Muslims For Kucinich

He knows that we know that he knows that we don't know why he is still running, and so here sits Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), all the way at the end of Larry King's temporary CNN conference table, under the now familiar heat of television wattage and mauvey election-year color schemes, on an auditorium stage at the University of Southern California for Thursday night's Democratic candidates debate.

He's been seated so far down there it's like someone forgot he was coming and had to get out an extra chair. In news photos, he looks blurry, obscured (and obscure), despite all his leftward clarity. Always smiling, with a set of translucent veneers, Kucinich is wearing a blue shirt and golden-hued necktie and a pinstripe suit with a tiny bit of schmutz on one of his jacket pockets.

This goodwill and perseverance, the whole "Fear Ends, Hope Begins" stick-to-itiveness of Kucinich '04 turtledom works no charm on the cranky, frowny version of Larry King, who earlier was reportedly griping that all four remaining candidates were late. Several minutes into the debate, King peers down toward Kucinich's marginal world and, in the accusatory manner of a Donald Trump addressing an employee he thought he'd fired already: "Congressman Kucinich, why are you here?"

"I'm here," Kucinich says, "to provide the people of this country with a real choice in this election. Some of the differences that are here are stylistic. I'm offering substantive change in this country."

King then all but makes the blah-blah-blah motion with his hand: "But logically, it appears you're up against it. Why stay in?"

Kucinich: "Because I'm the voice for getting out of Iraq, for universal single-payer health care, for getting out of NAFTA and the WTO" -- some woo-hoos here from a swath of the 400 or so people in Bovard Auditorium -- "[and] for having our children go to college tuition-free, for saving Social Security from privitiz -- "

"But," King says, interrupting, "you can have that voice as a congressman . . . "

"In this race, though," Kucinich says, without a trace of annoyance and none of the strident frustration of the left, "there are real differences of opinion, Larry. And this is what this debate is about today."

Later, Kucinich talks about health care, and King looks around, beginning even to multi-task the papers in front of him, another moment in the "Nobody's Listening to Dennis Kucinich Show." Kucinich has so many issues to talk about, with force and clarity, and when he does, people put their minds on screen-saver. (Even in the media room, a giant, old basketball gymnasium filled with dozens of reporters tickety-tapping, there is a discernible cessation of journalism and an increase in snackage whenever it's Kucinich's turn to answer.) "There's a direct connection between the lack of health insurance in this country and the control which the insurance industry has over Washington," the congressman plods on. "Larry, in 2000 -- Larry?"

(Hello, Larry?) The crowd laughs. "I'm paying attention to you, Dennis," King snaps. "Dennis, I can hear and look over there at the same time."

"I don't want you to miss this because this is something that -- "

"It's an old Jewish trait," King weirdly asserts. "We can do two things at once."

"Let's not get ethnic," jokes Al Sharpton, who is never asked why he is here because everyone seems to know that reality shows and presidential campaigns desperately need sassy, funny, plain-talking minority figures for ratings.

Kucinich eventually gets to finish his thought about health care, but the electoral process, such as it is, has once again boxed him off, set him aside, understood his logic, deemed him unelectable: "Let's turn to Iraq," King says, which would be great for Kucinich. It's his favorite subject and one on which he's made his grandest stand against the tides of war, injustice, lies. But Los Angeles Times reporter Janet Clayton, a debate moderator, begins: "Senators Edwards and Kerry . . . "

And so continues the addressing of the pertinent proper names of the evening. "Senator Kerry," King says, "Senator Edwards?" ("John and John," Kucinich says, when allowed to speak.) "Senator Edwards," Clayton says, "Senator Edwards," the Los Angeles Times's Ronald Brownstein says, followed by many more sentences that begin "Senator Kerry."

Only as a courtesy does it come back to the little guy on the end, who, when and if they'll say his name, is more frequently just Dennis.

In his less-than-influential orbit, Kucinich wins something besides numbers: He is the average Joe who has not yet been eliminated by the efficiently fickle American beauty, and so you find yourself rooting for him even as you haven't a clue why anyone would commit to him. You can't explain it; he's cute that way.

The drummers and dancers and singers and saxophone player are outside the auditorium, those lovable, uncynical passengers on the multihued Democreation school bus. These are Kucinich's people, though he is not exactly like them. He's more than twice their age. He got no groove. (But, "He isn't afraid of color," the current GQ notes, fashion-wise: "How many men who are perceived as being on the far left would wear a very pink shirt? Kucinich is no fashion victim. He's a little guy with potential for independent nattiness.") Not every candidate can bring his own antiwar Partridge Family wherever he goes. To be Dennis Kucinich, and to be for him, is to be unfazed by the threat of marginalization. You simply roll with it. They talk about his ideas, his honesty: "The others aren't for as drastic a change as Dennis is," says Kerry Garner, a 24-year-old neuro-stress reliever from Arizona who rode the bus earlier Thursday from San Francisco, who says she got involved a little late in all this. "We've gotten so far off-track as a country. The rest of the world is massively disappointed in us."

At the end of the debate, the Kucinich kids are still drumming, hoping the candidate will drop by to see them. (There is supposed to be a rally in a classroom in the campus building that houses USC's school of social work, but no one is there.) The candidate is still trapped in the post-debate spin room, where he will be reported in yesterday's Los Angeles Times to have been gripped in the massive arms of actor Ed Asner, in a sort of ritual expression of the way California loves to bear-hug a lost-cause candidate. (Fourteen thousand votes for Gary Coleman last October can't be all wrong.) Was he angry at King for not listening to him? Did he feel like he was treated with respect tonight?

"It's what James Brown said," the congressman says. "I feel good."

"Do you know if he's coming out here?" asks a woman on the sidewalk, Sarah Sue Roberts, 28. A USC theater alum, she works in a Los Angeles health club and writes movie scripts, or hopes to. She's come around to Kucin . . . well, Dennis. "My brother is in the Navy," Roberts says. "Out there somewhere, I don't even know. I want our troops home."

She's one of several women out here tonight who even think there's sex appeal in the diminutive 57-year-old vegan congressman, who earlier in the day turned them on by issuing a statement calling on Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan to resign.

"Yeah, I would go on a date with him," Roberts says of the bachelor candidate. There's something attractive, she says, about a man who won't quit.