In an earlier post, MB left this comment:
It’s a conversation for another time, but I’m struck by how well Kucinich matches up for many of us, but we never treated him as a serious candidate. I think there’s plenty of good reasons for that particular result, but it really bothers me when, in primary season (and the run up to it) we spend so much more time on electability and whatnot instead of substantive policies.
MB is right. Why have so many of us not taken Kucinich seriously, when his views match up so well with our own? Are we only looking at electability or are there other reasons for dismissing the candidacy of him?
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
He is to far left, to be president another example jerry brown in 1992, correct me if i am wrong as a mayor of a major city before he came to congress, did he not bankrupt the city?
Kucinich is a candidate I am willing to vote for. The reason he is not taken seriously is because the moneybags in the Democratic party don’t support him for the very reason that he doesn’t march in lockstep with their Zionist and corporate agenda.
I keep repeating myself but this is important, the moneybags in the northeast who control the democratic party gave Al Gore the boot, Gore opposed invading Iraq and enjoyed the support of the rank and file democrats. then the moneybags forced John Kerry off on us. Whether a liberal or neo con got into the White House our policy of helping Israel and taking out its enemies would be the same.
Look at who funds Hillary Clinton – it sure as hell isn’t Christians.
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.asp?id=N00000019&cycle=2008
Also Mike Gravel is responsible for getting the Pentagon Papers published and I also like what he says which is why he like Kucinich doesn’t have a snowball’s chance of getting elected.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/02/1331255
If either of these men stood a chance of getting elected the northeastern democrats would fix electronic voting machines to fix the outcome.
I will not support any of the other democratic candidates no matter how much money they raise.
We should demand that tv channels put candidates on tv and let them get their messages out and take money out of politics. If we can’t get our government back one way we should take it back another.
Look at it this way, the world would have thanked the Russian people if they had marched on the capital and hanged Stalin and the Jews who committed a holocaust against tens of millions of innocent Russians.
The world would have thanked the German people if they had stopped Hitler and the Nazis. The entire world wishes we would stop Bush and the evil vile neo cons and the democratic leadership.
Um, okay. That wasn’t slightly crazy. It was perhaps the first time I’ve heard “Zionists” and Nazis derided in the same monlogue, though, and that’s braggable.
Kucinich is a short, goofy man with a smoking hot wife who only helps to reiterate to me how short and goofy he really is. I can’t look at a picture of the two of them and NOT wonder how in the hell that happened. If he gets enough money to run some TV ads they should be Mrs. Kucinich talking to the camera explaining why she married him because she’s honestly seeing something here we don’t. Even if the answer is “I married Dennis because he’s hung like a freaking horse and he’s the S to my M,” at least I’d get my answer.
But back to the more philosophical tact: it’s not human nature to vote for someone we can’t identify with and respect/admire, even if we agree with them strongly on “the issues.” It’s just like food: I can create a healthfood that contains all the nutrients you need to live for a day and contains no transfats, which will make you lose weight while boosting your immune system. Reading the nutritional information on the side of the package, it would sound like the perfect food, but I still probably couldn’t sell it to you if it looked and tasted like dirt and tree bark.
Kucinich is the same way: great on paper but still innately unappealing. I wish there was a better answer for you, but it doesn’t get any simpler than “short and goofy.”
There’s a New Republic article today about Kucinich (available only to subscribers). The subtitle? “The Looney Who’s Running” 😉
He’s not even great on paper, he flipped from a career of being pro-life to run for president and is way out there on issues like creating a “Department of Peace” (uh, we have one, it’s called the Department of State) and I personally don’t agree with his extreme stance on a range of other issues.
He doesn’t match up for me, and he never did. I agree with anonymous, he’s just a goofball, and an insincere goofball at that. There is a difference between saying the right things on particular issues and being able to govern. In my book, he’s not doing either, but clearly most people don’t trust him to govern, with good reason.
hello vivian,
this topic has been bothering me too lately. out of all of the candidates kucinich is the most in line with my views. I also do wonder why he has never been the front runner any time he runs.
and brimer is right, he change his position on many social issyes before running. like he said, kucinich was pro-life, but he was also opposed to gay marriage.
I believe it probably boils down to personality, and wanting a president who is strong and charismatic, a president who you can see yourself in.
*changed *issues
ehh
i guess i should have spell checked
Kucinich is a far left liberal kook. This man wants to replace the military with the Department of Peace. I guess if you want peace in the world, then just disband your military and peace will follow. Kucinich also believes that the answer to all the problems that ail america is the Federal Government. Kucinich=Huge Government=Huge Taxes=No Workers=Bankrupt USA
TNR calling someone *else* a loon? Heh.
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Without supporting the kind of crap that LowTax posted, I do have to say that I don’t think Kucinich takes military issues seriously, and that’s a large part of what makes him a non-starter for me. He and I probably share the same long term goals – a huge reduction in military spending/deployment, but I don’t think he has the first clue as to how to actually start down that path. The first part would be the political/cultural challenge of convincing Americans that we don’t need a military that is 100x more capable than the next closest military. You sure as hell don’t start that conversation with “We need a Department of Peace!”
The other big part of why I’m not bothering with him is that . . . he simply hasn’t conducted himself as a serious candidate. Now, I know that the media’s dismissive treatment of him makes it rather difficult to get substantive press, but he’s not working hard enough to get his positions in front of people. For example, how many people know that he’s pro-choice, pro-same sex marriage, and is ready to bin the war on drugs? (And while he may not always have held those positions, he’s voting that way these days, and I’d certainly like to see more changed minds in our politicians . . .).
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But I think Anon’s onto something with his wife doing a commercial 🙂 I think the accent might make it perfect.
I gotta say that I’m mostly “anonymous.”
His wife is H-O-T. How did that munchkin manage it?
That said, have any of you seen Mrs. Thompson?
With anon, it was amusing. With Brian? Just creepy. Funny, that.
That should say “mostly with anonymous.”
Sorry.
Well, he is far too leftie for me, but that picture of him with his wife has caused no end of merriment for the likes of Wonkette.
Opinions are fine, errors of fact need to be corrected.
Kucinich did not bankrupt the city of Cleveland when he was mayor.Before he was mayor, the city took out revenue bonds, just like many cities do. At the time Cleveland had a municipal electric company, which supplied all the power for street lights and also provided electricity to about 25 percent of the population — at 15 percent lower rates than the private utility. The corporate boards of the private utility and the bank holding the city’s note were intertwined. The privae utility wanted to put the public utility out of business, so the bank told the city that unless the city sold its public power company to the private power company, the bank would default on the loans. Kucinich — by now the mayor — refused. The banks called the loans, which meant the city went into default. It did not go bankrupt. There’s a big difference. Years later the city council realized that because Kucinich refused to sell the municipal power company the city’s taxpayers had saved millions of dollars in utility bills. The city council commended him for his actions. The private power company, by the way, is the company that caused the huge blackout across the midwest and New York City several years ago.
As to the military, Kucinich has never said he would replace the military with a Department of Peace. His plan leaves the Department of Defense in place (But makes it a department of DEFENSE, not offense, and requires that it account for all the money it spends.) The Department of Peace would be another cabinet-level department, which would not only work toward peaceful resolution of international disputes, but also work to end gang violence, racial violence and domestic violence in this country.