Muslims For Kucinich

Dennis Kucinich proved once again Thursday that he's the most progressive candidate in the race by far. But he missed a golden opportunity to go after General Wesley Clark, who seemed woefully underprepared.

From the start, Kucinich didn't vacillate. His first time up, he was asked about Bush's $87 billion request for war and occupation: "Will you vote yes or no on the $87 billion, and if the answer is no, what's the message you would send to the troops?"

Kucinich responded: "The answer is no. I will not vote for the $87 billion. I think we should support the troops, and I think we best support them by bringing them home. Our troops are at peril there because of this Administration's policy. . . . I say, bring the troops home unequivocally, bring them home, and stop this commitment for $87 billion, which is only going to get us in deeper. After a while, we're going to be sacrificing our education, our health care, our housing, and the future of this nation."

Only Al Sharpton came close to echoing Kucinich's clarity and courage on this vital issue.

Howard Dean, the erstwhile peace candidate, said, "We have no choice" but to support the $87 billion request. Carol Moseley Braun, Joe Lieberman, and John Edwards concurred. Clark fobbed it off as a hypothetical question before mouthing the apparently obligatory "we need to support our troops."

On taxes, as the other candidates argued over whether they should get rid of all the President's cuts or just some of them, Kucinich cut to the chase. "The top 272,000 taxpayers are getting as much of a benefit under the Bush tax cut as the bottom 129 million," he said. "What is happening in this society is there is a maldistribution of the wealth." And he said that maldistribution is "going to be accelerated by this war."

On trade, he did not hedge. "We need to cancel NAFTA, cancel the WTO. . . . And we need to go back to bilateral trade that's conditioned on workers' rights, human rights, and the environment," Kucinich said.

Dean, to his credit, also held his ground here. Kerry baited Dean again for saying the U.S. shouldn't trade with countries that have labor and environmental standards inferior to ours. "That means we should trade with no countries," Kerry said. But Dean said he was not willing to "sacrifice the jobs of middle-class Americans in order to pad the bottom lines of multinational corporations." And he added later, "Eventually, we have to have the same labor standards through every trade agreement."

On Social Security, Kucinich and Edwards stood firmest against privatizing Social Security. "Privatization is off the table," Kucinich said. "There will be no privatization when I'm elected president."

(Edwards, by the way, also gave a stirring plea for labor law reform: "We need labor law reform in this country . . . putting teeth in the law to make sure that those who violate the law during organizing campaigns are, in fact, held responsible. And I think we ought to make the hiring of permanent replacement workers for strikers, we ought to ban it. We ought to make it the law of the land tomorrow. We need to empower working people so that they have more voice, not less voice, in this country.")

On the corporate scandals, Kucinich again drew the big picture. The shenanigans in the boardroom, he said, "go to the center of a debate in this country about wealth and democracy. . . . There is a role for government here. And that role for government is regulation. That role for government is breaking up the monoplies. That role for government is insisting on public disclosure, insisting on public audits, insisting on restitution whenever someone has been cheated." (Kucinich did go on too long here, though, trying to itemize how particular CEOs got pay increases when they laid off workers. A good point, but he ran overtime, which never looks good.)

And at the end, Kucinich gave the best answer to the question about "what would be the least popular but most right thing you would do" as President. Said Kucinich, succinctly this time: "First, I would take action to stop the federal death penalty. Second, I would move to cut the Pentagon budget by 15 percent, which would in no way affect adversely our national defense and put the money into child care. Third, I would move to create a department of peace, which would seek to make nonviolence an organizing principle in our society and would work with the nations of the world to make war itself archaic."

Most of the other candidates didn't bother to say anything unpopular, though Dean did mention his signing of the Vermont law granting gays and lesbians domestic partnership benefits.

But why Kucinich did not go after Clark is beyond me. Kucinich had nothing to lose, and as the only pacifist in the crowd, and as an outspoken critic of the Yugoslav war, which Clark directed, Kucinich had plenty of reasons to take him on, but he only mentioned him once.

The toughest question to Clark came from the moderator, Brian Williams, who noted, "On May 11th of 2001, as reported in U.S. News & World Report, you addressed the Republican Party Lincoln Day Dinner in Arkansas, expressed your support for the leadership of Ronald Reagan, for that matter, the leadership of our current President George W. Bush, his immediate staff and cabinet, and indicated they were needed in place. Did you believe it then? Do you believe it now?"

Clark seemed prepared for this one. "We elected a President we thought was a compassionate conservative," he said. "Instead, we got neither conservatism nor compassion. We got a man who recklessly cut taxes. We got a man who recklessly took us into war with Iraq. . . I knew that I needed to speak out. And when I needed to speak out there was only one party to come to. I am pro-choice, I am pro-affirmative action, I'm pro-environment, I'm pro-health. I believe the United States should engage with allies. We should be a good player in the international community, and we should use force only as a last resort. That's why I'm proud to be a Democrat."

But if he's "pro-choice" and all that other good stuff, why did he vote for Reagan? Kucinich and no one else bothered to ask.

Nor did they point out that Clark failed to answer many substantive questions.

Asked whether he believed lower capital gains taxes and lower dividend taxes might help create jobs, he dodged it completely.

Asked about how to deal with problems at Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, he went off on a jag about the importance of home ownership, adding that he himself has refinanced his home. All he would say is, "We really do need to investigate this. . . . We'll fix this."

On health care: "I don't have a complete package of health care proposals," though he did mention expanding the CHIP program and raising limits on Medicaid.

On allowing Social Security to be invested in the stock market, Clark evaded the question so obviously that he was asked a direct follow up, and he still seemed incapable of coming up with a straight answer.

On how to make corporate governance better, he simply stressed independent corporate boards.

There were other openings, as well.

On jobs, he talked about creating "positive incentives for business," and he bragged: "I've got a better job plan in eight days than George Bush had in three years." But Clark never explained that plan, and in fact said, "I'll be coming out in a few weeks with my own economic plan to address the deficit."

If Kucinich is to keep his rightful place as the leader of the progressive wing of the party, he needs to take the battle to General Clark.