(I love this guy!): The Vindication of Dennis Kucinich

I am so so so very glad that people are taking this man seriously!! No matter how big his losses, how cruel and nasty his critics have been, THIS is a politician who has perservered. He’s like the Energizer Bunny or the Timex Watch - takes a lickin’ but never quits a tickin’.

Win, lose, or dtaw, i am plain tickled pink to see Dennis Kucinich come back and to start to get credit for being a man of principal who has never wavered, never hesitated to show that he DOES have the courage to maintain and stand behind his convictions.

The Vindication of Dennis Kucinich
When he ran for president, he was ridiculed and dismissed. It turns out he was the future of American politics.
Story by David Montgomery Photos by Marvin Joseph
APRIL 9, 2018

Talk show host Larry King was peering down a long table in an auditorium at the University of Southern California. It was February 2004, and the candidates contending for the Democratic presidential nomination had assembled for a debate. At the far end, fixed in King’s gaze, was Dennis Kucinich, then a member of Congress from Cleveland.

Filling the remaining seats were then-Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, then-Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina and the Rev. Al Sharpton. Already, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, then-Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri and then-Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, among others, had dropped out of the race. King wanted to know when Kucinich would make his exit as well. “Logically, it appears like you’re up against it,” he said. “Why stay in?”

“I’m the voice for getting out of Iraq,” Kucinich recited earnestly. “For universal single-payer health care. For getting out of NAFTA and the WTO. For having our children go to college tuition-free.”

“You’re here to make statements then?” King said.

(LET ME INTERJECT AT THIS POINT TO REMIND EVERYONE THAT LARRY KING IS AN ASSHOLE. Now back to the article.)

Today, Kucinich, 71, is running for the Democratic nomination for governor of Ohio, and those orchards aren’t just blooming — they are on the verge of taking over the entire landscape of American politics. It has been six years since he lost his congressional seat, but the stunning beatdown of both the Democratic and Republican establishments during the 2016 presidential campaign was Kucinich’s invitation to come in from the fringe. Populist causes that he has championed forever despite derision and dismissal — universal health care, free college tuition, rethinking trade agreements, reining in the surveillance state, bringing troops home, making huge investments in infrastructure — are now mainstream positions within his own party.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/style/wp/2018/04/09/feature/the-vind...

Dennis K. Is like George Orwell and Devo - wayyyy ahead of his time!

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A long time ago, like in the 70s I think, he had an all night radio show and I used to work swing shift and listen to Larry when I got off work. He was fun then and had on some oddball guests. Then he went to TV and we know the rest.

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Mary Bennett

Wink's picture

I could listen to him
@Nastarana
on the radio. TV?
Not so much.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

snoopydawg's picture

@Nastarana

She was great when she was on air America and then she got her tv show and went downhill from there. Was it the money that changed them or the power of being on tv?

I've always liked Dennis. Remember when he brought articles of impeachment on Cheney? He spoke to an empty room. I watched him anyway.

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There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.

Alligator Ed's picture

If she doesn't, then Our Revolution is just another sheep-dogging exercise.

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mimi's picture

@Alligator Ed

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Benny's picture

@Alligator Ed @Alligator Ed Because OR does, Nina does.

“Kucinich was ahead of his time in terms of having that progressive politics before it’s popular, before it’s cool,” says Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, the national progressive advocacy group born out of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. (Our Revolution has endorsed Kucinich in the governor’s race, though Sanders himself has not taken a position.)

Source: same article posted by the essayist

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One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will. To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.--Tennyson

Alligator Ed's picture

@Benny This endorsement is a necessary, but not sufficient step, to rid us of warhawk pseudo-Democrats. If more people like Tim Canova can find the fortitude too run independent on a progressive platform, the better. Will it happen? I left my crystal ball in the swamp.

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@Benny

too senseless even for me to leave, lol.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

I certainly hope he wins. He deserves the job. We deserve him.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Lily O Lady's picture

@dkmich

assasination (sp?) on him. They have done it before. TPTB learned how to marginalize people when they were bullies in school.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

TheOtherMaven's picture

@Lily O Lady
Kucinich better be super-squeaky-clean, or They will find something to pin on him and railroad him into jail. (The newest, bestest form of character assassination - make your political opponent a criminal for doing what most politicians do!)

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Alligator Ed's picture

@TheOtherMaven I doubt they will find anything condemnatory against Kucinich unless they produce Steele Dossier 2.0.

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TheOtherMaven's picture

@Alligator Ed

We'll soon see if Ohio politics is as down-and-dirty as Alabama's - or Brazil's.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Lily O Lady's picture

@TheOtherMaven

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

The Liberal Moonbat's picture

This is also the guy who said that Edward Snowden should be given a ticker-tape parade, and who I've seen described as a "tax-and-spend libertarian", a term it has occurred to me would not be wholly inappropriate for myself (though I'll stick, as I always have, with "liberal").

Yeah, I know, he looks like a gnome, and being short's possibly the worst of all curses for seekers of high public office - let his taller, famously-beautiful wife run for President!

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Alligator Ed's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat

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posted DK's platform from 2008, it was something like 20 items, of which I supported 17 or 18.

by contrast, not one of those items was a plank in the party platform.

this was my effort to illustrate the total bogosity of the lunatic claim that "we" (all democrats and all independent leftish types) shared with one another a general set of values and objectives, and that only purity-pledged pony wanters would disgruntledly vote for anyone other than The Democrat. The Kucinich platform made crystal clear that the gulf between progressives and the Democratic party elites was far larger than the gulf between the Democratic party elites and the Republican party elites.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

in Congress. We so need it now.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBIRE7g5ybo]

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Beware the bullshit factories.