The San Francisco Bay Guardian endorses Kucinich
Originally published in the San Francisco Bay Guardian
President
Democrat
Dennis Kucinich
Let's start with a bit of political reality: Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts is going to be the Democratic nominee – and that's not such a bad thing. Yes, Kerry was wrong on the invasion of Iraq, and he voted for the USA PATRIOT Act. Yes, he's backed some pretty bad domestic policies (he once pushed to end tenure for public school teachers and supported increased H1-B visas, which the high-tech industry loves and the unions hate).
But his record is generally liberal, he's taken some tough stands (he opposes the death penalty, always has, and doesn't duck it on the campaign trail), and he can effectively challenge President George W. Bush on national security and can turn the president's dubious record in the National Guard into a major campaign issue. And the whole idea of having the founder of Vietnam Veterans Against the War in the White House is immensely appealing. As primary voters around the country have concluded, he's probably the most electable Democrat in the race.
But Kerry runs the risk of moving to the right, not only during the campaign but also in office, becoming (politically, not personally) another Bill Clinton and alienating a large part of the Democratic constituency. He needs to remember that progressives are also part of the party – and that urban issues are key to its future. And the best way to send that message is by voting for Dennis Kucinich.
Kucinich isn't going to win the nomination, and if this were a really close race, we might not endorse him. In 2004, against an incumbent Republican, Kucinich is absolutely unelectable. But he's an inspirational candidate who is almost universally right on the issues, and he's put on the table concepts that none of the other Democrats want to talk about.
Kucinich grew up poor, part of a big Cleveland family that moved 21 times in his childhood, always just a step ahead of the rent collectors. For a time he slept on the backseat of the family car. He was elected to the Cleveland City Council at 23 and was elected mayor at 31. He took over the top city job in 1977, in the midst of a horrible fiscal crisis. The big Ohio banks, which held the city's bond notes, demanded he sell the local municipal electric utility to a private company – and when he refused, they called in the notes and forced the city into default. But by holding his ground and not giving in to the giant corporate interests, he saved public power in a major U.S. city, and 17 years later, after the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran a big story demonstrating how Kucinich's courage had saved ratepayers and the local economy hundreds of millions of dollars, he got back into politics. He was elected to the state senate in 1994 and the U.S. House of Representatives two years later.
Kucinich is a genuine progressive. He supports government-run single-payer health care. He opposed the PATRIOT Act and was against the war almost from day one. (In fact, he's been pushing for the creation of a cabinet-level Department of Peace.) He's demanding a national living wage. He wants to raise income taxes on the wealthy and cut payroll taxes for the poor. He was against the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. He doesn't waffle, like Kerry does, on gay marriage: he out-and-out supports it. And he talks about cities, homelessness, low-income housing, and other issues that are barely on the agenda for most of the presidential candidates. We're a little dubious about his stance on abortion rights (a Roman Catholic, he was pro-life until last year, when he changed his mind and became pro-choice). And we wish he'd run a more effective campaign. But we're glad he's out there, and he deserves encouragement and support.
Howard Dean, the most prominent antiwar candidate, has done a tremendous service by turning Iraq into a defining issue and by energizing a huge sector of the Democratic electorate. Aside from the war issue, he was never a real progressive – his record in Vermont is decidedly moderate, even fiscally conservative – but we admire his energy and his willingness to directly take on the president on the war. He forced the other Democrats to follow and may very well have helped make Kerry a more electable candidate.
But his campaign has essentially collapsed, and his followers need to move on. The Kucinich campaign – which shows no signs of giving up – can be an organizing force for the left and help keep the activist spirit alive in the party as we head to a convention where the focus has to be on defeating Bush. We'll come around to John Kerry, and the rest of the party should too. But for now we're voting our conscience and backing Kucinich.
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