Dennis Kucinich may be feeling even lonelier than usual today - but I want him to know he's not alone. I just sent the second largest political donation I've ever sent to Kucinich, second only to what I gave Barack Obama in 2009. Please, if you agree with me, follow this link and send him a small token of your appreciation - if you don't agree with me, please read further and then tell me why I'm wrong.
My money, where my mouth is:
First things first - his voting record. As a Member of Congress, Kucinich voted with our party 91.2% of the time, yet despite this near lock-step with the party, he is often caricatured as voting with the Republicans.
Here are all of the bills in which Kucinich voted against our party. If you look, you'll see a trend - almost every time Kucinich votes against our party, he is voting against enabling our military. This isn't voting 'with Republicans', anymore than riding in a bus with one is carpooling with Republicans. Kucinich is voting against Bush's Wars.
There are some noteworthy Democratic-supported bills that Kucinich did vote against though. Kucinich voted against the PATRIOT Act. He voted against the Military Commissions Act, which retroactively legalized many of Bush's abuses. He voted against the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 which if applied retroactively would label many civil rights and women's suffrage activists as terrorists. He voted against going to war with Iraq, and he voted against funding it.
One of the most important things about Dennis Kucinich is that he, unlike so many politicians, can admit when he is wrong. Kucinich was one of the few Democrats who opposed a woman's right to choose - until 2003, when he realized the error of his ways. In Kucinich's own words:
I've always worked to make abortions less necessary, through sex education and birth control. But the direction that Congress has taken, increasingly, is to make it impossible for women to be able to have an abortion if they need to protect their health. So when I saw the direction taken, it finally came to the point where I understood that women will not be truly free unless they have the right to choose.
Now, NARAL lists him as a 100% supporter of a woman's right to choose.
Threatening Kucinich's incumbency will not convince him to change his mind. The most important thing to know about Kucinich is that he has demonstrated that he will do the moral thing, even at great personal risk. When Kucinich was mayor of Cleveland, he refused to let Muni Light, Cleveland's publicly owned utility be privatized, fulfilling a campaign promise. He did this at personal risk - the Mafia contracted an assassin to kill Kucinich for refusing to privatize a public service. Worse than the personal danger was the danger to the city - Kucinich stood up to Cleveland Trust Company as well - and when he thwarted their theft of a public utility, they immediately called in all their debts in full, forcing the city into default. For his indefatigable moral courage, he was named as one of the worst big-city mayors of all time by a panel of experts in Best and Worst of the Big-City Leaders, 1820–1993. A great honor indeed, as anyone who has worked against the status quo understands.
For the sake of the Democratic Party, I hope we can all permit people of conscience to stay within it.