Following the campaign, September 29
From Karin Caifa:
BAD NEWS FROM HOME
The bad news: Kucinich’s home state of Ohio isn’t on his side. The good news: Ohio isn’t on the side of any Democrat. The most recent poll of Ohio voters has the Buckeye State going to President Bush in 2004. The poll, conducted by Cincinnati’s Institute for Policy Research between Sept. 4 and 19, showed Gephardt and Lieberman making the best showings against Bush in that state. In a hypothetical Bush-Kucinich matchup, the incumbent led the congressman by 29 points. Kucinich was also one of three Dems to have a “negative” favorability rating (-5 percent) in the survey, along with Graham (-1 percent) and Sharpton (-27 percent). From my visits to Cleveland I’ve found that most Cleveland natives have forgiven Kucinich after his exile from City Hall 25 years ago (obviously because they voted him to Congress), but they don’t view him as a viable candidate for the White House.
THE OUCH FILE
He’s used to feeling the heat from the right, but among the post-debate swipes Kucinich felt Friday was one from the notably left-leaning New York Times and another from the centrist but still “Democratic” Leadership Council. Friday’s Times editorial page says in its post-debate “Democratic Aspirations,” “Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio took the misguided view that funds for the postwar effort should be eliminated and the troops brought home immediately.” The DLC’s “New Dem Daily” Commentary and Analysis page writes, “Fortunately, none of the first-tier candidates can equal Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s bizarre conviction that NAFTA is the worst thing to happen to the U.S. economy in decades, but some are in danger of embracing a Kucinich-lite position that trade is basically bad for America unless we limit it to trading partners with the same wages, labor regulations, and environmental standards that we have.”
IT AIN’T OVER TILL IT’S OVER
After Thursday’s debate, Kucinich addressed his low poll numbers and whether or not he feels he should stay in the race: “I started off with relatively low name recognition, I’m aware of that. But this isn’t a popularity contest at this point, it’s a contest of ideas and it’s a contest of the integrity of what we stand for. And I think as time develops, I’m very confident that as we move toward the primaries my campaign will represent the real surprise of the election season. … I don’t think the election’s over.”
FILE SHARING
Here’s an issue we haven’t heard much about in a while: sharing music files online. Kucinich hopes his stance on the issue, plus his proposals for universal tuition, will help him win the votes of college students. “I think it’s a disgrace that these big Wall Street companies are trying to make criminals out of college students who simply want to listen to their friends’ music,” he said Thursday. “I filed a letter with the Federal Communications Commission on the side of the college radio stations. And I don’t know that anybody else in this race even understands the issue, let alone takes a position on it.” And how is he so familiar with the issue? “The fact that I have a daughter who’s a senior in college doesn’t hurt,” he noted
ON THE TRAIL
Monday: Appearances in California.
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