Dark horse day-dreamer Dennis Kucinich has ended his second bid for the presidency and is now repairing to Ohio to raise dough to fight off a primary challenge for his congressional seat.

It should be remembered of Dennis that, his desirability as President aside, he was the only true liberal running for the job. He is the only Democrat who has called the Iraq War bullshit from bomb one, a man who fulfilled the country’s collective birthday cake wish when he initiated an impeachment effort against Dick Cheney, and one of the few people in Congress to vote consistently and unapologetically against every new infringement on civil liberties that the White House has cooked up and that the Democratic party has bent over to take.

Because he actually stands for something it was not surprising that Kucinich was instantly relegated to the leprous “third tier” of candidates, where dwell the Tancredos, Gravells and Hunters. Candidates like these do not put a twinkle in the eyes of Wolf Blitzer or Tim Russert because they don’t “fit the mold” of what the Fourth Estate expects from a president, namely their ability to compete for the public’s attention with the other topics that pass for news these days, like Paris Hilton’s traffic violations and Britney Spears’ gash. If you don’t have the cache of being a Mormon demi-billionaire, a former first lady, a Tiger Woods or a walking glob of New York sleaze, you may as well not show up at the debates. And if you try to, well, eventually the doors must be locked for the good of the nation.

Kucinich might not have been your man for the job, but the manner in which his campaign was torpedoed from the outset by the likes of NBC, whose parent company General Electric could not have more of a stake in quashing the ambitions of someone who believes in such notions as a Department of Peace, should give everyone pause.