Top ten responses to...

Top Ten Responses To -- "I Love Kucinich But He Can't Win"
by Tad Daley


How many times have you heard someone say: "I love Kucinich ... but I just don't think he's electable"? I often encounter staffers for other candidates out here in Los Angeles where I'm based, and even they often say these words to me. Saul Landau recently said on National Public Radio that Dennis's name has apparently been changed to the hyphenated 'Kucinich-ButHeCan'tWin.' The Congressman himself has been asked about the phenomenon repeatedly in the presidential debates.

Our campaign's overarching theme is 'Fear Ends / Hope Begins.' Over and over again, people say to us: "Dennis stands for so many of my hopes and dreams. But I so intensely fear George Bush's re-election ... that I will not vote for Dennis, or donate to Dennis, or volunteer for Dennis. I will support instead some other, lesser candidate who does not really reflect my aspirations for the human community, but who has a better chance of winning on November 2nd."

At the Kucinich campaign, we believe our single most effective strategy now to gain new votes is to move these individuals to change their minds.

Now that the cold primary season has commenced, there is little doubt that this as our most fertile garden to till. This is about mobilizing support from those who are already with us! These are votes that are already rightfully ours! This is about persuading people to defy their fears, and to vote their hopes and dreams.

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NUMBER NINE: Dennis Is The Most Electable Candidate In A Face-Off Against George Bush.

We believe that Dennis may well be the candidate best equipped to ensure that George Bush emulates his father - and rides off into the sunset as another failed one-term president. What was the consensus verdict after the 2002 Congressional election debacle for the Democrats - That if Democrats run like Republicans, Republicans will surely win. That the Democrats need to present voters with a clear distinction, a clear choice, and a clear alternative vision. "It's Democrats above all who need big ideas," says former Clinton and Gore pollster Stanley Greenberg, "who need to create an election that is about something." The lesson of 2002 is that the candidate with the best chance to beat George Bush will be the candidate who offers the starkest contrast to George Bush. And no one can dispute that that candidate is Dennis Kucinich.

Is there any Democrat who would better motivate our liberal and progressive base in November 2004 - generating not just votes, but midnight oil and shoe leather? One of the central theses of both John Judis and Ruy Teixeira's 2003 book 'The Emerging Democratic Majority' and E.J. Dionne's 1997 book 'They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era' is that broad demographic, geographic, economic, and political changes are making us more and more a Democratic country. But historically among voters of color -- who become a greater proportion of the electorate with every election cycle -- the more progressive the candidate the greater the turnout on Election Day. Dennis, indeed, is the candidate who can best mobilize this "emerging Democratic majority."

In addition, no one could secure the allegiance of more Ralph Nader voters than Dennis Kucinich. Al Gore and Nader together received 3.5 million more votes than George Bush in November 2000. But not ALL those Nader voters will likely vote for ANY Democratic nominee in November 2004. Surely, more of them would turn out to support Dennis than they would any other Democratic candidate. And given how many states would have swung the other way but for the Nader candidacy (he received 99,000 votes in Florida), these voters could make absolutely the decisive difference in the 2004 election.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Dennis has a great many weapons to wield in the national security debate. Dennis can make a comprehensive case that George Bush's foreign policies have generated new foreign enemies. That George Bush's defense policies have weakened our defenses. That George Bush's responses to 9/11 have made future 9/11s far more likely to occur. (So much for Republicans being "strong on defense.") And our man has a comprehensive alternative to offer. Dennis Kucinich will accommodate rather than alienate, employ carrots far more than sticks, and dry up the swamps of hopelessness and humiliation that cause insecure youth to head down the terrorist road. Dennis Kucinich will be both tough on terror and tough on the causes of terror. In Dennis Kucinich's America our nation will abide by Lincoln's precept: "The only lasting way to eliminate an enemy is to make him your friend." And that is a winning message for the post 9/11 world.

Also contrary to the conventional wisdom that sees Dennis as 'too far left' to attract swing voters, Dennis has a history of winning votes from blue collar 'Reagan Democrats' - because no one better illuminates how Bush's policies favor the rich and leave them out in the cold. Dennis has a track record in building broad ethnic coalitions. And Dennis is an experienced and seasoned politician, having fought and won grueling political battles as a city council member, a mayor, a state senator, and a member of the U.S. Congress.

Finally, Dennis is from Ohio, a key Midwestern battleground swing state with 20 electoral votes. Dennis has defeated Republican incumbents three times in Ohio. No Republican in the history of this nation has ever been elected President without carrying Ohio. Dennis can win Ohio for the Democrats. And as Ohio goes, so goes the nation.

NUMBER EIGHT: If Voters Believe Dennis Truly Has 'No Chance Of Winning the Nomination' Then For
Them There's No Danger In Voting For Him In The Primary!

When people say, 'Dennis cannot win,' they themselves are often unclear about what they mean. Do they mean
Dennis cannot win the nomination? Or do they mean that if Dennis does in fact win the nomination, he cannot win
the general election? These two very different propositions lead to very different conclusions.

If Voter Vanessa likes Dennis but believes Dennis would lose to George Bush on November 2nd, then a decision to
vote for someone else in the primaries might make sense if Dennis was a frontrunner, if Vanessa believes that
Dennis has a real shot at the nomination, if the pundits thought Dennis had any chance at all of becoming the
Democratic candidate for president.

But they don't.

Most voters and most of the punditocracy have written off any possibility that Dennis can win the nomination. Here in
my town the mighty Los Angeles Times never refers to our man as anything other than 'long shot candidate Dennis
Kucinich.' Ted Koppel famously dismissed him as a 'vanity candidate.' If Vanessa believes that Dennis has no
chance of emerging as the nominee, then a primary vote for Dennis carries no danger of anointing the wrong
candidate to face-off against George Bush. For Vanessa, there is no risk that she will help choose a candidate who
is going to get blown out in the general. There is no peril.

There is no worst-case scenario.