Dennis Kucinich, the Blue Wave and Hope for the Dems

By DON ROLLINS

It was 2008 when sartorially challenged ex-congressman Dennis Kucinich lost the second of two ill-fated presidential primaries. The outcome shocked no one with a political pulse: having already lost more campaigns than most candidates ever mount, expectations for a Kucinich nomination were low from the start.

For his part, Kucinich embraced his dark-horse liberal populism, running to the left of the seven other Democratic hopefuls with their decidedly centrist policies. But in the end, even the low expectations proved too high: the native Ohioan attracted a paltry 9% of the vote in his home state, lost his own district and finished near or at the bottom of the pack in every caucus and primary.

On their surface, Kucinich’s contributions to his party ceased once the losses outnumbered the wins. The zero sum culture of political parties rarely abides two-time losers, let alone those considered extremist and therefore liabilities.

Yet while establishment Democrats since have done their damndest to ignore the in-the-flesh Kucinich; his once out-of-vogue vision of a more leftist party was front and center in the November midterms, when a cadre of left-of-center and democratic socialists flipped more than two dozen congressional seats.

To appreciate Kucinich’s kinship with this emerging progressivism is to fix him more squarely in the camp of the early New Dealers than the Democratic Party circa 2008. His core objectives read as though they were notes taken from a pre-war FDR cabinet meeting: free health care; comprehensive public works programs; strong safety net; corporate and banking oversight; agricultural supports; free education; military restraint; support for labor unions.

The similarities between Kucinich and the new Democratic left extend beyond the issues to a certain fire in the belly - an urgency to rattle the chains of the power brokers within the party itself. For Kucinich, as with the Blue Wavers poised to ascend to House leadership, a better Democratic Party is about more than restoring trust with the historically disenfranchised: it’s about putting them in charge.

Followers of Kuchinch’s career may understandably want to distance the architects of the Blue Wave from Kucinich. They may rightly point out the many contradictions, including his impassioned if occasional defense of Trump, stint as a Fox News contributor and unsubstantiated claims the Obama administration once tapped his phones. He is, as one former aide put it, one very odd and masochistic duck.

Even at 72, Kucinich remains a bona fide eccentric — a characteristic that drew new Democratic ire when he sought (and lost) the party’s 2018 gubernatorial nomination.

But these oddities and instances should not disqualify Kucinich as a worthy warhorse and elder in the effort to reform the Democratic Party from the inside. Even in the twilight of a weird-to-say-the-least career, he has far more in common with the rabble rousers shaking the foundations of his political tribe than those who still run it.

Don Rollins is a Unitarian Universalist minister and substance abuse counselor living in Pittsburgh, Pa. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, December 15, 2018

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