He's out. Formal speech to come tomorrow. And I have to see this as a shame; based on all the (dubious) candidate-matching rubrics available online, here was the man for me: A committed, principled progressive, a 6-term representative who needed to apologize for none of his votes on the trail, and--at least until Mike Gravel cherry-picked his role as the righteous, wacky outsider--a leftward force in the dialogue.
I will add that at the TNR offices there is a large reprint of the helpful New York Times chart of candidate stances on major issues. We've been X-ing their bright and shiny faces out as events warrant. But on the democratic side, it seems layout concerns (and a latent media bias?) left room for only six candidates, which, sadly, didn't include Dennis the Menace. A theoretical X then, for an improbable run.
Update: Thumbs down to Kucinich's pro-Serb, pro-life stance in
early incarnations of his ideology. Thumbs up to commenters for
pointing this out! Our democracy must be alive and well.
--Dayo Olopade