Advisor: Kucinich Ideas Will Persist
Originally published in the Knox College News
Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich is aiming for more than just votes, he hopes to bring new ideas to the American political scene, according to one of Kucinich's top advisors, speaking March 9 at Knox College in Galesburg.
"Almost certainly John Kerry will be the [presidential] nominee of the Democratic Party, so why is Dennis [still] running?" said Tad Daley, national issues director for the Kucinich campaign.
"The answer is that a presidential campaign, and especially ours, is about more than just choosing the nominee. Dennis Kucinich is about articulating an alternative vision for the American people," Daley said. "He wants to take some ideas that are not on the public policy radar screen and try to get them out there."
Several presidential candidates "have had a profound impact on American politics, even though they did not win," Daley said. "Paul Simon, who ran in 1988, was not ashamed to call himself a liberal... In 1968 Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy, both ran on a real vision of social justice and an end to this foolish [Vietnam] war.... Adlai Stevenson ran in 1952 and 1956, against a virtually unbeatable general [Dwight Eisenhower]..."
"Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas [both early 20th-century Socialist Party candidates for president] never got many votes, but they talked about a role for government in the economy... and in March 1933 Franklin Roosevelt took office and enacted ideas that Debs and Thomas had advocated 10 and 20 years before."
Daley predicted that the nation would eventually enact one of Kucinich's policy planks: a national, single-payer, non-profit health care system that would insure all Americans. "Health care is the paramount social issue in the nation," Daley said.
"Like Debs and Thomas, Kucinich is a man ahead of his time, and many of the ideas that he has articulated will come to fruition, probably under some other president," Daley said. "We're trying to move history just a few inches in the direction we want to go."
Daley's visit was sponsored by three student groups, the Knox Democrats, Campus Greens, and Alliance for Peaceful Action.
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