More Bad News for Kucinich: He's Dumped from Saturday's Presidential Debate

Hoping to narrow the field and thus generate a better debate, ABC announced this afternoon that it was eliminating three presidential candidates from Saturday’s debate: Republican Duncan Hunter and Democrats Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel. According to the Associated Press, the network believes that by limiting the field, it will foster more interaction between the combatants. So it forced candidates to meet at least one of three criteria: place first through fourth in Iowa, poll 5 percent or higher in one of the last four major New Hampshire surveys, or poll 5 percent or higher in one of the last four major national surveys. “In previous debates where the stage was more crowded you had to make sure all of the candidates got fair time," said David Chalian, ABC News political director. "Here you will have more time to go in depth on the issues."