Give Dennis Kucinich His Due

[Guest guest]

Give Dennis Kucinich His Due

Steve Cobble

 

 

 

 

Five years ago, this month, the world said no to the Iraq War, with

massive demonstrations all around the world involving 10 million

people. In the United States, more than 100,000 people came to New

York City to challenge the Bush/Cheney rush to war--and one of the

speakers, one of the very few elected officials to speak that day, was

Dennis Kucinich.

 

So what, you say? Well, maybe it's time to give Dennis his due.

 

Compare the outpouring of affection and respect for John Edwards with

the snark and abuse offered Kucinich when they each bowed out of the

presidential race last month. Most liberal columnists and progressive

bloggers offered kudos to Edwards for forcing and/or encouraging

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to move left on healthcare, on trade

issues, on poverty and inequality. John and Elizabeth Edwards did

exactly that, and I offer my own thanks for the issues they ran on,

especially given everything that was going on in their family. They

deserve our appreciation for boldly putting good issue positions on

the table, fighting hard for them and opening the door for the other

candidates to get bolder, too.

 

 

 

 

 

But why stop there? Why not ask who opened the door for Edwards?

Because on almost every issue that John Edwards battled hard on in

2007, helping move Obama and Clinton closer to the light, it's

indisputable that Dennis Kucinich pushed on those same issues back in

2003, again in 2007 and every year in between. In other words,

Kucinich was against the war, for fair trade, against NAFTA and the

WTO, against the Patriot Act, for single-payer health care, for an

infrastructure plan to rebuild America and put forward a plan to bring

the troops home--all long before not just John Edwards, but long

before almost anybody.

 

Consider the Patriot Act vote, cast by the Congress in October of

2001, only a few weeks after 9/11, in a scary time of threats and

intimidation from the Bush/Cheney Administration. This vote had our

lawmakers so scared that only a few brave House members stood up to

oppose it, and in the Senate, only Russ Feingold had the guts to say

no. But Kucinich voted no. Why? Because he read the bill. He risked

his political career to oppose an intrusive, liberty-violating,

fundamentally un-American bill. Very few others did, especially House

members from ethnic urban districts.

 

So give John Edwards his due. But give Kucinich his due, too.

 

Because the truth is, Dennis Kucinich has the best voting record in

Congress of anyone from a mostly white, ethnic district. No one else

who shares most of Kucinich's positions--even those who are much less

outspoken than he is--also has a district like his. He's not from

Berkeley or Madison. He doesn't have a huge, liberal base

constituency. Dennis Kucinich is consistently braver than his district

would suggest he should be; and perhaps no other progressive is as

brave compared to the people they represent. If you disagree, I offer

impeachment as an example. Or gay marriage. Or animal rights. Or the

abolition of nuclear weapons. Or a ban on weapons in space. Or his

early opposition to pre-emptive war.

 

Maybe those brave votes are a big part of the reason that Kucinich

currently has four opponents for his House seat, including at least

one who's being massively funded by outside corporate interests. Maybe

his tough race is not all due to his absences, but to his

outspokenness. Maybe it's not his ears but his votes. Maybe it's not

his size that irritates the big corporate boys but his willingness to

act on his beliefs.

 

Maybe the special interest money that's pouring into Cleveland these

days for his opponents is not really because they're dissatisfied with

his constituent service but because they don't like his commitment to

ending the war economy; because they're irritated by his feistiness on

behalf of canceling NAFTA, for fair trade, for living wages, for card-

check union organizing; or because they hate his years of leadership

on behalf of getting the insurance and drug companies out of people's

healthcare.

 

Think about this: Kucinich campaigned in 2007 on almost exactly the

same key issues he ran on in 2003--ending the war, fair trade and

single-payer health care for all. Since that time, the Democratic

Party as a whole has moved more towards his early positions on these

issues, as have all his opponents (to greater or lesser degrees) in

the presidential primary last year--but he hardly moved at all. He was

right then, and he's right now, on most of the fundamental issues that

base Democratic voters care about.

 

Here's a fun experiment. Go to ActBlueright now, pick out any House

candidate randomly, and see if their proposed issue positions outdo

Kucinich's existing votes. And then think about the fact that

progressive groups will in the coming months spend hundreds of

thousands of dollars, and the blogosphere will correctly exalt and

extol many of these challengers, and activists will offer up thousands

of words and hundreds of hours and dozens of dollars each, all to

elect people who do not now--and likely never will--measure up to

Kucinich's existing track record.

 

Then consider treating him with a bit more respect.

 

 

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.

Confucius