Three cheers for the losers
OK, this column by Ellen Ratner calls Kucinich a "loser" but it makes some good points all the same
Three cheers for the losers
Posted: September 29, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern
Honesty is a rare policy anywhere, but virtually unknown in that Fib-A-Thon we call American Politics. If the U.S. electorate is like some Capt. Ahab, in search of the Great White Whale of honest politicians, then it best start looking for them among the ... the losers. Yep, the only place you'll hear the genuine news are from politicians destined to lose the races they're in and, thus, have nothing left to lose by telling the truth.
Right now, there are two truth-tellers among the Democrats – Rev. Al Sharpton and Rep. Dennis Kucinich. In the Democratic debate this week, these two colorful – and I must say it, losers – carried the evening by making it clear the Democrats aren't running against the themselves, but against George Bush, and if the American people are going to vote to return a Democrat to the White House, they need to be given a better reason than Howard Dean's latest faux pas on the Middle East or "gotcha'" tactics against Lieberman, Kerry, Gephardt, et al. As far as I'm concerned, the only candidates who made a compelling case against Bush were the Rev. Al and Kucinich.
It's important to make distinctions. Remember the last presidential election? By the end of the campaign, there wasn't a dime's bit of difference between Gore and Bush except that one knew Bill Clinton better than the other one. The press judged the candidate debates like it was a Ms. America pageant – you know, Bush's poise, how Gore looked in a bathing suit, etc. – and completely omitted any serious discussion of policy differences.
In fact, the press wasn't given many differences to highlight, except counting each candidate's beads of sweat, how many molars appeared in each phony smile, Bush's malapropisms and who seemed more "sincere." The election resembled that election you remember for president of your high school – except your class president didn't have the authority to declare pre-emptive war, bankrupt the economy or give his friends hundreds of millions of dollars in "no-bid" contracts.
Let's face it: By the standards of the election of 2000, Washington with his bad teeth and Lincoln with his ugly looks couldn't have been elected dogcatcher.
But now it's 2004 and the stakes have changes. Thousands of Americans have been murdered by terrorists, Saddam and Mullah Omar have been dispatched to the dustbin of history and our domestic economy has lost over 3,000,000 jobs so a handful of Bush-O-Crats can keep 50 percent more of that 12-cent quarterly dividend.
In spite of this, most of the mainstream candidates – you know, the "serious" guys, the "players," the guys "who can win" – try to out-Bush Bush by seizing a safe middle ground and thereby obliterate any serious differences with the president, and likely any chance to beat him.
But you better believe there are serious differences. Only don't listen to Kerry, Gephart or Dean if you want to hear them. Try spunky Dennis Kucinich. He proudly reminds everybody he didn't vote to give China most-favored-nation trading status, in return for which the Chinese have blessed us with a $100 billion trade deficit.
Just as proudly, he proclaims his vote against the North American Free Trade Agreement. If elected, he would repeal it the day he takes office, thereby closing a $435 billion dollar trade deficit and creating more U.S. jobs with the stroke of a pen than FDR did during the 1930s. He led the coalition in the House to stop the war in Iraq and lately, has begun to demand that we pull out and turn it over to the United Nations. He says the $87 billion is "just the beginning. We need to reorder our priorities. Support our troops by sending them home."
At the dinner following the debate, Al Sharpton earned the only standing ovation from the group of Democratic contributors. Rev. Al conceded he was a long-shot, but he likened the field of Democratic candidates to a choir. In a church choir, he said, you have tenors, baritones and sopranos and some who can't sing at all – they just move their lips and pretend.
Out of 10 candidates, he went on, there were going to be nine losers, but everyone has a responsibility to make a vigorous case for opposition. Instead, the good reverend pointed out this crop of candidates amounted to a bunch of elephants running around in donkey suits. And he quoted his grandmother who once said that to get a donkey to move, you have to slap it!" His role was to slap that donkey and get it to move.
Abe Lincoln's homilies couldn't put it any better.
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