that California should secede from the Union. Secede, and give the rest of the country a bright, sunshiny middle finger. The Golden State can take care of itself.

The End of Idealistic Voting

But I digress. Kucinich’s withdrawal from the race represents a more insidious corruption of the democratic process than even the mainstream media’s compromised influence. Without Kucinich (or any of the others), the possibility of “voting your conscience” is effectively gone: All that remains is tactical voting, the game born of polling, horserace “journalism,” and the minutiae of a popularity contest divorced from substance. Of course, I recognize that some people genuinely feel that Clinton, Obama or Edwards represents their interests. Good for them, I say. But there are plenty of people who have been deprived of viewpoints that may be more representative of their wishes than either of the Big Three. Without a tangible ideological difference distinguishing the Big Three — more like the Big Two-and-a-Half, since Edwards’ advocacy on middle-class and poverty issues makes him less of a media darling than a female candidate and a black candidate. Voters have to grind their individual politics into establishment mush. All those questions the media have been playing with, such as the issue of electability as mitigated by gender and race, have come to the forefront. All the polls have come home to roost, especially since the prospect of another Republican in the White House is unconscionable. Rudy (Jackboot in a Human Face) Giuliani? Mike (Theocracy) Huckabee? Mitt (The Panderer) Romney? It’s sad that it falls to McCain – a man whose singing about bombing foreign countries to the tune of the Beach Boys (and continued insistence on more wars) is reason enough to have him committed to an insane asylum – to be the least offensive choice for the Republican presidential candidate.

So which Democratic candidate can win against a Republican candidate? What tactic should people yearning for a change from establishment politics use in casting their votes? While many pundits continue to push the myth of liberal bias and political dominance, it’s clear that pop-conservative economics (e.g. “Reagonomics”) and social policies have been the political leadership’s real guiding ideology. Progressive agendas (the environment, women’s right over their own bodies, gay marriage, an end to the war in Iraq) either have been sabotaged or, at the least, forced into a holding pattern. Given the realities of the dysfunctional electoral system, it would seem that even voting for a third-party candidate may not be the wisest tactical move. However much it would be desirable to scorch the political landscape and see both Republicans and Democrats humbled, it remains that voters must factor into their tactical voting choices that any Democrat would be far more preferable to a Republican, even if not otherwise ideal.