Kucinich was the best candidate

I just realized that. I thought he was a nut for wanting to leave iraq right away but i realize now that he was 100% right about everything.

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He had the ideas that would have made the voters rush to vote for him instead of just ABB. We need him in 2008

should have run allen alda playing dennis kucinich.
d.j. certainly had the most progressive vision. dept of peace. his idea of taking the profit motive out of medicine is genius.

He was no more right that Dean. We had the best candidate in Kerry. To win a Dem has to beat the lies, the media and the voting machines. I can't see a way around that.

Kucinich did, kerry didnt. I liked kerry but he really had too many things he was going to do. There was no theme.

is eomething that the people will accept or embrace? :shrug:

I'm not so sure anymore that there's more of us than there are of them.

When you stand for something you have a few big advantages.

1. THe people who really like what you stand for will work harder for you.
2. People will do what they did this time around with bush and vote for you since you stand for something.
3. Once you take a point of view more poeple will start to agree with it especially if you keep pushing it.

He was not only right about the war but he was also right about Universal Health Care and the need for a voter-verifiable paper trail and about the need to get rid of NAFTA, the WTO and USA-PATRIOT.

agree completely. we are screwed for the forseeable future (or until the apocalypse, which the ass* in office seems determined to bring about)

And for real, without the help of Diebold.

I think he's great, and I think he'd be a great president, but he'd never get elected. It's a shame too.

But he is un-electable. Not that Kerry was electable, apparently.

He woudlve been endorsed by the greens and nader getting him an extra 1% vote.

He wouldve gotten us democrats to work harder than we did.

Besides why is he unelectable? Because hes too liberal? Sure hed be labeled as a liberal but he would say "Yeah thats true and i am proud to be liberal and to want to provide health care for all and to not stand up for corporate interests like you Mr Bush." He couldnt have been more hurt by the liberal charge than kerry was. A charge doesnt hurt as much when you welcome it.

The only other thing that may have hurt him was his pledge to lower the defense budget by 15%. But what he could do is explain that this isnt less money for weapons or for troops wages, this is less money for defense contracting businesses.

The only problem i have with kucinich is the whole abortion thing. He was against abortion then he became pro choice and would even have a litmus test and only appoint judges who had the same view. THat seems odd. However people can have changes of heart. I used to be for the death penalty even for minors. Now i am against it for everyone.

Possibly myself included - I'm sorry, but some of his ideas are just way way way too liberal for me.

He might have been, however, be the Barry Goldwater of our side - a stunning electoral loss, but the ideological rebirth of the party that it needs.

:wow:

All he needed was a chance to get his message across and Bush never would have had a chance. Also, he would have hung in there and demanded an accurate count of all votes.

"All he needed was a chance to get his message across"

Unfortunately, with the corpse-orate media we now suffer under (AAR excepted), he might as well have been speaking Latin. Getting his message across never would have happened. And besides, considering the imbecility of most 'murkans, would have been casting pearls before swine.

The knuckle-draggers couldn't recognize what's best for their own self-interest if it hit them in the face, let alone decipher it through the swamp of right-wing commentary that infests most broadcast media.

If he won the primaries, he would have to be covered by the media.

They constantly talked over Kerry's speeches. And they played Bush's stump speechs (after promoting them as important policy speeches) in full and then they fawned all over Bush like the sychophants they are.

Haven't you seen the media "coverage" of Kerry?
Didn't you notice how the media repeated the lies put forth by the "Swiftboat Veterans of the Truth", but were virtually silent once these vets had admitted their allegations were a complete fabrication?

By law, the media don't have to be objective or balanced anymore (since Reagan did away with the Fairness Doctrine).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine

Even truthfullness wrt News isn't a law or rule but rather a policy (by the FCC) so it can't be enforced.
http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2005/11.html
"In February 2003, a Florida Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with an assertion by FOX News that there is no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States."

And it isn't exactly a secret that the vast majority of mainstream media is owned by a few big corporations.
www.takebackthemedia.com

It's very very bad, but it makes perfect sense.

It's called "perception management", "formation of public opinion", "weltanschaukrieg", "psychological warefare", "manufacturing consent", or just plain "propaganda".


About the not-so-independant mainstream media:
www.outfoxed.org
www.orwellrollsinhisgrave.com
www.chomsky.info

whether by one vote or three and a half million.

... than lose voting for one that wasn't quite comfortable with them.

He stood firm on the issues and had support from every group but real right wingers and centrist Dems.

Republicans, Socialists, Greens - and Nader would never have been an issue, wasting so much time, money and good will, had Dennis been the candidate.

Had he been the nominee, the centrist dems would still have voted for him to get rid of Bush.

But the socialists, greens, Nader followers, libertarians, etc. who would have voted for Dennis, did not vote for Kerry.

Dennis was the only candidate who could have brought all those folks together. Because the socialists and Greens/Nader folks never bought into Dean.

would have buried him. When they drove him out of office, it opened the door for voinovich. We should have NEVER had a repuke in power in Cleveland. voinovich, with Cleveland voters accustomed to voting for him, went on to become Gov for two terms and and now senator.

And the cleveland city council has vindicated him saying that he was 100% right.

Trust me, shrub would beat him to a bloody pulp with it.

Kucinich used that in his campaign and was proud of it. You cant beat someone down with something they are proud of.

they were all missing something.... and they all had something. Or thought they didn't or did. The problem is our candidates run as human beings... with virtues and flaws.... while Bush ran as a corporate logo for the right wing nutfactory.

I admire him but I could NEVER overlook that. Ever.

He was anti choice before the primaries.

Took a lot of women to convince him but he is an open minded feller and he did see the light. Probably the only man to convince another pro lifer the errors in their ways.

was the first to say - before Kerry dreamed it - that he would make Roe v Wade the litmus test for Supreme Court Judges.

Dennis was pro-choice BEFORE he tossed his hat into the campaign.

would do things that America needs to have done to make it a really great country.

Of course, the American people are so brainwashed by TV and image over substance that DK just ain't pretty enough to be elected Prez in this country.

Some of our greatest presidents would be unelectable by today's "image" standards. Washington would be the goofy guy with false teeth. Lincoln wasn't exactly a looker, and he was more than a little gawky. Jefferson would probably be wearing "an ugly tie" or perhaps he might sweat too much under the TV lights. Grover Cleveland might be considered "too fat". And FDR in the wheelchair would be seen as weak.

n/t

...and I defy anyone who has ever seen him in person to deny it!

(Besides which, I have never heard a smarter, more pragmatic politician in my life.)

:)

ah well, but it still wouldn't have matter with the rethugs controlling the machines, the harassment, the registrations and the purges.

He didn't even win his own state's primary, something which Dean did by an overwhelming amount, even after he had dropped out. Hell, I heard that in the primaries he didn't win his own district.

I like the guy and I'd vote for him, but OH is ultimately a pretty conservative state.

so there.:)

and that's great because we need people like him.

He has the courage to speak the truth. I'm just saying I doubt he'd win statewide office. Hell, I don't think Gep would win a statewide office in MO either.

so it isn't like the rest of Ohio. Still, I think Dennis' populist economic message is the way to win a lot of the southern and rural areas Democrats are losing in, so maybe he has a chance.

I just wish more people agreed with me.

complain about electablity being used in the primaries when they ignored Kucinich for precisely that reason, sorry for coming across jerky but I was furious once Kerry began to win and people started pinpoining the victory on electablity which may well be true but this was often their arguement against supporting Kucinich.

But, this was a special case election. I can see how the Bush horror would drive people into deciding they'd better not take chances this time around and go for the "electable" guy.

What really stuck in my craw was being told again and again that I was "wasting my vote." WTF? In a primary?

If people don't vote their true picks in primaries, the party will never get a sense of the support for certain issues and candidates. If you don't vote for your "longshot" candidate, you're guaranteeing future marginalization of the ideas and matters you care about.

it really pissed me off, the sheer hypocrisy of it all.

It sucks out loud. But Dennis' time will come. Maybe not president, but 4 years of Dubya with the brakes off will force a lot of people to give him a second look. He'll be a player because he's a clear alternative and not some fearful-of-offending split-the-difference politician.

people complaining about what they themselves did, people should vote their beliefs in the primaries.

Everybody would say they loved him, but no one wanted to take him home. :(

I caucused for him. :)

Seriously, love the guy. I caucused for him too.

I just get really furious at people bitching about electablity being used to determine Kerry as the nominee yet these same people refused to do shit for Kucinich because he was "unelectable" then Kerry wins and they complain, I hate that.

But he never could have been a contender.

but oh so wrong.

but would have been a poor candidate.

Yes, he said some great things. He has his strengths and his weaknesses.

But he certainly was not the "best candidate" if you base it on the reality that he had the least votes.

Dennis is a damn fine person and someone I support in terms of his convictions and such. I disagree on the realism that his policies are in relation to the actual possibility that they could be enacted.

That's where a lot of people left with when they accessed his total package. I could write some long diatribe about why he was good but could never be president, but I've done it before and I'm not particulary inspired enough to re-enact my opinion on a subject I fear means little now.

Most people would favor his health care system. What he could say is that he cant pass it unless the dems control the congress. And people who want universal health care will then vote in dems for congress which they wouldnt normally do. It creates like ultra coattails.

people would have flocked to him in droves.

Maytbe soon...

Morph them!

mmmm


no.

My people's sworn enemy!

But then I live in a Red Zone. They weren't voting for any Dem.

The pub freeps liked Sharpton for some reason. They liked his plain-spokenness, or at least thought he as amusing.

I voted for DK in the Illinois primary. Kerry's nomination was a foregone conclusion at the time, but I voted my conscience. And I don't regret it for a moment.

About half the people in this thread have said that they liked Dennis's policies, that his policies were most in line with their own even, but that they think unspecified other people wouldn't like him.

This is what I heard the entire primary season.

the derision and pity Reagan's quixotic runs used to evoke. Dumb cornpone B movie actor wants to be president, whatta joke. Then he won big... and turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to the Republicans. There's something to be said for sticking with the guy with the strongest fidelity to your principles and going for broke. Rightwing Repubs got spanked with Goldwater, but instead of being cowed, went with Reagan -- and hit a jackpot that's still paying returns.

but about Kerry, not Dennis, though I do like the guy.

I'll going for broke with Kerry. If I can't have that, then Clark I hope. Or Edwards.

I'll have to write in Mickey Mouse if it's Hillary.

I voted for Kerry in the primaries and backed him all the way. I will proudly do it again. If Kerry hadn't won my next choice would have been Clark. I have respect for all the dem canidates.(unlike alot of people around here) But I voted for who I had the most confidence, respect, and felt he would do the most for me, my kids, and my country. Everyone has a right to their choice and should be respected. But as I have seen over and over around here some people change their minds and attitudes like turning a light switch off and on. I have seen so many around here that apparently feel that playing the blame game, turning on a canidate, making nasty remarks about a canidate, and eating their own is the way to go. We sure are going to get somewhere's or get ahead by doing that. :crazy: It is amazing how people forget so quickly that Kerry won this election and it was stolen. Do they think this wouldn't have happen regardless of who the presidental canidate was? But if you ask me all of the dem canidates deserve respect not just a few selected ones. And in no way do any of them deserve to be trashed and disrespected for all of these men worked hard and did their best.

The Republicans went with Goldwater, got shellacked, and came back with Nixon, a moderate, then Ford (another moderate) before going with Reagan in 1980. The Ford - Reagan primary battle in 1976 was interesting, in that Reagan's supporters campaigned on the idea that he was actually more electable than Ford because he could steal away conservative Democrats, as actually happened when he ran in 1980.

The notion that Reagan was considered some kind of unelectable joke, but the Republicans ran him out of principle anyway is simply false. They wanted the southern Democrats, and Reagan was the guy who could deliver them. In other words, it was Reagan's electability, not just his ideology, that got him the nomination. It was calculation on the part of the Republicans.

Many people like Kucinich, but almost no one thinks he is electable, or that he brings with him a workable plan to shake up the electoral map, as Reagan did.

it's the same thing we hate about repukes and some independents. We may have our own brand of hypocrisy.

but then they turn around and complain about that same process that didnt elect the guy they compromised for. If you wanna know why I got so uptight in the primaries, this was mainly why.

and he still is right. He is the one who keeps me from bolting this party when I get really upset.

Given that fact, why don't we stop picking candidates on the basis of what you think someone else might like?

He was always my choice and I put up with a lot of shit for that.

Clarity
Utah Internet Outreach for the Dennis Kucinich for President Campaign

I swore never to return to the Democratic Party, and then along came Dennis Kucinich.

Then came a man who said, "why can't we have Universal Health Care, Universal education and ending this ridiculous war?"

"Why can't we make non-violence an organizing priniciple of American society?"

"Why can't we build a sustainable United States of America for the 21st Century?"

It was an honor to freeze my butt off in New Hampshire for Dennis Kucinich, and if he runs in 2008, I'll work like hell for him again.

Thanks Dennis. You led me back home. :)

I have never been so committed to a candidate. I trust him and that is no small thing. He is a politician who will play the political game but not with our needs.

Unfortunately, the rest of us are woefully ill prepared for it. Seriously. Even most Democrats are wrapped up in the good ideas of 30 years ago.

There will have to a be a lot of education before the public will be ready to understand a man like Kucinich, much less come to agreement with him. However, forward is the only direction we can sanely want to go, so we better get work, learn, express, and teach.

sure wish he would have been the candidate.
although kerry did actually win

Damn! I wish I would have taken Skinner up on his offer to change my name.

Love the man and his ideas. Love that he stood pat all the way to the convention to make a difference. Wish more people would have voted their consciences instead of selling out for second best.

I agree he would have won if everyone who said they liked his positions "but he isn't electable" would have supported him. People around here like to talk about how * pedals the fear but they fell victim to their own fears when they chose not to support the man who best represented their own ideals.

I just didn't see him as the "TV personality" that would resonate with a majority of Americans.

That is stupid and superficial, I know, but don't those two words adequately describe American TV culture right now?

We need to break apart corporate control over our news media so that a variety of views are given serious consideration and representation on TV. Even then, however, we're such a lame-ass celebrity culture that I don't know if someone who isn't "marketable" like Bush or toilet paper will do well in the Q ratings.

:evilfrown:

Funny when we cut and run... There will be no "UN in" part...

The Iraqis are screwed and now we are too.

I liked the guy - expected him to be more vocal after the theft (ex: be amongst the first 3 reps asking for an investigation and stuff like that?
As it is, he was as muzzled by the party as everyone else, so....

about the theft. There have been several articles but surely you do not expect to hear about it. He is still muzzled as the rest of us are.

He was the first Dem to speak openly about the need to make certain every vote was counted. Published statement in Common Dreams.

Kucinich has a great heart but nobody voted for him. It's the latter that counts in an election.

No one knew who he was. Thats why they didnt vote for him. He didnt have enough money to get media exposure.

If he were the democratic candidate hed get exposure and money.

It would have been great to have a candidate like Dennis who would have confronted issues in a meaningful way, taken on the corporate media, and actually called Bush the liar that he is.

Kucinich is great on the issues, and I think we need a Democrat who will defend Democratic values instead of running from them. Still, based on how Dennis ran his campaign he would be a terrible administrator as President.
Paul Wellstone would have won this election. I wish there were more like him.

in retrospect, he should have been our candidate, so that at least an anti-war, anti-media-monpoly message was part of the campaign.

As a serious presidential contender, of course.

Being a progressive, I liked him. But even he's a little out there for ME. "Department of Peace"? Come on now, Alan Keyes would've beat Kucinich in a presidential race.

And when a competitor in a race of 9 people comes in dead last, I don't understand how you can call him "the best candidate".

made a liberal message as the theme of the campaign.

with a Department of Peace?

George Washington thought it would be a good idea. Walter Cronkite says it is an idea, whose time has come. 11 state Democratic parties have now passed resolutions in support of it.

of the Democratic Party, but he is not nearly as popular at Beltway DLC cocktail parties, so he's not the best candidate.

...if Kucinich had won the primaries, I would have had the sense that the core values of the Dem party had been restored at long last. Kucinich is very much the people's candidate.

I do have to point out, though, that I had some early jitters about Kucinich on the choice issue. A little alarm always goes off in my head when someone says that they personally think abortion is wrong, but are willing to let others choose it.

As Michael Moore once pointed out when he was speaking in town last year, it doesn't sound so bad until you imagine him saying, "I personally don't believe in interracial marriage, but I'm willing to allow others to choose."

If a woman faced with an unwanted pregnancy asked for my counsel I would counsel her to have the baby and put it up for adoption but I would not put her or her physician in the hoosegow for choosing to terminate the pregnancy...

in fact, he stole Dennis' Supreme Court test.

I don't think he did very well...


How many delegates did he get?


And didn't he campaign to the end...

In places where he had an active grassroots support group, such as Minnesota and Hawaii, he did well at a time when the conventional wisdom was to just forget all the other candidates and crown John Kerry king. (He got 20% in my precinct caucus despite a party oldtimer telling us that any votes not for Kerry or Edwards were "wasted.")

The DNC tried to pretend that he didn't exist. They gave him less time than others in the debates and even scheduled his talk at the convention for just before national network coverage started, so that only the CSPAN junkies saw him.

The only places he could get more than one sentence of press coverage were places like Minneapolis/St. Paul where activists nagged the local papers. Even then, the TV stations wouldn't cover him, because they had "important" stories such as a domestic dispute involving a county sheriff somewhere in the boonies.

As I said above, nearly everyone I talked to liked Kucinich's ideas, but then they invariably added, "But he can't win."

It would be interesting to ponder how well he would have done getting the same press coverage that Lieberman and Gephardt and even Graham got before the primaries.

ON EDIT: He got 9 delegates from Minnesota. I don't know about the other states.

I realized again what I had known at the time of the Iraq war resolution: here is a guy with no insight. He thought the rigging of elections through black box voting was just a sad conspiracy theory, even after he'd been caught in the trap. Kucinich knew Bush was lying about Iraq, just like most of us here; he saw what Bush was, knew what someone like Bush was capable of. Kerry thought Bush was just another opponent, deep down, must've believed the lies that Bush is essentially a good guy. Bush didn't fool Kooch... Kooch had the eye, Kerry didn't. Doesn't speak well for Kerry.

That was because he stayed in the race, and his supporters were hardcore and tenacious, gaining support as we moved from the precincts to the legislative districts to the congressional districts.

He continues to get sidled with a "too liberal" tag, yet has beat Republican incumbents in tough races. This is because he is only labelled "too liberal" due to the fact that he is something far more dangerous. He is an actual POPULIST (not just someone who uses the term to sound good).

When Kucinich entered the race, he was one of the few candidates against the war. He had been drafted to run (I know because I am one of the thousands of people who drafted him). His was a message and platform that was VERY dangerous to the party status quo (being in bed with the corporate beast). He was beginning to gain grassroots momentum when Dean cast his hat in. Though he was not a populist when you examine his record and platform, Dean gained a lot of "media darling" factor. He also gained backing from Microsoft, AOL and some of America's larger outsourcers (according to Open Secrets). Unfortunately, a lot of people who would support a populist platform got swept up in it and Kucinich (who was a better candidate) was overshadowed by Dean (who had better handlers).

In the end, we wound up with my #2 choice (by a fairly long distance) who is certainly a great man but has problems with making his vision approachable. We did not pick the "best" candidate, rather the one who all too many Democrats thought was the "safest" candidate.

The only upside to all of this? By 2008, the country will be SO f-ed up that perhaps we'll be ready for a real populist and the Democrats can get back to being the party of the people. That is, if we will look beyond superficial crap long enough to pick the best leader with the platform that best expresses the core values of the Democratic party. Beauty is more than meets the eye anyway and Dennis Kucinch is one of the most beautiful people I've ever seen. In my "beauty contest", he's in the finals with Gandhi and Mandela.

The American people respond to good old-fashioned and honest populism. Why don't we give them that choice for a change?!?

My soulmate and I voted for DK in the February Wisconsin Primary.
Kucinich support grew as did respect for Dennis here during the campaigns and debates.
Dennis called The War President a liar.
He still comes with no strings attached.

Kooch has all the right ideas for progressing this nation, perhaps with Clark on the bottom of the ticket to shore up the Foreign Policy and National Defense bits he would have won. Unfortunately we'll never know.


I voted for Kooch in the Primary and did so with pride. (Clark was already long gone by April 29)