Callahan’s Cleveland Diary

I know the Kucinich presidential campaign is a joke. All of Cleveland’s smart people agree about that, so it must be so. But just for the pure randy hell of it, let’s imagine…

Let’s imagine that Dennis Kucinich is a serious guy who actually cares about the human beings, including but not limited to those from his Congressional District, trapped in the Iraq bloodbath. This hypothetical serious guy knows he was right to oppose the invasion four years ago, when most of his party’s “wiser heads” supported it. He knows that the majority of Americans — even most Plain Dealer reporters! — now agree that his view was correct and the “wiser heads” were very, very wrong. Nevertheless, he knows that most of his party’s most visible leaders, the 2008 candidates for President, will go on supporting the continued bloody occupation of Iraq until public revulsion finally forces them (or enables them, if you prefer) to call for pulling the plug. He knows that, in the meantime, those candidates’ pro-continued-occupation positions will set the parameters for “serious” debate about Iraq in the media. He believes this will lead directly to hundreds more American dead, many thousands more Iraqi dead, more recruits and resources for al Qaeda — all to delay the inevitable for a few ass-covering months.

In this imaginary scenario in which Kucinich is a serious person who feels the need to stop a war he thinks is terrible, what does he do?

Before answering, let’s interject a few political facts not generally included in the Letterman, American Greetings and Plain Dealer versions of reality:

1) In the last four elections, Kucinich has won re-election to his Tenth Congressional District seat with the following vote percentages: 75%, 74%, 60%. 66%. The 60%, in 2004, was against two general election opponents — after spending the first eight months of the year travelling the country for his last “joke” anti-war presidential campaign.

In November 2006, Kucinich not only won two-thirds of the vote, he got a majority in every single municipality in his District… including Bay Village, Westlake, Rocky River and Strongsville, all of which have Republican mayors. Out of 641 precincts, he carried 616.

In the May 2006 Democratic primary, Kucinich won every single precinct in his District against Plain-Dealer-endorsed rival Barbara Ferris. He got 65% of the vote in Ferris’ own precinct in Parma.

In short, Kucinich’s opposition to the war, his other supposedly flaky positions and his national campaigning haven’t hurt him with his own constituents. On the contrary, those vote totals look very much like a mandate from Tenth District voters to keep doing what he’s been doing… certainly to keep up his fight on the Iraq issue.

2) Because Kucinich’s home base is unassailable and he’s a good Democratic team player in every other respect, his seniority guarantees his growing clout on Capitol Hill. Being on the “Late Night” joke radar doesn’t undermine this in the slightest — in fact, the edge of celebrity probably strengthens his position (not to mention his Hollywood money connections).

3) No “serious” Democratic candidate for the 2008 nomination shares Kucinich’s basic position on Iraq: There is no “win” available. Close the Congressional pocketbook for Bush’s fantasies, internationalize the decision-making, start deliberately funding and organizing the withdrawal now, and get our troops out fast.

This is not Clinton’s position. Or Obama’s. Or Richardson’s. Or Edwards’. Or Dodd’s. The only “serious” candidate with a similar perspective, Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, dropped out of the race in November. Feingold’s withdrawal means that Kucinich’s perspective — which is arguably shared by a majority of Democratic voters, and by more voters of all stripes than the Bush plan — is without an advocate in the early primary maneuvering.

Okay. Given these facts, what does our hypothetical “serious Dennis Kucinich” who actually cares about stopping the carnage in Iraq do about it?

Here’s what I’d probably do:

I’d announce my own candidacy for President. In my announcement, I’d say something like this: “At this moment, people’s trust in government is on the line. Trust in the Democratic Party is on the line. What does it say if only one month after the voters gave us control of Congress on the issue of Iraq, that we turn around and say we will keep funding the war?… We Democrats were put back in power to bring some sanity back to our nation. We are expected to take a stand. We are expected to assert our constitutional power as a co-equal branch of government. We are expected to do what we said we would do: Get out of Iraq and bring the troops home.”

Soon after that, I’d release my specific plan for getting out of Iraq. I’d try to do it somewhere where I thought it would get some attention, like maybe a national event where other candidates are present and I knew I’d have some support.

(I might not sing. But then, maybe I’d figure singing was the only way to get the PD to cover the event and mention the existence of my plan. You have to hedge your bets.)

Then I’d take the highest-profile committee job my seniority could get me.

And then I’d do everything I could think of to get my candidacy and my Iraq plan noticed — by the national media (yes, that includes comedians) and by Democratic voters in Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire. My goal would be simple: To be impossible to ignore, to drag the debate in my direction and force the “serious” candidates to talk with voters about the core Iraq issue (from my point of view), i.e. getting out.

In all of this, the absolute last thing I’d worry about is what the media (or the blogosphere, or the chattering class in general) thinks about me in Cleveland. After all, I just got 66% of the vote in my district and I’m trying to save a lot of lives. Who cares what Mike McIntyre thinks?

Yes, that’s how I’d probably go about it, if I was Kucinich and I was really serious about ending the war.

Of course this is all imaginary and hypothetical, because as the smart people around here know, Kucinich isn’t a serious guy and his campaign is a joke.

Right?

Update 1/23: I included New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson in the list of presidential candidates who don’t share Kucinich’s determination to get U.S. troops out of Iraq fast. At a press conference yesterday, Richardson called for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq in 2007.

“After a failed policy, after we knew that there’s no WMD and no link to al-Qaida, and after our coalition seems to be falling apart, I believe we need to withdraw from Iraq this calendar year,” Richardson said

(h/t to Ohio Daily Blog)

This entry was posted on Monday, January 22nd, 2007 at 6:10 am and is filed under Politics & elections, War & peace. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.