Kucinich says slow, steady wins the race
Originally published in the Union Leader
Kucinich says slow,
steady wins the race
By HOLLY RAMER
The Associated Press
CONCORD — The way Dennis Kucinich sees it, keeping his Presidential campaign alive depends simply on staying alive himself.
“I will have exceeded the expectations of the media if on Jan. 27 I have a heartbeat,” the Ohio congressman said yesterday when asked what threshold he has set for the New Hampshire primary.
During an interview with The Associated Press, Kucinich rose from his chair and stepped over an imaginary line on the floor to illustrate how he will surmount the low bar most of the national media has set for his candidacy.
“I can just kind of walk over it, and say, ‘On to the next election,’” he said.
Stuck in single digits as the race tightens in Iowa and New Hampshire, Kucinich said his strategy is focused on slow, steady movement. He insists a nominee won’t emerge before the Democratic convention in August and that by then, he’ll have picked up enough delegates here and there to win.
“I’m not subject to the same laws of political physics that other campaigns are, where they have to maintain a momentum in order to keep going,” he said. “My time hasn’t come yet. Every candidate’s had their little day in the sun, but I haven’t been there yet. When I am, the whole dynamic will change in this election.”
Kucinich expressed confidence that he will win his home state’s March 2 primary, though a poll earlier this week showed Howard Dean as the early favorite of Ohio Democrats. Kucinich was in fourth place.
Both candidates have made opposition to the war in Iraq central themes of their campaigns, but Kucinich has suffered from a perception that he’s unelectable. Confronting that criticism head-on, he planned to meet with Dean supporters in New Hampshire last night.
Kucinich aides said the idea for the unusual house party grew out of hearing from voters who like Kucinich but support Dean as the more electable candidate. They persuaded a group of Dean supporters to give Kucinich a chance to ease their doubts about him.
Though the campaign said the event would not be focused on criticizing Dean, Kucinich said he planned to explain how he and the former Vermont governor differ on trade, health care and Iraq.
“It’s one thing to say you were opposed to the war. It’s another thing to say, ‘We’re stuck, we’re going to be there for years,’” said Kucinich, who has proposed a 90-day plan to get the United States out of Iraq. “The minute that we say we’re going to be there for years, Democrats are playing right into President Bush’s hands and forfeiting what should be the defining issue of this election.”
On health care, Kucinich said he hopes Carol Moseley Braun’s decision to drop out of the race and endorse Dean means she will urge Dean to support the single-payer health system that she and Kucinich advocated.
“It’s fairly astonishing to have a medical doctor holding fast to a health care system which has increasingly separated doctors from their patients and given insurance companies a tremendous amount of power,” he said.
He suggested Dean doesn’t understand the nation’s health crisis in the same way he came to growing up in a large family that often struggled financially.
“I grew up under circumstances where it mattered to people if they had health care or not and what the cost of health care was,” he said. “That may not be in his resume, it’s in mine.”
Kucinich was reminded of his past earlier yesterday when he poked through a collection of vintage advertisements at a 1950s-style diner in Tilton.
“This resembles the car we lived in when I was a kid,” he said, pulling $6 out of his wallet to buy an advertisement for a blue Packard automobile.
Kucinich grew up in Cleveland, the eldest of seven children born to a Croatian truck driver and Slovenian homemaker. Before he turned 18, his family had lived in 21 apartments, homes and cars.
“That experience has had an enormous impact on the way I look at the world, on my sympathy for people who are struggling to have affordable housing or trying to get a job with a decent wage,” he said. “No one can separate me from the broad-based and direct concerns of the mass of American people, because guess what? You’re looking at one of them. I come from right there.”
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