What Dennis said.

During the 2004 presidential primary season, Slate had an interesting little self-quiz in which you matched yourself with the Democratic presidential candidates. (I'd link to the page if I could find it; after 15 minutes of searching, I gave up.) You picked your preferred response to about a dozen issue-related questions, and it calculated which presidential candidate was best suited for you.

I'm going to be honest, and tell you what only about a half-dozen people know: The quiz told me that I should be a Kucinich supporter.

Kucinich??

Oh, jeez. Give me a break. He didn't have a prayer in 2004, no matter how many smart, progressive things he said.

And as far as being presidential material goes, I'm still not a Kucinich supporter. I think that he, like Howard Dean, can do his best work from another position.

That being said, I think Kucinich is pretty much dead-on with this article. Here's a little bit of the tee-up:

Ending the war in Iraq is right for a lot of reasons. The war was unjustified, unnecessary and unprovoked. It is counterproductive, strengthening al-Qaeda and weakening the moral authority of the United States. It is deadly: Many Americans, and many, many more Iraqis, have been killed or injured as a result of the fighting. And it is costly: Well over $250 billion in taxpayer funds have already been spent, with no end in sight.

It is also increasingly unpopular. For all these reasons, plus the increased spotlight that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita put on how much the war is draining resources desperately needed at home, Democrats should clearly call for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. If Democrats do not make this the centerpiece of their campaign in 2006, they risk repeating recent history, in which they failed to recover seats in the House and Senate.

National Democratic leaders have already tried, and tried again, to ignore the war, and it didn’t work politically. During the 2002 election cycle, when Democrats felt they had historical precedent on their side—the president’s party always loses seats in the mid-term election—the Democratic leadership in Congress cut a deal with the president to bring the war resolution to a vote, and appeared with him in a Rose Garden ceremony. "Let no light show" between Democrats and President Bush on foreign policy was the leadership’s strategy, and it yielded a historic result: For the first time since Franklin Roosevelt, a president increased his majorities in both houses of Congress during a recession.

Then, in 2004, with the president vulnerable on the war, the Democratic Party again sacrificed the opportunity to distinguish itself from Bush. Members avoided the issue of withdrawal from Iraq in the Party platform, omitted it from campaign speeches and deleted it from the national convention.