A looming banana crisis would probably upset Chongo as much as anything possibly could, Bobert. I predict that this rumor will only serve to give greater impetus to his already wellnigh unstoppable campaign.

I also want to add that I would have voted for Obama (with some reservations) back in 2008 if I could have...and I was very glad that he won and McCain lost...but I have not been at all well impressed by his performance once in office. Still, I'm not surprised by that. I kind of suspected it would turn out this way...though I dearly hoped that it might not. And how would it have turned out with McCain in the White House? Probably even worse! But we'll never know for sure. Anyway, I don't think McCain had any chance whatsoever of winning after 8 mind-numbing years of George Bush. It was time for the "bait and switch" boys who fund the Big Two to do the old switcheroo, which is what always happens when one of the 2 mega-parties has utterly worn out its welcome with the American public. The other one is then ushered in (by corporate funding) as the supposed saviour who will make everything right again! (which they most certainly are not, and they will NOT do)

And then the whole process starts over again from the beginning.

It's a lot like that in Canada too. And in the UK. And, I suspect, in most of the western world. Elections are empty and costly propaganda shows put on to distract the general public and make them think they can significantly change the way their government functions. They could too, if the political parties were really serving the general public....but they aren't...they are serving their major sources of funding, and that's not the general public. It's the banks and the big business community.

The odd maverick like Dennis Kucinich sincerely tries to fight back against what's happening. The corporates' way of dealing with people like Dennis Kucinich is:

A. don't fund them
B. see that they get very little mass media coverage
C. use gerrymandering (re-drawing voting districts) to destroy their electability when the next election comes around. There have been repeated attempts to nullify Dennis's support by redrawing the voting districts around Cleveland in such a way as to split up the areas that tend to support him so he will lose the votes of many of his most loyal supporters, and thereby lose his seat in the next election.

Option "C" is a game both the Democrats and Republicans have played throughout their history, and it has resulted in some hilariously illogical boundaries to voting districts, cleverly designed to help either one party or the other. Both parties are utterly lacking in shame when it comes to these sort of dishonest shenanigans. Both parties would, I think, be delighted to end Dennis Kucinich's political career, so they are probably fairly well agreed on the gerrymandering when it comes to his particular district. The Republicans don't want him. The Democratic Party bosses would be pleased not to have him either.