Dennis Kucinich is in the running for President. Again. I love the little guy, and I’m glad to see him throwing his hat in the ring. As Auguste says,
A truly anti-war candidate, pro-health insurance, pro-education, pro-environment, pro-privacy* – the guy had it all.
Except, of course, a chance in hell.
That’s pretty surely the case this year too, but I’m always glad to see a true progressive challenging the other folks.
And Auguste, if Mariska does show up at your house, I’d better be invited.
In other election news, it looks like the current favored candidates from each party might just be Giuliani and Clinton. Peter Daou, Hillary Clinton’s blog advisor, sends on this CNN poll, pasted below the fold because I can’t find a link on the CNN website:
nterviews with 1,207 adult Americans conducted by telephone by Opinion Research Corporation on December 5-7, 2006. The margin of sampling error for results based on the total sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
FOR RELEASE: MONDAY, DECEMBER 11 AT 4 PM
BASED ON 322 REGISTERED REPUBLICANS — SAMPLING ERROR: +/-5.5% PTS.
14. Please tell me which of the following people you would be most likely to support for the Republican nomination for President in the year 2008. Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Arizona Senator John McCain, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, New York Governor George Pataki, or California Congressman Duncan Hunter? (RANDOMIZED)
Registered Republicans
Dec. Nov. Oct. Aug. 30-
5-7 17-19 27-29 Sept. 2
Giuliani 29% 33% 29% 32%
McCain 24% 30% 27% 21%
Gingrich 13% 9% 12% 12%
Romney 6% 9% 7% 6%
Brownback 2% 2% 1% 1%
Pataki 2% 1% 5% 3%
Thompson* 2% 3% N/A N/A
Hunter* 1% 2% N/A N/A
No opinion 23% 8% 13% 3%
* Thompson and Hunter not included on the list prior to the November 17-19 poll.
BASED ON 612 REGISTERED DEMOCRATS — SAMPLING ERROR: +/-4% PTS.
15. Please tell me which of the following people you would be most likely to support for the Democratic nomination for President in the year 2008. New York Senator Hillary Clinton, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, former North Carolina Senator John Edwards, former Vice President Al Gore, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, Delaware Senator Joe Biden, Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, Illinois Senator Barack Obama, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson or retired General Wesley Clark? (RANDOMIZED)
Registered Democrats
Dec. Nov. Oct. Aug. 30-
5-7 17-19 27-29 Sept. 2
Clinton 37% 33% 28% 38%
Obama* 15% 15% 17% N/A
Gore 14% 14% 13% 19%
Edwards 9% 14% 13% 12%
Kerry 7% 7% 12% 9%
Biden 2% 3% 2% 3%
Richardson 2% 3% 2% 3%
Clark** 2% 4% N/A N/A
Bayh 1% 2% 2% 2%
Vilsack 1% 1% 1% *
No opinion 10% 4% 8% 8%
*Obama not included in list prior to the October 27-29 poll.
** Clark not included in list prior to the November 17-19 poll.
Has Clinton even declared her candidacy yet? It’s good to see she’s already focusing on what’s really important, polls and violent video games.
And is Wesley Clark still pretending to be a Democrat? What’s the point this time?
Don’t worry, you were already on speed-dial.
I voted for Kucinich in the 2004 Illinois primary, after Kerry had already locked it up.
The nominee probably will be decided before the 2008 Illinois primary, too. Why should we matter? After all, we’re only the fifth most populous state, with the third largest U.S. city—not important people like pig farmers in West Cornhole, Iowa.
Until such time that hard campaigning starts, and all the crap that New Yorkers know about Giuliani starts being pounded into the rest of the US. Obviously I could be completely wrong about this, but I don’t see how Giuliani actually ever wins the nomination. Even if he takes a right turn on his social politics for election season. Wait until it’s pressed that his wife had to get a court order to make him stop having his mistress sleep at Gracie Mansion.
Wait for the Gore. All the big money people are waiting for the Gore.
Before the 2004 primaries, I liked Clark, Moseley Braun and Clark’s platforms best. Then I liked Dean and had to vote for Kerry.
No offense to Peter, but this is one of the most convoluted surveys of candidates and potential candidates I’ve seen on the 2008 race.
Just looking at the Democrats, only Biden and Vilsack have announced. Dodd, Kucinich, and Gravel are nowhere to be seen on the list. Gore has repeatedly said he isn’t running (as of now). Everyone else is a presumptive candidate, but with Gore on the list the whole poll’s validity is shot. It’s a fantasy poll.
The Republican list is missing at least Tom Tancredo (though I hope no one is actually missing Tancredo).
Oh well, when I am running a major news network, I’ll get to make shit up for my self too.
I’d add, every poll you see will show Hillary Clinton with a lead for at least another two months. She will have to announce earlier than planned and then weather the second round of the Obama-mania boomlet. Obama can make things competitive in the early going race to be the front-runner, but don’t expect any big changes at the top for at least a few months.
It’s December 2006. My guess is Clinton will not enjoy unanimous top spots in polls in December 2007.
I ended up a Maine state delegate for Kucinich, as I came out of the local caucuses as an Edwards delegate (to the state convention) and he didn’t make the necessary 15%. So, I pledged to Kucinich, since Kucinich supporters in Iowa voted for Edwards, to give him the 15%. What goes around, comes around, neh?
I blogged the NH Primary from Manchester Kucinich HQs, as they were incredibly open and welcoming to bloggers (granted, we at Wampum were the only ones there…sigh.) Most of Kucinich’s staff were highly experienced campaign operatives who said they, for once, wanted to work for someone they believed in, despite the futility of the run. As an operative myself, I respected that (hence, my current gig as CM of DraftGore2008PAC. Gotta love the dreamers…)
Go Dennis. Give ‘em hell.
FWIW, he was also anti-choice for a really, really long time… pretty much up until the point where he needed to start taking votes away from Dean’s left flank before Iowa in ’04. I saw a representative of his (he pulled a no show) speak at an event with Nader in Baltimore in 2003 and… well… between the two of them there was enough gendered language and what not that I was pretty well permanently turned off of K-Rocc as a candidate.
YMMV, of course. I dunno. I don’t have much time for spoiler candidates who want to advance issues but don’teven stick to their actual positions. I mean, that’s like the worst of both worlds, right?
Sorry about that, I meant I liked Clark’s, then Moseley-Braun’s then Kucinich’s platforms early on then I went nuts over Dean and voted Kerry.
I don’t see “pro-choice” on that list. I seem to recall Kucinich was a little dodgy on that. Anyone have any info on that?
Dodgy indeed. Consider the source, but this National Review article boasts an accurate (as I recall) timeline of DK’s stance on choice:
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-carney110102.asp
I’m confused. I’m assuming everyone here would like to see a Democrat win in ’08, so why is Kucinich running a good thing for you? He’s possibly the most unelectable candidate I’ve ever seen. All he’ll do if he’s at all succesful is force your front runner to tack left, thereby making them less electable. Wouldn’t it make more sense to let your candidates move to the center?
Kucinich’s official position heading into the 2004 primary was that he had changed his mind on abortion and would pledge to make Roe vs. Wade a litmus test when appointing judges.
In other words, he was lying through his teeth, considering that the part about the pledge bears uncanny resemblence to a position a panderer would take to sabotage Dean, who had solid pro-choice credentials dating as far back as his medical practice but said he wouldn’t use litmus tests.
Heading into this cycle, he’s as unelectable as ever. But so is Clinton, who Romney, McCain, or Giuliani will have a field day with. Obama might win, but he’s a slightly less charismatic version of Howard Dean, so I suspect that one scream is all it will take for the media to make fun of him so much that he’ll be unelectable.
I still want Feingold drafted.
Concern troll alert!
Zuzu:
I used “pro-privacy” as a catchall since the anti-choice contingent is pretty much expanding their crusade to include birth control, etc. – the star in the quote corresponds to a footnote which acknowledges that DK’s stance on abortion has been less than consistent and less than perfect. But whatever his motives, he seems to have become pro-choice, and I wonder whether actions will speak louder than words.
Kucinich is far from a true progressive. As others have posted, he was pro-life for a long, long time. He was also mayor of the first American city to go into default since the Great Depression.
a) Looks like an elf
b) Has really weird, anti-abortion ideology
c) Horrible mayor
But, yay! Progressive!
Me or Henry?
zuzu,
Kucinich was previously pro-life, but he was talked out of it. I see this as doubly good, because not only is he pro-choice, but the fact that he became pro-choice relatively late in his life shows that he is responsive to reasonable argument. Plus, he’s an Ohio Democrat, so his pro-life position was hardly a political liability at the time he abandoned it.
I can’t wait to vote for this guy again. In the anti-war climate, I think he might have a shot. Everyone thought he was fucking crazy for it last time. Now that we’ve had a couple more years of dead kids getting shipped home from Iraq in boxes, I suspect a strongly anti-war position might not be such a liability. The only person who could wrest my primary vote from Kucinich is Gore, and I suspect he’s not about to tarnish his popularity as a private advocate with all the shitty right-wing character-assassination he’d be targetted by if he ran.
Could we put a moratorium on talk about “electability” until it becomes the primary reason the GOP turns down Tom Tancredo and Newt Gingrich?
Liberals’ concern about electability got us John Kerry. And thus four more years of George Bush.
The only metric that impacts electability, IMHO, is a candidate’s ability to stand for something and present a vision for leadership that captivates people.
If you don’t like Clinton, you can relax, because these polls pretty much gauge name recognition and that’s about it. For example, let’s take a look back:
And that’s already the equivalent of 10 months from now.
[...] etical predications about whether he or she could win the general election. I have no clue whether Dennis Kucinich is electable. I don’t care. I would like to hea [...]
MB: Perhaps you would be better served looking into WHY Cleveland went into default under Kucinich? And yes, that was pretty damn progressive. (In short for the non-link-clickers, the Cleveland Trust Bank essentially tried to blackmail the city into selling (privatizing) their municipal electric company. Kucinich refused and the bank refused to renew the notes it held.
Actually, we got John Kerry because he won primaries. And he came damn close to unseating a sitting president during wartime. Whatever else you think of him, give him that.
You could also say that it was the party’s attempts at winning over NASCAR dads in the South that did them in.
The best quote:
[...] d the progressive wing of the party by announcing that he will not be in the running, than Dennis Kucinich has thrown his hat into the ring, a candidate who appears to [...]
But you forget his anti-choice stance for most of his political career. I worked at the company that did most of his fundraising for the last election. I opted out of doing any fundraising for him. He says he has realized the error of his ways but at the time it seems like a calculated political move, changing his stance right before the election season.
I hope his change of heart is genuine and that he will continue a pro-choice stance. But honestly he should think about the senate not the presidency.
I don’t think Kucinich is electable. But I really don’t care. He doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning, which is why his view on the abortion issue isn’t a huge concern for me (although it certainly would be if I thought that he ever win). I’m glad Kucinich is running because he forces some of the more moderate Dems to think about the hard issues — Iraq, healthcare, education, the environment, etc. His presence forces them to take a more principled stance. And I think that’s a good thing.
I agree with the people who point to the importance of having progressives in primary campaigns based on their ability to raise the important questions. In some instances third-party candidates can do the same thing. In the recent gubernatorial campaign in Mass. Grace Ross raised a lot of important points.
Here’s where I get a bit cynical. It is extremely easy for a candidate to give lip service to the position that an outlier candidate espouses, even to co-opt this message, and not do a damn thing about it once elected. In the above example, Deval Patrick, though he’s awesome on a number of counts, really has been guilty of this.
Yes, the presence of more options is always good. Every candidate should be made to actually earn the votes of the electorate. But in a political system like the US has, it’s extremely difficult to influence the choices of elected officials because the power of the voters is always so divorced from the process. Having more frequent elections could be a partial solution (for Senate, Pres, etc) though it could result in so much turnover everyone is always in the middle of learning their jobs, but it’s nothing without a more fair campaign finance picture and much shorter campaigns.
I am not saying that other countries do it better, but isn’t it radically different when a prime minister can get hit with a vote of no-confidence if they screw it up. Maybe this isn’t ideal either, but its problems are clearly different problems.
In general, having only two parties approaching any sort of power is a horrible system. The reason that Joe “I don’t represent the Jewish values of tons of American Jews in the least though I clearly wear my faith on my sleeve” Lieberman is able to hold the Dems hostage is because they just did not win enough other seats without him. Win enough seats, ignore other parties. Don’t win enough seats, put together a coalition.
I’m just so tired of the “Big Tent” parties.
Clark is also anti-war, pro-choice, pro-affirmative action, pro-environment, pro-health care, and pro-labor. He looks old but he’s about the same age as Kucinich, the Clintons, Dean, Gore, etc. He was valedictorian at West Point, was a Rhodes scholar, a four star general, received many military decorations, with several honorary knighthoods and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. In a Oct 2003 ad he said, “And I don’t care what the other candidates say, I don’t think OutKast is really breaking up. Andre 3000 and Big Boi just cut solo records, that’s all.” (Thanks, Wikipedia)
Kucinich became solidly pro-choice about the same time I did, so I can’t fault him for that. It took Dubya and Jeb for me to see the light and understand what being pro-choice actually was. Maybe the same thing happened for him.
Alon, it was Henry. You must have been pending moderation or something when I posted.
The nominee probably will be decided before the 2008 Illinois primary, too. Why should we matter?
Yeah, I feel the same way in California. The early primaries have pretty much always picked the candidate by the time it comes round to us.
I’m all in favor of having people in the primaries who aren’t electable. Would we ever have gotten to the point where people are talking about Clinton and Obama as front runners if totally unelectable people like Shirley Chisholm hadn’t paved the way? (Not that either Clinton or Obama will necessarily be the front runner, or that either necessarily ought to be your favorite candidate, just that a world in which white men aren’t the only thinkable candidates is better than a world in which white men are the only thinkable serious candidates.)
I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d like to see a winning Clinton/Obama ticket (or Obama/Clinton ticket) just to get it out of the way.
When you think about it, less than 5 or 6 years ago, the “conventional wisdom” was that if a woman or non white was going to be elected in the US, they would have to be Republican. And here we are now, with two seemingly viable (at least at this moment, among the general population) politicians, one a woman and one Black and much of the talk among political groups is more about how to stop them, as opposed to how to get them elected. That seems like a pretty amazing turnabout, to me.
I am not particularly fond of either one, or of the positions they’ve taken but I’m fairly certain that, because of the sometimes delicate, sometimes blundering political dances that any female or minority candidate for president is going to have to do in order to be taken even a tiny bit seriously, I wouldn’t much like any of them. At least they aren’t Republicans… total deal breaker there…I’d slam the ceiling shut myself, and reinforce it.
In the US, we don’t vote for women for president, and we don’t vote for non white people, and especially we don’t vote for Black people. If Clinton and/or Obama can get past all that nonsense, get elected, and govern … well, I was going to say even slightly as well as say, Bill Clinton (some of whose policies I thought were awful)… but, no, they would have to do twice as well as even whoever is considered the best president, let alone an average one. That being a fact of life for barrier breakers and all that.
It’s probably easier for me to say this – not only being a woman and Black, and thus having a sort of vested interest in things, but also because of the reality that if there was anyone running who I could support wholeheartedly, could feel good about voting for, would be proud to wear their buttons and not cringe when speaking of them to others… well, it’s a given that they wouldn’t have a chance in hades of coming close to being nominated, let alone elected.
So, if I’m not going to like any of them anyway, why not Clinton or Obama?
*wanders off to prepare for her starring role at the stake burning*
It wasn’t an attempt to troll. It’s just fact that having more “principled stands” or what have you in a primary damages your candidate in the general election. I get to watch every Republican presidential hopeful find God during a primary. It kind of sucks. I don’t care about abortion, I’m all for stem cell research, I’m not concerned about our crumbling moral fiber or sex education in school. But it issues like that that get out the GOP primary vote, even though they’re all net losers with most Americans, so thats what we get. There’s serious doubt whether Guiliani can win a GOP primary because he has problems with die-hard conservatives, even though in my mind he beats anybody you’ve got in a walk. Conversely, the “principled stands” that Kucinich espouses are electoral losers for the Democrats. He’s definitely to the left of the majority of Americans by a good bit. That’s not even a value judgement, it’s just an observation.
Look, we’re not saying it is or isn’t true, we’re saying we know and we do or don’t give a shit. But most importantly, _we know_.
Here’s the thing — when you lack a Leader, shit like electability and appeal to key demographics and poll results and whatever become really important. When you have a true Leader, somebody with principles and vision and all that, people will for for them. It’s just that it’s so rare to see a true leader in electoral politics that nobody thinks it’s possible.
Damn it’s nice to see that King Tommy is only polling at 2-3%. Hopefully he’ll stay firmly ensconced at the bottom.
Because it won’t be Clinton or Obama, but Giuliani or McCain.
I would vote for him. Besides, an “elf” would be a nice change of pace from old, fat Republican guys without necks.
I voted for Kucinich in ’04, and will do so again in the primary in ’08. I note that as others have said, his conflicted and evolving feelings about abortion strike a chord. I’m pro-choice when it comes to actual government policy, but filled with grave misgivings about the procedure itself. Kucinich, who is a a man of genuine faith as well, comes closer to my views on most issues than anyone I know — and as Jill says, he’ll move the argument left.
Sam Brownback isn’t getting the GOP nod either, but he will move the GOP right. We have to counter that.
You don’t have to run for President to move things left. In the last ten years, the greatest success of the American left in terms of center-shifting has been in gay rights. But the American public is moving leftward on that issue because of court rulings and gay rights organizations that put SSM on the agenda, rather than because of lightweights who run for President to raise consciousness.
A politician can only engage in center-shifting if he’s in power or if he’s a major party nominee. For example, Bush center-shifted the public to the left on immigration by proposing a guest worker program, which immediately got mainstream attention because it came from the President.
Isn’t it ever thus? “We can’t do this or that, cuz no matter what, white male will win.”
Am not sure that that is true, but then again, we’ve never tried anything else (with viable candidates) so there really is no way of knowing.
I don’t actually think we’ll get a chance to test it out in 2008 either, although I do believe that of any year in the next 12 (or 14, I guess), that would be the best one.
Well, wait, forgot about… Geraldine Farraro? Am not sure of her last name. While her being a woman and a VP candidate was one issue, I don’t think it was the major one that caused them to lose.
I’d vote for Clinton, Obama or Clinton/Obama too.
In 2005 (apparently the most recent scorecard) Kucinich got a 100% rating from NARAL (along with our new senator Sherrod Brown!), and he responded to the NPAT saying that he does not support any restrictions on abortion or the withholding of public funds from organizations that perform abortions. I’ve contacted him on many bills regarding reproductive choice in the past, and he’s always given me a prompt, enthusiastic response (as opposed to when I wrote a letter to Mike DeWine asking him not to confirm Alito, citing caselaw, and got a letter back–after the fool was already confirmed–explaining what a SCOTUS justice is and how you get be one, in third grade social studies textbook language.) and voted in support of reproductive freedom.
I do love me some Dennis. What can I say?
Re: the abortion thing, I though single-issue voting was the kind of cutting off nose to spite face type of stuff that conservatives specialize in. Guess not….
As for Obama–maybe you need to live in Illinois and watch his voting pattern to understand the only things he has going for him is the same stuff most candidates/normal politicians usually have these days: good looking, glib, and surfing the issues like a man with absolutely no internal morals. I wouldn’t vote for him with a ten-foot pole.
Of course, more to the point is whether the traditional parties have anything at all to offer these days:
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=696
Nanette, it’s not that women and minorities can’t win. It’s that Hillary Clinton is as electable as a bar of soap shaped and colored like a foreign flag. Obama is probably more electable – being an empty suit helps – but McCain will still mop the floor with him, and I’m pretty sure that so will Giuliani. Most election cycles only have one or two electable candidates, so it’s not surprising they’ll tend to be white and male.