The Iraq War

1.

From the very beginning, Barack Obama said No to the War in Iraq. Join the movement to end the war and change Washington. –Flyer mailed to Iowa voters, Obama for America

Reality check #1: There were eleven Democratic legislators representing Illinois in 2002, and all but two of them voted against the war. Obama would have in no way "jeopardized his political career," as he says, to speak out against the invasion. Actually, he would have gone against his overwhelmingly liberal constituents in Illinois who largely shared his initial opposition.

Reality check #2: Barack Obama is not part of the movement to end the war. The movement to end the war is filing into his office and getting arrested because he won't end the war. Let's look at his withdrawal plan, not his campaign propaganda. When he talks about pulling out "combat troops," brigade-by-brigade, he leaves out the fact that there are tens of thousands of troops (anywhere from 50,000 to 75,000 by most estimates) that fall outside the brigade structure. He leaves out the fact that there are 180,000 private contractors, and 48,000 mercenaries among them, to remain in the region. And only when pressured does he admit that he can't pledge to pull these forces out even by 2013.

He mentions in the fine print of his plan that he would leave a residual force in the country to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq, train the mutinous and dysfunctional Iraqi Army, and protect American forces and bases. At first glance this sounds reasonable. But if we can't manage to defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq (whose primary purpose is to expel us anyway) with the troops we have there now, how would pulling out the "combat troops” make us any more capable of accomplishing this? By all measures, the largest military successes that have been made against AQI have been a direct result of the troop surge, which is something only John McCain thinks we can and should sustain. As for this idea about leaving forces in the region to protect forces in the region: Iraqis overwhelmingly believe we’re there for their oil—not their interests—and this is the primary motivation fueling the “insurgency” against our occupation. Our promises not to build “permanent” bases are meaningless to them. What constitutes permanence? A year? Forever? We pledged not to leave permanent bases in Korea, and we're still there. Our decision to maintain bases in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War became a rallying cry for September 11.

But here’s the biggest reality check of them all: Iraq wants us out of Iraq. When Iraqis say they would feel safer if we left, why does Obama disagree? If your family lived in Iraq and told you that they wanted the US soldiers out now, would you still support Obama's policy? Seventy-seven percent of Iraqis say they want all forces out and bases dismantled within a year, and the majority of Iraqis say they want us all out immediately. Most US soldiers feel the same way, which is why someone like Ron Paul gets more donations from actual troops (rather than the companies that build the machines for the troops) than any other support-the-troops candidate. Most US citizens, and especially Democrats, want us out now. Obviously, most citizens of the world have felt this way since the beginning. Why do you disagree with all these people? Why is it OK for a non-Arabic speaking nation to presume that it’s a good idea to babysit the cradle of civilization at the barrel of a gun? Sixty-eight percent of Iraqis think it's morally acceptable to shoot a US soldier. Most US soldiers say they understand why. Four million Iraqis have either fled their country or have been internally displaced. Fifty percent of those refugees are college-educated, and that percentage rises every day. Seventy percent of the country doesn’t have access to clean water. They’re without power most of the time. They don’t have enough food. Their hospitals are falling apart. And over a million have died. Our military presence is doing nothing to alleviate any of this.

Obama talks about a "surge of diplomacy" with other nations in the region, and you talk about how we need the cooperation of the Muslim World, but what you don't talk about is the fact that The Arab League and the UN refuse to bring in peacekeeping forces to provide humanitarian assistance as long as the US military remains in the region. We are not keeping a safe space for multinational negotiations to take place; we are providing an impediment to these negotiations. I appreciate Obama's commonsensical willingness to admit that it's a good idea to talk with our "enemies," but when he announces that we should “leave all options on the table” with Iran (knowing full well that the options on the table include plans to drop B-61 nuclear bombs on their nuclear facilities) is he not further complicating our relationship with the nation whose help we need?

Obama smokes cigarettes, watches SportsCenter, and has no wrinkles. I understand his appeal to younger people; he's cool, I agree, but the amount of money we are spending on the war is literally bankrupting our generation. We're spending $3 billion per week. That's nearly $5,000 per second, not including projected long term costs, which range into the trillions. Added up, not only is that at least $10,000 per second (which is half my yearly salary), it's what we could be doing with the money. And we don't even have this money right now. It's coming from China and from the reckless idea that we—and our children, and our grandchildren—will pay off the debt these old people are investing in a disaster. How can you support this massive diversion of resources and the outright robbery of our economic inheritance? Is it not pathological that 51% of our income taxes go to failed wars in countries most Americans can’t even locate on a map?

Obama's tone towards the Iraqi people is insulting; and his intentions for their welfare are dubious. Sounding like a confused football coach, he praises the American troops for "performing magnificently" and chastises the Iraqis for "not stepping up." Astonishingly, one of his stated reasons for their inability to “step up” has been their resistance to draft Cheney’s Hydrocarbon Law that is included in Bush's list of benchmarks. This law, which was buried within the "reconciliation" section of the 2007 Defense Appropriations Bill, states that Iraq's oil reserves must be equally distributed among the Sunnis, the Shias, and the Kurds. But it also throws open the doors to foreign investment, converting Iraq's oil industry from a nationalized system to a commercialized system, and granting Western companies control of 80 of Iraq's known oil fields and all of their unknown reserves. This leaves the Iraqi's 18 wells, a fraction of their wealth, to be split three ways. Under his plan, Obama withholds reparation funds from the Iraqis unless they step up and meet this "oil-sharing" benchmark.

Kucinich was the only legislator in Congress who actually read this legislation (he tends to do that), and when he realized its implications he convened an emergency session to try to rally support against it. Although this brought the law to national attention, the bill passed anyway, and Obama voted for it.

Iraq, as it stands, has the second largest proven oil reserves in the world. But because some of its territory hasn't been explored for oil, it's speculated it might have even more than Saudi Arabia; and Iraqi oil—being closer to the surface—is finer and cheaper to extract. Granting Bush and Cheney's friends at ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP the right to steal the only thing Iraq has left is a multi-multi-multi-billion dollar fraud, and a maneuver that would enable America to offset OPEC's control of the oil industry and screw over our “adversaries” in Russia, Venezuela, Iran, and China. It's obvious to the Iraqis—and to us, right?—that we went there for oil. Is it possible that we won't leave Iraq without it? Is it unreasonable to suspect that not just the Republicans, but, gasp, the Democrats as well, have their eyes on this oil? Is it unfathomable that Obama, whose plan differs from George Bush’s more in accent than in application, might not be innocent of this less-than-honorable intention?

2.

Kucinich would immediately call for the orderly withdrawal of all US military forces. Congress has estimated that this would cost anywhere from 5-10 billion dollars. At the same time, he would pull out all private contractors and mercenaries. He would end all suspicions that we’re there for Iraq’s oil by barring the privatization of their industry.

Then (and this is where his plan differs from Ron Paul’s) he would go to the UN and the international community and declare that the US is finished with the policy of unilateralism, and invite the cooperation of the rest of the world, who also has an interest in a secure Iraq. UN peacekeeping forces would be sent into the region, concurrent with the withdrawal of US military forces. Half of these forces would come from Muslim nations and would speak Arabic. As recently as a year ago a Zogby poll found that 90% of US soldiers still believed they were fighting in retaliation for Sadaam Hussein’s role in 9/11. This breathtaking distortion of reality obviously manifests itself in the nature of US-Iraqi interactions on the ground.

Political negotiations, the airing of grievances, and the beginnings of ethnic reconciliation would be orchestrated under the guidance of a multinational peacekeeping coalition, not dictated by the mandates of what is perceived to be a colonizing superpower. The absence of corrupt mercenaries and a self-interested United States government will help calm the paranoia and fear that has stifled the potential to arrive at sustainable diplomatic agreements.

All of this, including the care of orphans and refugees; job training; the rebuilding of schools, hospitals, bridges, roads, houses, and factories, will be funded by the United States and the UK in the name of reparations for 18 years of military and economic (sanctions) warfare. The IMF and the World Bank will not play a role in usurping Iraq’s economic sovereignty.

Will this immediately end terrorism and sectarian violence and turn Iraq into a happy la-la land? No. Is it better than the problems raised by a long-term occupation carried out by criminal mercenaries and confused US soldiers? Does it represent a dramatic shift in America’s involvement in global affairs that would transform our image and help us to recover international credibility? Will it undercut al-Qaeda in Iraq’s primary call-to-arms by removing the impetus of evicting Western invaders from Muslim lands? Maybe.

The well-being of the United States is connected to the well-being of Iraq, and Obama’s plan, which is a paraphrased copy of the Party leadership’s, does not seem to grasp this reality.

Beyond Iraq

They must see Americans as strange liberators. –Martin Luther King Jr.

It’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day today, and as I read over some of his speeches, I notice that in one of them, Beyond Vietnam—A Time to Break the Silence, King outlines a plan for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Vietnam. In essence, this plan mirrors Kucinich’s proposal. Another thing I notice is that in this very same speech, King refers to the necessity of acting to end the war immediately—“the fierce urgency of now,” he calls it. Obama, despite his less-than-urgent plans for Iraq, frequently invokes this principle.

Something is wrong with this country. I feel I need to curse in order to rectify the situation. There is a man (Dennis Kucinich) whose views on war and peace are dismissed, considered impractical, ridiculed as crazy or even New-Age-y, yet, if you actually take a moment to look at them, with un-retarded eyes, they are quite simply the embodiment of the perennial virtue of any of the greatest heroes of our species: nonviolence.

That’s what’s wrong with this country. No one will listen to a man (a vegan moreover), who uses the word “nonviolence” without saying we need some “fucking” nonviolence—without saying motherfucking nonviolence, and then proceeding to gnarl at a hamburger and shoot a hunting rifle into the air. As a nation, we understand that translation.

What we don’t seem to understand is our own sedated death wish—our hypocrisy of going to church, or sitting in the privacy of our homes, reading Rumi or Jesus or Ghandi, and then going out and furthering the bizarre inversion of values that confuses violence with “toughness,” and peace with being a pussy. We possess a fundamental insecurity that drives us to call stewards of the Earth tree-huggers, and derides public displays of empathy as the nonsense of bleeding heart liberals. I’m sorry, hearts are supposed to bleed. That’s their fucking purpose.

“When I speak of love,” Martin Luther King Jr. said in that speech, “I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man.”

We need to reclaim this kind of toughness from the John McCains of the world, who sing “bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran,” and say that Middle Eastern countries “only want to trade burkas.” And from the Tom Tancredos, who announce on national television that they would launch a nuclear attack against Mecca and Medina if “islamofascists” strike our soil again. And of course there’s Bush. His kind of toughness was to kill a million people. No surrender; gut-feeling, gitty-up.

But it’s not just the Republicans. It’s the Democrats who have bought into this definition, and who refuse to grow a backbone and re-write the rules. How close to global destruction do we have to come before we realize that the biggest threat to our national security is the philosophy that underlies our National Security?

We can, of course, sing about peace, pray for peace, talk about it, but when it comes time to practicing it, that’s pure silliness. We deify leaders of the past who have brought about peaceful revolutions through principles of nonviolence, yet when the avatar of Ghandi launches a presidential campaign, we’re too scared. We don’t seem to get it. His slogan is “Strength Through Peace.” What is that? That’s gay, man.

Again, I feel the need to translate. If I were running the Kucinich campaign—and I wish I were—I would have the slogan switched to two words: “Stop It.” Stop it, Barack Obama, when you call Iran a “genuine threat.” Stop it when you announce to the world that you would unilaterally invade Pakistan. Stop it when you pledge to expand the size of the United States Military by another 100,000 troops. And if nothing else, stop distorting the words of Martin Luther King.

“A true revolution of values will soon look across the oceans and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: ‘This is not just.’ It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: ‘This is not just.’ The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

I am embarrassed to live in a nation where our leaders quote Martin Luther King and vote for war in the same breath. We should not allow this obscene plagiarism of spirit to give cover to the militarist fibers of the men and women aspiring to become the commander in chief of the world’s most powerful nation. King was talking about re-orienting our national priorities away from the very imperialism that Obama deftly endorses. When King spoke on that day of “the fierce urgency of now,” he was talking about the fierce urgency of ending the war in Vietnam now, not the fierce urgency of electing Obama as President so he can make our military even larger.

Despite Hillary Clinton’s best efforts to appear as “tough” as a guy, and despite Obama’s efforts to cash in on the anti-war vote, if you analyze their rhetoric, their votes, and take a look at who is advising them, there is no reason to believe at this point that either one is more or less hawkish than the other.

And then there’s Kucinich—whose reason for being is to make war archaic—and he’s on the sidelines. He’s telling us that we are walking down the same dark, shameful corridors we were warned to abandon. He’s urging us to crawl out from the shelter of unfettered militarism and act in accordance with the higher elements of our being. He’s trying to save us from our own spiritual deaths, and what is the response he gets? “Cute, Dennis, cute.”

Campaign Finance

1.

It may sound strange for a presidential candidate to launch a fundraising drive that isn't about dollars. But our democracy shouldn't be about money, and it's time our campaigns weren't either. The special interest industry will spend more money than ever to try to own our political process. We're not going to play that game. –Obama for America

Obama's campaign has taken advantage of the current public misconception regarding the terms "lobbyist," "special interests," and "bundlers." The first two are commonly understood to be bad things, but the practice of "bundling" is something most people aren't familiar with yet. The difference between lobbying and bundling, aside from their misplaced connotations, is negligible: they both serve the purpose of getting large businesses to contribute lots of money to politicians in exchange for political favors. The McCain-Feingold 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act capped the limit of individual donations at $2,300 in an attempt to halt the influx of soft money. But instead of doing this, it simply altered the delivery method, and the system has evolved to slither around the law. Now that CEOs can't write checks for $24,000, they get bundlers to corral 12 checks of $2,000 each. It's a loophole; and the results are the same.

Obama, like John Edwards, has sworn off money from official federal lobbyists. But this ban does not include bundlers. Nor does it include the spouses of federal lobbyists, or the people who were mysteriously registered as lobbyists a few months ago. It also doesn't include the partners and associates and CEOs and consultants of lobbyists. There are plenty of ways to get a dollar from here to there, and all Obama's ban does is make the path more indirect. From a marketing perspective this has benefited Obama because it enables him to fashion himself as a new breed of politician who is “cleaner” because he hasn't been in Washington as long, yet it doesn't prevent him from taking millions and millions of dollars from the same tainted sources. As Stephen Weissman of the nonpartisan think tank Campaign Finance Institute points out: "Obama gets an asterisk that says he is trying to be different ... But overall, the same wealthy interests are funding his campaign as are funding other candidates, whether or not they are lobbyists."

On the eve of his presidential campaign, although he had taken millions from lobbyists and PACs up to this point, Obama helped to push through a highly-publicized finance reform bill that did nothing whatsoever to improve the integrity of his own contributions, and functioned only to cast his primary opponent's fundraising in a negative light. With these reformist gestures, Obama is misleading voters into thinking that he isn't beholden to the same corporate and lobbying influences as the people inside the establishment he vows to change. In other words, he’s taking advantage of an impotent system’s quirks to score brownie points.

2.

Your contribution of $150 to Obama '08 does not fall under this category and you don't consciously represent the interests of the public radio lobby. Obama has raised a lot of money online from non-affiliated donors, (the kind that make up the entirety of grassroots candidates like Kucinich, Gravel, and Ron Paul), but this is the small fry behind the big fish of his money machine. According to the Campaign Finance Institute, 68% of Obama's money comes from donations of $1,000 or more. Whitehouseforsale.org has a semi-complete listing of his bundlers. He voluntarily discloses them after they've raised at least $50,000. Clinton does this after they've raised $100,000; but neither of them disclose how much a bundler has contributed after the $250,000 mark, so we don’t know to whom they are most indebted. Browsing the list (several hundred sources long) I notice names like Mark Johnson (of the Carlyle Group), Ari Emanuel (brother of Rep. Rahm Emanuel, former chair of the DCCC), Kenneth Griffin (billionaire head of the hedge fund Citadel Investment Group LLC), Paul Tudor Jones (founder of the hedge fund Tudor Investment Corp), William Kennard (chairman of the FCC under Bill Clinton), Robert Wolf (CEO of UBS investment bank.) This should give you pause if you think his fundraising campaign is primarily a grassroots-orientated operation. When you add it all up, Goldman Sachs is Obama's biggest contributor. Exelon, the owner of 19 nuclear reactors and 11 nuclear power plants, is his 6^th biggest contributor. According to The Washington Post, at least 17 of Obama's major fundraisers are managers at either hedge funds or private equity funds like Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, J.P Morgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and UBS.

Have these sources influenced his policies, and will they in the future? Obama is the only Democratic candidate who is an outspoken supporter of nuclear power. Could Exelon have played a part in his decision to vote for Bush's "Nuclear Bill," which gave India access to shipments of U.S nuclear fuel, reversing three decades of non-proliferation policy, and potentially escalating the already apocalyptic arms race in the region? Could Obama's relationship with the Crown family and his connections to General Dynamics, the 6^th largest defense contractor in the world, play any role in his desire to expand the size of the United States military by 100,000 troops? Was his Wall Street war chest in mind when he voted for business-friendly tort reform, which limited rank-and-file employees' ability to obtain redress for corporate misdeeds? Has pocketing several million dollars—more than any other candidate—from the for-profit healthcare industry prevented him from promoting the sorely needed not-for-profit healthcare plan he once talked about? It's not fair to assume that every dollar he's taken will translate cent-for-cent into a policy decision (or to assume that I’ve pinpointed the blueprints to his money trail), but it's extraordinarily unreasonable to assume that, as a “modern progressive,” he won't be severely handicapped, if not held hostage, by his indebtedness to conservative corporations.

You say that Goldman Sachs is "not the worst company in the world." I don't know about them being the worst, but it is certainly the most powerful, most secretive, and most politically-entrenched company on Wall Street. It is infamous for having a revolving door relationship with the federal government, and seeing as how it doesn’t exactly embody Democratic values, the fact that it is Obama's number one contributor is unsettling. To give you an example of how this works, here are some recent high-level connections between Goldman Sachs and the White House:

Josh Bolten, the current White House Chief of Staff, served as the Executive Director for Legal and Government Affairs at Goldman Sachs. Along with White House Counsel Harriet Miers, Bolten was cited for contempt of Congress for failing to produce documents relating to the U.S attorney-firing scandal.

Henry Paulson, current US Treasury Secretary and member of the IMF's Board of Governors, was previously the CEO of Goldman Sachs.

Bob Steel, nominated for the position of Undersecretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance, was Henry Paulson's co-worker at Goldman Sachs.

Robert Rubin, U.S Secretary of the Treasury during both Clinton administrations, was previously Chairman of Citigroup and an associate at Goldman Sachs.

Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, Former U.S Trade Representative, and former deputy to Condoleezza Rice, was a managing director and vice-chairman for international strategy at Goldman Sachs. Zoellick is famous for promoting Wall Street's interests abroad, for deriding opponents of America’s free trade policy towards the developing world as "globalization nihilists," and is considered by some to be more of a mercantilist than a capitalist. He was one of the co-signatories of the famous 1998 Project for a New American Century letter to Bill Clinton, which called for the removal of Sadaam Hussein. As a sidenote, he’s a Swarthmore graduate.

I don't really know how good Obama is at being congenial and bringing everyone together at the big table (I also don’t know if it matters), the fact is that these corporate interests want, expect and will get something in return for their support. People become bundlers to be connected with the power elite, to encourage favorable policies, or to be considered for a government appointment—usually an ambassadorship. According to Craig McDonald of Texans for Public Justice, more than 60 of George W. Bush's 241 "Pioneers" (an honorary category of his bundlers) were awarded with government appointments. The watchdog group Common Cause has identified 14 "Pioneers" whose businesses directly benefited from their investment in Bush's presidential run, mainly through the easing of federal regulations in one way or another. Obama's bundlers don't have creative Texan titles like "Pioneer" or "Ranger," but they are invited to high-society soirees at mega-mansions where those who have raised $4,000 each are dubbed "Supporters," those who have raised $50,000 each are called "Hosts," those who have raised $100,000 each are called "Chairs," and those who have raised at least $250,000 are awarded a special pin with the letters NFA—National Finance Committee—written across it. These people didn't raise $250,000 dollars with a bucket and an Obama sign out on the corner. They aren’t “mid-level employees inspired by [his] message of Change.” Obama knows very well that if he is going to become president he’ll have to return these favors with more than a lapel pin.

3.

The only candidates who are not “playing this game” are Kucinich, Gravel, and Ron Paul. Despite Ron Paul's desire to abolish most things, these candidates have several things in common:

1.) They are the only people in the race who don't have bundlers working for them.

2.) They are the only ones who would end the war in Iraq. I mean, actually end it.

3.) All of them are systematically marginalized and trivialized, sometimes criminally, by the corporate media and their respective party leaderships.

4.) Their views, when laid-out in candidate blind taste tests and aligned with opinion polls, are often (with the possible exception of Ron Paul) more in tune with the opinion of mainstream Americans than the mainstream candidates.

5.) They are all painted as radicals by the power structures that would stand to lose billions upon billions if any one of them were elected.

6.) They are running for a cause, not whatever "message" they think will be the most marketable in relation to the other contenders.

7.) People question their sanity, not their authenticity.

There are two points I want to make about this. The first is that the differences between Obama, Clinton, and Edwards with regards to campaign financing—and their platforms in general—are more stylistic than substantive. Because they are required to put their mouths where their money is, instead of the other way around, this election has been reduced to an impoverished poetics revolving around the adulterated notion of "Change." One candidate will fight for change, one will work for it, and the other will simply radiate it. These are false choices—the real voices for change are being kicked offstage precisely because they are the real voices of change. And if you think that Obama, despite his revolutionary emails, has become any less entrenched than Clinton in the money matrix that strives to control the agenda of this nation, you are being misled.

My second point is this: Gravel, Kucinich and Ron Paul aren't stupid. They're not "bad" at campaigning and raising money. They know full well that if they took enough money to get into the good graces of the powers-that-be then their status and credibility level, as ordained by a subtle oligarchy, would rise precipitously. Kucinich knew that as mayor of Cleveland, at the age of 31, he could have been on a fast track to a governorship if he played along with the corporations that wanted to buy out the public energy utility system. But instead he decided to ruin his political career, risk his life, and save the people of Cleveland $200 million. There's a big difference between compromising with people to get things done, and compromising yourself to such a degree that you aren't able to help the people you've been elected to serve.

To touch upon a point I want to address later: I find it hard to resign myself, in "practicality," to the fact that there is almost always a direct correlation between the amount of money a candidate raises and the number of votes they receive. The fact that these grassroots candidates don’t take corporate money is their biggest hurdle, but it’s also their greatest promise. If any of them were elected, they would be willing and able to bring about the Change that Obama, Clinton, Edwards and Mitt Romney only talk about in their stump speeches. If there are candidates out there willing to subject themselves to the ridicule of a system that equates corporate money with political and personal viability then there should be people who are mindful enough to recognize their insurgency and support it—or at least not insult it. These candidates are clearing minefields in a corrupt landscape, and while a vote for them (unless we wake up) will most likely not bring them into office during this election, if everyone who supported them—and agreed with them—actually voted for them on the grounds that their passion and integrity are too powerful to ignore, then maybe next time around, for them or for others, the level of practical hope will rise high enough to push them out of the “unelectable” category before they’ve delivered their first speech.

Civil Rights

1.

Why doesn’t Obama support gay marriage? In The Audacity of Hope he writes:

“I was reminded that it is my obligation not only as an elected official in a pluralistic society, but also as a Christian, to remain open to the possibility that my unwillingness to support gay marriage is misguided…in years hence, I may be seen as someone who was on the wrong side of history.”

Of course he’ll be on the wrong side of history. He’s on the wrong side of the present, and I highly suspect that he knows it. People are putting forth the same discriminatory arguments against gay marriage that they used against inter-racial marriage. For a man who was literally the product of an illegal union, conceived by a black man and a white woman during a period when anti-miscegenation laws were still in place, it seems strange to me that he’d advocate a policy of separate-but-equal with regards to marital parity, denying members of the LGBT community the right to dignify their relationship in this manner if they so choose.

If you think that Obama is soulfully opposed to gay marriage then you have to admit that he possesses a somewhat skewed sense of social justice and an uncanny inability to remember the very recent past from both a historical and a personal vantage point. On the other hand, if you sense that he privately sees marriage as a civil right that should legally be extended to all, but he won’t publicly acknowledge this for political purposes, you must concede that his fumblingly eloquent and endearingly fallible Audacity of Hope meditations are largely a shrewd and disingenuous circumnavigation of a contentious subject.

This is a single issue, a “wedge issue,” if you will, but it brings up an important point. I don’t think Obama is being honest when he talks about gay marriage. I don’t think he’s being honest when he talks about border security. I don’t think he’s being honest when he, a former community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, says he wants to leave the death penalty in place for those who have committed “heinous crimes.” How could he be in favor of this? Obviously rhetoric has the ability to inspire, but we need to preserve critical reasoning in the blizzard of pretty words. Obama—or his speechwriters—are more artful than most politicians when it comes to explaining or explaining away their positions; but given the baffling disconnect between his personhood and his platform, we shouldn’t get too carried away. As much as I love and respect creative writing, we’re talking about the presidency, not the Pulitzer, and we should allow ourselves to be moved, not fooled.

2.

In an election where many people consider illegal immigration to be a graver threat than global warming, why do you think Obama, the son of an immigrant, joined 81 Senate Republicans and eight democrats (including Dodd and Clinton, interestingly), in voting for the construction of a 700-mile-long wall along the Mexican border? A wall that would spend billions of dollars to destabilize our economy, further endanger the lives of thousands of immigrants, dissect Native American lands, draw lines between towns and universities, and devastate local ecosystems? After Obama voted to confirm Michael Chertoff (a proponent of water-boarding and the man behind the illegal detention of thousands of Americans of Middle-Eastern descent), Chertoff used his powers as Secretary of Homeland Security to waive in their entirety the National Historic Preservation Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Coastal Zone Management Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and the Endangered Species Act—all so that we could build a 370-mile triple-layered fence straight through nature preserves in California.

If America endorsed Kucinich’s fair trade policies and moved away from its habit of continually screwing over the developing world maybe there would be less need for Mexican corn farmers to flee their homelands and come here to serve as an unwanted underclass. But economic issues aside, I find the idea of a continental divide offense on a personal level. I know that a lot of Americans are proud that they don’t care what the rest of the world thinks about us; but I do, and I like the rest of the world. I like the Spanish language and I like multiculturalism. What kind of message do we want to send, how do we want to express “America,” switching our welcome mat from the Statue of Liberty to a wall?

3.

If Kucinich were a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, he would have scored 100% on the CBC Monitor's report card—currently higher than any member. Obama scored 70%. Despite the tremendous symbolic power of electing a black president—and the tangible repercussions that would resound in its wake—many black political commentators have pointed out that Kucinich is the candidate who would bring about the most good for the African-American community. As Bruce Dixon put it, Kucinich, the Slavic vegan, the man excluded from tonight’s CNN/Congressional Black Caucus Debate, is the blackest candidate in the race.

Because of Obama's corporate obligations and centrist posturing, he simply can't offer the anti-poverty, anti-discriminatory platform that Kucinich champions: a federal ban on the racist death penalty, an end to the mass incarceration caused by the racist "War on Drugs," a single-payer healthcare plan, reparations for slavery, and an end to the war in Iraq—a war which, like all wars, African-Americans oppose in greater numbers than whites.

It is a prodigious accomplishment that a biracial man named Barack Hussein Obama won a caucus in a land populated almost entirely by corn and white people. It is equally unprecedented that Iowa, a state that has never elected a female senator, congresswoman, or governor, awarded Hillary Clinton the number of delegates that she got. America is clearly ready to elect the first black president or the first female president, and this decontextualized fact alone is something to take pride in. But, with the issues at stake, and the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent turning Obama and Clinton into palatable concepts, would it not be equally revolutionary for America to elect its first not-for-profit president? Its first short president?

As a black man running for president I understand Obama’s need to distance himself from what is perceived as the more radical elements of the civil rights movement, both to present himself as non-threatening to white voters and to provide a generational distinction between him and Hillary Clinton (Obama, however, is only 5 years younger than Al Sharpton). But this is problematic on two levels. The first is that it's hypocritical and simply irreverent. While simultaneously invoking the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. in the form of sanitized nostalgia, Obama goes beyond dissociating himself from his socio-political endowment and moves into the territory of outright condemnation, even going as far as to degrade the accomplishments of the 60s as "baggage." The other day, in fact, he praised Ronald Reagan for “changing the trajectory of the country away from the excesses of the 60s and the 70s.” Excesses as in…what? Equal rights? Environmental protection? The anti-war movement? Sexual liberation? Consumer rights? Anti-colonialism? Feminism? Whatever he is praising or condemning, to do so within the paradigm of Ronald Reagan’s counter-revolution is to applaud a fundamentally conservative, and even racist, ethos.

The second problem with his narrative of instant redemption—as intoxicating as it may be—is that it’s a myth. Obama’s rise to fame represents a dramatic continuation of the struggle for social justice, not its culmination. The end of conflict in America cannot be remedied with perlocutionary speech alone. His actions must match his words, and I've seen little in terms of action to substantiate the euphoric implication that he will magically dissolve the tensions between those who feel that global warming is a farce and those who feel that our planet is being destroyed. Between those who feel that homosexuals should be quarantined and those who think they should have equal rights. Between those who want an endless War on Terror and those who think that war is terror. And equally pressing as these racial and partisan divides is the question of how exactly he plans on fending off the corporate interests—which work against the public interest, and especially the plight of African-Americans—now that he has so thoroughly entangled himself in their networks. Although I suspect that John Edwards is disingenuous in many ways, he’s probably right when he says that Obama can't drag these corporations into office, "nice them to death," and return power to the people.

Unity

1.

Now, I'm just pointing out to you that Mr. K and Bush are very VERY similar in their approach to politics: My moral way, or the the moral highway…Obama speaks to me because he seems a strong and charismatic embodiment of many of the thing I do believe while still appearing to be able to convince others of his stance. –Swarthmore Alum, Obama supporter, boldface added

Obama’s message of unity has inspired people. He’s attracted more Independent voters than Clinton, and it seems Republicans hate him less. But he’s campaigning, not governing, and if we are going to suggest that he’s any more progressive than Clinton, why would Republicans and right-of-center Independents approve of his policies once he gets into office? I see one of two things happening.

The last two presidents ran on similar premises. George W. Bush promised to be a “uniter, not a divider,” but ended up being one of the biggest dividers in history. And Bill Clinton promised to put “people before partisanship,” which basically meant abandoning a lot of people through a triangulated platform of “welfare reform” and NAFTA. Either Obama is going to have to attract enemies on the Right, or he’s going to have to abandon certain key values of the Left.

Obama has less of a history of bringing about actual bipartisan compromise than either Clinton or Kucinich. His work to support The Wounded Warriors Act, which improved conditions at Walter Reed, is great, but this was in no way a controversial issue after the media brought the scandal to global prominence. He also didn’t “lead the charge” on this; he was one of nearly 50 cosponsors—that’s half the Senate. He co-sponsored the Federal Funding Transparency Act with Republican Senator Coburn, which is an original and helpful initiative to create a publicly accessible database of information that has already been disclosed but would otherwise be more difficult to locate. These are not insignificant accomplishments, but do they represent the mystically redemptive powers Obama’s supporters seem to attribute to his persona?

Along with the fact that he’s using his inexperience as an asset (that is, he simply hasn’t been around long enough to attract much animosity,) I think the phenomenon of unity can be explained by three words in your statement that I cited above: seems, appearing, and charismatic. One the one hand, it’s obvious that people aren’t logical, so why not believe that a poetical president can somehow win converts to the progressive cause? I like Obama. I almost love him—he’s great. Do I know whether or not he’s acting? No. I mean, of course he’s acting, he’s running for president—it’s a job interview. But I like his act. I like the wafts of academia in his pensive, soothing, baritone. I like that he’s tall, and that he’s biracial. He’s incredibly attractive. I like his name, although, when he attacks the Muslim world, I’m not sure how much they’ll care that it contains the word Hussein; maybe they’re sick of that. He’s funny, cordial and elegant in an unpretentious way. He’s young. He can speak English. Maybe, through his charm, he will be able to win over some people that Reagan stole, and convert more Americans to progressive causes.

But here are my concerns about this. If you take a look at his record, Obama seems to have been more convinced by the Democratic Leadership Council (the Clintonian center-right corporate-backed wing of the Party), than he has convinced anyone else of his ideas. Just as Hillary Clinton showed earlier signs of a more progressive demeanor, Obama came into the Senate railing against the dangers of John Ashcroft, the Patriot Act, and the war in Iraq. But when he got into power he voted in a near lockstep with the Party leadership (and Hillary Clinton) to re-authorize the Patriot Act, re-authorize the war, and to help confirm Condoleezza Rice, John Negroponte, Alberto Gonzales, Michael Chertoff, Samuel Alito, and Robert Gates. As a Presidential candidate he’s put forth a healthcare plan that has more in common with Richard Nixon’s and Mitt Romney’s than the rest of the free world, and he has clearly bought the Republican theme that a swollen and hyperactive military program is necessary for our national security.

Obama has been given credit for his “post-partisan” approach to politics. But how is this any different from a “triangulating” approach? That is, the act of a candidate “presenting his or her ideology as being ‘above’ and ‘between’ the left and right sides of the political spectrum?” Why did he request Joe Lieberman (who now endorses John McCain for President) as his “mentor” in the Senate and rush to support him in his re-election bid over the anti-war candidate Ned Lamont? Why does he praise Reagan and refer to Paul Wellstone as a gadfly? Why did he squelch the exhilarating grassroots campaign of Christine Cegelis and endorse the DCCC-approved veteran Tammy Duckworth? Why does the DLC support him? Why is he still on their “100 Politicians to Watch” list? Does he believe, as Bill Clinton believed, that economic populism is no longer politically expedient in the wake of (the charismatic) Ronald Reagan?

I don’t know what kind of Democrat, or person, Barack Obama is. Most of the media circus has been focused on exoticizing his personal narrative, rather than scrutinizing his political narrative. I do agree that the Person, as if it existed in a vacuum, matters. But what matters more is the relationship between the person and his or her political activities, and so far Obama seems to have been more of an object of change than an agent of change. And until he actually does something, until he pulls off something incredibly controversial and maintains broad support across the ideological spectrum, none of his speeches or books, filled with half-truths, however eloquent, are going to convince me that he’s the liberal messiah—or anymore pragmatically progressive than Clinton.

My second concern is this: Obama and the American people are on a honeymoon. Sometimes, when people get married, they are romantically obsessed with one another. Then, when it comes down to “life” and things like that, this feeling can recede. Like the honeymoon period, an effective campaign inspires a musical over-exaggeration of the positive attributes of the beloved. Obama is riding this wave, but what happens if, or more likely, when, it crashes? I’m afraid the currently fired-up Democratic base might experience a dramatic deflation of Obamania that will leave many people disaffected. What happens when we continue to see body bags coming back from Iraq? What happens if things in Pakistan go wrong? How will Obama handle the plummeting economy and still stay friends with everyone? What happens when he comes face-to-face with the stark reality that most Republicans are more interested in blocking any kind of progressive agenda rather than admiring Obama for his message of unity? What happens when people find that, after four years of an Obama presidency, they are still deeply dissatisfied with their healthcare coverage?

2.

What I respect about you Congressman Kucinich, is I think you really have core values. I don't believe any of your opponents really have core values, and I think that in these troubling times I'd rather have somebody where I know where they stand, where I know where their convictions and principles are. —Sean Hannity, Fox News pundit

Take a look at the University of California’s Vote View Website (or look at another study that’s similar,) where they rank each senator or congressperson in terms of “progressiveness” and “conservatism.” In the 110^th Congress, Kucinich ranks as the 5th most liberal congressman, while Ron Paul clocks in as the 2^nd most conservative member. In the previous session, Kucinich was the 3^rd most liberal, and Ron Paul was the most conservative. The professors who put this study together have compiled a database where they ranked all 3,320 individuals who have served either in the House or the Senate since 1937. In this chart, Kucinich ranks as the 167^th most liberal (which could tell you something about where the party has gone), and Ron Paul ranks as the number one most conservative member of either the House or the Senate since 1937.

Remember how our conversation began? We were talking about how Kucinich said he might consider running with Ron Paul, and how Ron Paul said that if weren’t running for president himself, he would vote for Kucinich. And your main point here, the culmination of your caricature-ization of Kucinich, is that he is as morally inflexible as George Bush?

As I said, it’s good that Obama has attracted young people and disgruntled Independents in New Hampshire and Iowa. But along the same lines, and in a more dramatic fashion, there is a strong cross-party, youth-oriented draft movement for a Kucinich/Paul ticket. I don’t know how I feel about a Kucinich/Paul ticket, or that such a thing would be possible, obviously. The idea behind it is that the two of them, aside from the points mentioned in the campaign finance section above, are both anti-imperialists—which the other candidates, all of them, are not—and that they are friends who revere the Constitution, civil liberties, and the balance of powers, and stand against the corporations who seek, and succeed, to control the mealy-mouthed mainstream candidates who, if they tried to walk their own talk, would fall over and drown in the spittle of their “nuanced” doublespeak.

According to Paul Krugman, a recent Democracy Corps survey of voter discontent found that the most commonly chosen phrase explaining what's wrong with the country was "Big businesses get whatever they want in Washington." Policy analysts that Maya interviews say, even if they have no desire for a libertarian president, that a Kucinich/Paul ticket would be like a four year rehabilitation program for the country to purge the government of the corruption that any of the mainstream candidates would continue. Ron Paul has stated, hypothetically, that he would be willing to compromise on Kucinich’s “welfare” ideas because the money we would save by ending our imperial misadventures would more than cover the bill for them. And from the words of the bitter partisan himself, Kucinich said he would run with Ron Paul, the most conservative legislator in modern history, “to unite the energies of the country."

In the improbable event that the general election came down to Ron Paul vs. Obama, I might consider, as a citizen of the world, voting for Ron Paul, then fleeing to Holland for four years to avoid the ensuing anarchy. Perhaps the triumph of an anti-corporate and anti-imperialist candidate would do more good in the rest of the world than the “damage” (in my view), that a libertarian executive could potentially do to America. I say this as a joke; but actually, it’s something to think about.

Watch Fox News. Go onto YouTube and type “Kucinich and Fox News.” See the dialogue that ensues. Obviously Fox is a propaganda machine, but it’s an incredibly well-heeded propaganda machine, and Kucinich enters into this Republican world as an ambassador, to exchange ideas and present an authentic and intelligent face. A genuine rapprochement between opposing parties can occur on a foundation of trust, and because of the honesty that has hurt him in the short run, Kucinich has inspired more trust in the long run than other prominent Democrats. Despite the fact that Republicans usually disagree with him on an ideological level, many of them can relate to him, and respect him, on a human level. Obviously morality is not absolute, but it’s nearly universally accepted that having a sense of morality (whatever the specifics may be), is a good thing so long as it’s tempered with compassion and the ability to listen. And it’s easy to recognize this in Kucinich. Journalist Studs Terkel said of him: “He gets things done in no small way because of his understanding of his opponents' humanness as well as his wrongness. There is an ultraconservative congressman from a nearby state whom Kucinich describes as a ‘good, honest man.’ I spoke to that Congressman and discovered that he admires Dennis very much. You get the idea? I think this guy can reach anyone and change seemingly unchangeable minds.” This is exactly what you’re saying Obama can do and Kucinich can’t do, except Kucinich can actually prove it.

If you browse through The Library of Congress and look at the Congressional Record and the Bills and Amendments section, you’ll notice that Obama’s speeches and proposals range from the admirable to the practical to the mundane, while Kucinich’s range from the admirable to the practical to the absurd. Absurd, as in, creating a Department of Peace, abolishing all nuclear weapons, abolishing the death penalty, impeaching the Vice President, ending the war in Iraq, and preventing any other insane wars our government feels like starting. In most cases he has no delusions about the immediate viability of such proposals, but he’s making a point, and beginning a discussion, and throwing ideas on to the table that are too logical and forward-thinking for a government that is too often behind the times. He does and can work diligently in concert with his colleagues to enable less-than-perfect bills to pass, but he also functions as a voice in the wilderness amidst a less than humane system. And just as his bold campaign can function as an end in itself—as in, he probably won’t get elected this time around but he’s pushing his issues into the limelight—his risky and courageous appeals that our government must stop and look at the big picture should command the respect they deserve, not the ridicule they receive from “rational” skeptics.

Final note: to address the grown-up high school bullies: for all the superficial flack he gets about refusing to eat cheese and using the word “healing” in public, Kucinich actually (or accordingly) had the most poverty-stricken and dangerous upbringing of any of the candidates. He was evicted from 21 apartments before he was 17 years old. He lived in cars. He was surrounded by drugs and abusive adults. His highly polluted and dilapidated neighborhoods were full of murder and other violent crimes—his own family members survived several attacks on their lives, and he himself received last rites on what appeared to be his deathbed. He got into politics when he was 20 years old, knocking on every door in Cleveland, simply because he couldn't take it anymore. He didn't even know what party he belonged to because his platform emerged from such a visceral level. I see him as an example of an actual person who has preserved his full personhood and has still managed to sneak his way into having the powers of a politician. My support for him stems from a recognition that his vision and courage are fueled by a pre-partisan mentality, a mindset seared into his consciousness by the scars of his early life that continue to haunt and guide him as a public servant.

Attendance

1.

Kucinich has a 98% career voting attendance record—the highest of any presidential candidate, including all the other “lower-tier” candidates. This is despite the fact that he has relatively zero campaign dollars, and doesn’t have a private jet to shuttle him around wherever he wants to go. And not only is he still proposing legislation, but he’s also reading other peoples’ legislation, commenting on it, arguing for or against it, and, of course, voting on it.

Since Obama has taken office in January of 2005, he has missed more votes than all but four senators; three of them are running for president, and the other one has a brain hemorrhage. In the Illinois State Senate, he voted “present” over a 130 times, remaining notably neutral on issues of abortion and gun rights. He’s missed over 80% of the votes since the Senate reconvened this fall, more than any other presidential candidate.

Obviously the hazards of campaigning would make him miss a lot more votes. But, from another perspective, the hazards of campaigning will also help him get more votes. One of the main attractions to the idea of Obama is that he means so many things to so many people, and so it works to his advantage to stay as open-ended as possible. He has accumulated fewer strikes against him, and the fact that he has fewer concrete accomplishments to stand behind him doesn’t seem to matter, because he represents the future, not the past.

Whatever the idea behind his absences is, the fact remains that he has missed many votes; and it’s not just the number of votes that concerns me, it’s their particular nature. Just to name a few, in recent months he has missed key votes regarding issues of war and peace: the Moveon.org repudiation vote, the 2008 war appropriations bill, and the Kyl-Lieberman amendment.

The Moveon.org repudiation vote was a resolution to condemn all attacks on the military—not just Moveon’s ad. You say you would have skipped this vote as well, but don’t you agree that a government ban on criticizing the military poses a problem for a democratic nation engaged in a dumb war? BBC, ABC, and NHK found that 70% of Iraqis say they feel less safe since “the Surge,” and so, as corny as it sounds, General Petraeus did betray us (and his troops, and the Iraqis), by lending undue legitimacy to the Bush administration’s failed policy in Iraq. In a country that prides itself on free speech, anyone who is against this war has a right to speak out against the lies that perpetuate it, whether or not they are delivered by a man in a uniform.

Although Clinton voted against repudiating Moveon.org, she voted in favor of the Kyl-Lieberman amendment. When the Senate declared that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard was a “terrorist organization,” it handed Bush his favorite word and symbolically enabled him to pursue his absolutely psychotic plans to attack another Muslim country that posed no threat to the United States. Obama criticized Clinton for authorizing this incendiary rhetoric, but if he stood in opposition to it, attending a campaign event in New Hampshire is no reason not to make it back to the Senate floor to argue and vote against it. We were (and maybe still are) teetering on the brink of a disaster with Iran. Isn’t the prevention of a war more important than appealing to a crowd of prospective voters, especially if you’re running on an anti-war platform?

Up until very recently, Obama has voted not only to oppose withdrawing troops from Iraq, but has voted to fund the war every single time since he came to power. But this past December, when the 2008 omnibus spending package came to the floor, instead of voting for or against it, he wasn’t in attendance. Four other Senators were absent, and three of them were running for president: Biden, Dodd and Clinton. Were these senators really just too busy campaigning to miss one of the most important votes of the season? Or is the real issue the disturbing fact that all the Democratic candidates (aside from Kucinich and Gravel) are running on anti-war platforms that are not anti-war? By obfuscating this essential issue with military technicalities, convenient absences, and pithy catchphrases, the mainstream candidates are misleading voters—whose main desire is to see the war draw to a close—into supporting their false promises.

A Note on Private Contractors

Jeremy Schahill, author of Blackwater: the Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, reports that there are more private contracting forces in Iraq right now (over 180,000) than there are military forces (163,100). Blackwater joins a list of over 170 private companies in the country. These corporations have made billions upon billions of dollars in the war. Blackwater alone has made upwards of a billion, and although it is the most politically connected and infamous, it is nowhere near the largest, nor is it the most profitable. Where did this money come from? Do you think that Obama (or any congressperson) could have voted to dump hundreds of billions of dollars into the Department of Defense’s bank without realizing that there was a giant shadow army withdrawing enormous paychecks from the same bank? Some of the mercenaries get paid hundreds of times more than the official soldiers. Billions of dollars are literally unaccounted for—lost in Iraq—while the people who live there can’t afford to buy food or clean water. My congressional representative, Jan Schakowsky, estimates that 40 cents of every dollar appropriated for this war go to the private contractors. I highly doubt that Obama was unaware of this.

As far as that bill you cite, HR 5631: You’re right, the language of the bill was not “vote yes or no to give money to corrupt, trigger-happy war profiteers.” The group that put the list together was angry that Obama had committed murder with his votes and felt it was reasonable to exercise some poetic justice. But now that the literary flourish has been stripped, it’s ironic that you pick that particular bill, which was approved on 9/7/06, because this was the same day that Robert Greenwald’s film, Iraq for Sale: the War Profiteers, came out.

My cousin worked for one of these private contracting firms in Iraq. She left not only because her life was in danger, but because far too many of the contractors are racist, culturally clueless, and indifferent to the plight of the Iraqi people. When our representatives empower these corporations to continue their violent overseas boondoggling, our government is literally taking billions of dollars out of our pockets and handing it over to criminals whose actions are entirely counterproductive to the goal of creating peace and stability.

You write “If anyone knew about Blackwater, actually knew that they were the ones getting the money, and still voted for that bill at that time, I condemn that out of hand. Everything I've seen from Obama suggested that he did not, and bought too much of the Bush line about the money going to fund troops, troops families, and etc.”

You should condemn them, not vote for them, because no one bought that line then, they sold it. Not only was it common knowledge that the mercenaries in Iraq were engaging in war crimes, it should have been known that it takes at least three years for a “Yes” vote on appropriations to actually manifest itself in the form of equipment on the ground in Iraq. Once the money is appropriated by Congress, the Department of Defense is authorized to enter into contracts to procure HMMWVs, Armored Security Vehicles, Fragmentation Kits, Bradley vehicles, Stryker Reactive Armor Tiles, Bradley Reactive Armor Tiles, and other equipment. The soldiers would not in any way have been “left in the field without armor or ammunition.”

I wish that the Democratic Congress, which was elected on a mandate to end the war, would have simply gone on television and told the American people the truth about this. But the truth is that the Democratic Leadership did not, and does not, actually want to end the war; and they continue to take shelter under the “support the troops, not the war” and the “we don’t have the votes” myths to exempt themselves from exercising the power of the purse we have granted them.

Healthcare

I have no idea how “universal” healthcare could function without a mandate to ensure that everyone buys in. The idea behind “universal” healthcare is that everyone has it. Obama’s plan, by most estimates, would leave around 15 million citizens uninsured, not including about 12 million undocumented immigrants. That’s not universal. And in not ensuring that everyone pays for their healthcare, the price of premiums for everyone who does pay would be much higher, especially considering that both Edwards and Clinton put more government money behind their plans than Obama. Why would anybody buy Obama’s healthcare program while they’re healthy when they could simply sign up for it once they become ill? Under Obama’s plan there’s no penalty for that. People would cheat the system, which is conservative anyway, and screw it up for everyone else.

But that aside, the problem with healthcare in America is not an issue of having or not having a mandate, the problem is that the whole operation is handled by private corporations who want to make money by denying people coverage. While Kucinich’s single-payer plan, which he has proposed multiple times in Congress and which has gained considerable support, would save peoples’ lives and financial futures, Obama’s would save the jobs of the executives at the companies from which he has taken millions. Obama has actually said in interviews that he was concerned that the employees at places like Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Aetna would have to find new jobs. They would, but I think most people in this country are rightfully more concerned about getting the cancer treatment they might need to keep them alive than preserving the jobs of the people who continually try to screw them over to a make a fortune. Should we keep building nuclear bombs so that the scientists don’t have to relocate to a new laboratory?

Whether they know it or not, the American people agree with Kucinich. In spite of the false specters raised by the Republicans, and more subtly by Obama himself, regarding “socialized medicine,” according to an NBC-Wall Street Journal poll over 2/3 of Americans believe that the government should “guarantee everyone the best and most advanced healthcare that technology can supply.” And Business Week polls found that “67% of Americans think we should guarantee healthcare for all U.S citizens, as Canada and Britain do.” Only 27% disagreed. Canada has a single-payer system.

Our healthcare system literally knocks full percentage points off our GDP. A 2003 New England Journal of Medicine study found that 31% of healthcare expenditures go to administrative costs. Not only is a single-payer system more humane, it’s also cheaper.

So this is not a question of public will or economic logistics, it’s a lack of political courage, and Obama, who, again, has taken more money from the private healthcare industry than any candidate—Republican or Democrat—does not have this courage.

Media Bias, Polls, and Electability

1.

America, are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine? –Allen Ginsberg

On December 13, my birthday, I had the honor of seeing Dennis Kucinich be excluded from the Democratic debate hosted by the Des Moines Register (who?). The stated reason was that he didn’t have a storefront office in Iowa; he had a home office. Alan Keyes (who?) was included in the Republican debate, despite the fact that he had neither a storefront nor a home-based office in Iowa.

A week later, ABC hosted a debate in New Hampshire. Kucinich was excluded from that one as well, even though it was an ABC-Facebook debate, and Kucinich was leading Richardson in ABC’s own polls and creaming most candidates in all Facebook polls.

A week later, after inviting him and then disinviting him within 44 hours, Kucinich filed a lawsuit against NBC to allow him to participate in their debate in Nevada. Kucinich won the case; the judge called NBC’s decision “offensive,” and issued an injunction against them: either include Kucinich or cancel the debate. NBC got all their lawyers to convene against the Nevada Supreme Court, and after staying up all night and arguing all day, less than half an hour before the debate began the court sided with NBC. Maya and I fell asleep during the ensuing “debate.” Articles were written by journalists who fell asleep during the debate. All the remaining three candidates agreed with each other on everything. And the moderators, one of whom explicitly endorses Barack Obama, acted more like guidance counselors than reporters. Without the “unelectable” Kucinich there, no one could alert the American people to the fact that nearly everything Obama, Clinton, and Edwards said was either a waste of letters or an outright lie.

NBC is owned by General Electric, which is one of the biggest corporations in the world, one of the largest contractors of nuclear facilities in the world, and owner of the military manufacturer Raytheon.

ABC is owned by Disney, winner of the Sweatshop Retailer of the Year Award in 2001 for its abuse of employees in Haiti, Burma, Vietnam, Indonesia, Mexico, and China. Disney has been condemned for denying its employees the right to organize, for paying them almost nothing, forcing them to work 7-day weeks, 16-hour days, and physically assaulting them.

The Des Moines Register debate took place in the lions’ den of the for-profit healthcare industry.

These companies want Clinton or Obama to win. They’ve contributed heavily to their campaigns. Kucinich’s extremely outspoken pro-labor, pro-environment, anti-nuke, and anti-war positions are not perspectives they would like the American people to contemplate.

ABC has a particular fondness for Kucinich. After he won their post-debate poll a few months back, ABC removed the poll from their website, and put up another one, phrased slightly differently. When Kucinich took the lead in that poll, they removed it, then put it back up, then relegated it to some backpage oblivion. The centerpiece of their debate page was a photograph of all the candidates. Kucinich, who was at the end of the line, was cropped out of the photograph.

During the 2004 election primaries, Kucinich was on another ABC debate, in which Ted Koppel accused Al Sharpton and Kucinich of running “vanity campaigns” because they had no money and not as many endorsements as the candidates who had money. Kucinich finally used this as an opportunity to comment on the media’s role in the electoral process itself, "Ted, you know, we started at the beginning of this evening talking about an endorsement. Well, I want the American people to see where the media takes politics in this country. You start with endorsements, then we're talking about polls, and now we're talking about money. Well, you know, when you do that, you don't have to talk about what's important to the American people. I'm the only one up here on this stage that actually voted against the Patriot Act. And voted against the war. I'm also one of the few candidates up here who's talking about taking our healthcare system out from this for-profit system. I'm also the only one who has talked about getting out of NAFTA and the WTO and going back to bilateral trade conditioned on workers rights, human rights, and the environment. Now, I may be inconvenient for some of those in the media, but I'm, you know, sorry about that."

The next day ABC removed its coverage from Kucinich’s campaign.

Obviously this is a vicious cycle. If the media excludes him, he loses votes. If he loses votes, the media excludes him. Media visibility equals implied credibility, and Kucinich has, relative to the mainstream candidates, little of either. I’ve only seen The New York Times mention his name twice: once when his brother died, and once to say that, because he wasn’t triangulating, it seems as if he had “teleported” himself here from the 1970s. The meaning is that he’s not full of crap, but the connotation is obviously that he’s a fucking weirdo. Perhaps if the media did its job then the one candidate who is right about everything would be more closely associated with not seeing WMDs rather than seeing UFOs. Frankly if Tim Russert had asked me that question I would have used it as an opportunity to ask him if he has ever picked his nose and eaten his own snot.

2.

We can have a president who agrees with us on the issues and will work to institute the policies we want, or we can have a president who is tall. –Dennis Kucinich

The only reason why Kucinich is unelectable is because “he’s unelectable.” Americans want Dennis Kucinich to be president. It is their unconscious yearning. They want to carry him into office on their shoulders, screaming his name. They don’t want Obama’s healthcare plan. They might think it sounds nice when he says “universal healthcare,” but they don’t really want the for-profit system to continue to send them into bankruptcy and deny them coverage. They don’t want his plan for Iraq—they cheer when he says “I’ll bring the troops home,” but the majority of Americans agree with Kucinich because he actually plans on doing that. Americans would rather have a no-strings-attached president as opposed to someone who is beholden to corporations from various industries that work against the public good. Obviously there are people out there who think that all immigrants should be deported, gay people shouldn’t get married, the environment should be at the mercy of polluters, and everything should be privatized. You can’t please everybody. But at least those people might appreciate an honest president.

Kucinich isn’t running for president to pull America to “the left,” he’s running to pull them to their senses. He’s running because he knows that most Democrats agree with him. It’s a common occurrence that people end up with this name, “Dennis Kucinich” (who?), after taking a candidate blind taste test, in which a person takes a survey asking them their views, and the survey pairs them with the candidates that best represent their beliefs. As Tucker Carlson said, “What Dennis Kucinich is offering is Democratic dogma. People should be on their knees worshipping him.” He’s hanging out there naked, saying, “Take me America, I’m yours.” But we’re not, and why?

Because he’s unelectable. He has handily defeated candidates in polls like The Independent Primary, The Democracy for America Pulse Poll, Progressive Democrats of America Straw Poll, and The Virginia Democrats Straw Poll. He’s won numerous post-debate polls on C-SPAN, DailyKos, and, of course, on ABC’s and NBC’s websites themselves. He drove the crowd wild at the AFL-CIO debate in Chicago, yet when it came down to labor endorsements, the union leaders didn’t pick the poorest member of Congress. They picked Clinton. Or Edwards. And after Kucinich won The Washington State Democrats Straw Poll, it was quickly pulled down and replaced with a picture of Barack Obama. Kucinich won The Nation poll, and was voted by Nation readers as the “most valuable progressive in the country.” Yet when it came time for their big electoral editorial, not only did they not endorse him, they dismissed his campaign as “quixotic.”

Now, let’s dream a little. What if The Nation listened to its readers and endorsed him. What if they championed him? What if The Progressive endorsed him; hailed him as their savior. What if Mother Jones, In These Times, Utne, ZMag, Salon, Counterpunch, Ms., YES!, Alternet, Truthout, and all the other news sources that agree with everything Kucinich says simply put a banner on their homepage that said “We Endorse Dennis Kucinich for President.” Perhaps there might be a ripple. What if the AFL-CIO endorsed him? And all LGTB activist groups. Immigrants’ rights groups. The entire anti-war movement. Maybe Hollywood celebrities would find it fashionable to support him. Maybe someone would be forced to put his picture on the TV screen in a way that doesn’t degrade him, and maybe his poll numbers would rise a few percentage points. If that happens, he would be allowed to continue participating in the big cable network debates, which are really the only places most Americans see the candidates. If everyone who supported Kucinich advocated passionately to get him into the debates there would be enough of a snowball effect to get him in. Serious and united support from his would-be base, the progressive left, might not make him president, but it would make him a Candidate, and that’s what he needs: to be seen as a candidate in the eyes of most voters. Who knows where he could go from there.

When polls are taken—the more traditional polls in which they mostly call older people who have a history of voting for a particular party and also own a landline phone—they generally ask questions like “if the election were to be held tomorrow, who would you vote for?” Sam Husseini of the Institute for Public Accuracy has noted that the process of furthering the emphasis on electability turns citizens into pundits. “Pollsters are not asking questions like 'regardless of their perceived changes of winning, which of the candidates do you agree with on the issues?' The fact that pollsters are not asking those types of questions not only marginalizes the issues, it even means that someone who is regarded as a fringe candidate now could manifest broad support, but the polls wouldn't pick it up because the question isn't asked."

Perhaps Mark Halperin of Time Magazine summed it up most concisely: “Voters are bombarded with information about which contender has 'what it takes' to be the best candidate. Who can deliver the most stirring rhetoric? Who can build the most attractive facade? Who can mount the wiliest counterattack? Whose life makes for the neatest story? Our political and media culture reflects and drives an obsession with who is going to win, rather than who should win." That’s brilliant Mark, but how about practicing what you preach? I’ve always thought it was very strange to watch these people on television “analyzing” the election, talking about what the candidates need to do to get the American people to think this or that, as if they were sitting in some back room by themselves, and not broadcasting live to millions of Americans.

We as citizens—if we want to even attempt to change this—need to embrace a radical naiveté. Instead of standing by and bemoaning the inevitability that these corporate reality-making machines will decide for us that there are only 2½ candidates, we could, at the very least, refuse to propagate this undemocratic endorsement at a popular level. The fact that CNN dismissed Kucinich as soon as he announced his candidacy is one thing, but the fact that The Nation magazine has followed suit…what does that say about their commitment to change? You could say that they are just being reasonable, but I think they are being pathetic.

Conventional wisdom only has the trappings of immutability. It was glorious to see Hillary Clinton defeat Obama in New Hampshire, not because it was Hillary Clinton defeating Barack Obama, but because it left the pundits stammering in the reality that they had been defeated by the voters. Things can change. Self-fulfilling prophecies can implode if we use our mental sovereignty to overcome the savvy rationality that tells us our very hearts are “unelectable.”

3.

But let’s be boring now, let’s grow up and assume what is obvious to most rational people: Kucinich probably won’t get the nomination this year. This being the case, why would I vote for him?

First of all, although this would take another essay, the more I look into Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the more I realize that, on key issues, the main difference between them is that the latter is a better artist, and the former knows where the bathrooms in the White House are.

Backed by research that shows that groups watching presidential debates with the sound off almost always predict the winner, I feel that the perception that Obama is “more progressive” has little to do with his advisors, his record, or his platform, and a lot to do with the fact that he looks like this, whereas Hillary Clinton no longer looks like this, this, this, or this. Think about an ugly Obama; just give it a shot.

If Obama were truly a far superior candidate than Clinton, if Obama were a candidate who, aside from the fact that I “liked” him more, actually had different policies, obligations, and records, then I would consider voting for him if the race were neck-and-neck and I perceived Clinton to be a grave threat. But that’s not the case. Both of them are blowing in the wind, which seems to be heading at least slightly to the left.

Given these circumstances, I will vote for Kucinich for the following reasons:

1.) I support affirmative action for fiery grassroots candidates who I agree with when the differences between the “top-tier” candidates are not significant.

2.) Kucinich’s career as a politician will not end with this election; he faces another election in his congressional district almost immediately afterwards, and the Republican Party is pouring unprecedented amounts of money in order to knock him out. Our failure to vote him into the White House is dispiriting, but it would be disastrous to see him lose his seat in Congress. He is an invaluable resource to the progressive cause in America—and to peace and sanity worldwide. He needs as many votes as possible in this election, not only to help him with his congressional re-election bid, but also to bolster his influence in our national polity. If he returns to Congress toting a surprisingly impressive finish in the presidential race, he will likely have earned for himself more clout in Congress. Even if he can’t be president, the more power he has, the better.

3.) I would like to send a message to the self-loathing Democratic Party that it would be nice if it existed. If a progressive candidate as riveting as Kucinich is found to be embarrassingly “unviable” more Democrats might retreat into their holes with the notion that progressive platforms remain unviable. Likewise, the more support Kucinich receives, the more encouragement progressives feel. The other day I heard a congressional debate for a seat in Illinois. One of the candidates was quoting Kucinich, saying that he believes in “strength through peace,” and announcing that the time had arrived for Democrats to unite behind a single-payer healthcare system. That is inspiring. Remember, Kucinich isn’t running to create a third party; he’s trying to revive a second one.

4.) And finally, I love him. He makes my heart go pitter-patter. He is a rare being. He is a tireless, courageous, and insatiable advocate for all the things I believe in. He has inspired me, engaged me, and sparked an awareness of the problems and the possibilities we face, on both political and spiritual levels. His perseverance—and the constancy of his faith in humanity—is astonishing. He uses every breath he takes to say, in one way or another, “Life is too short not to change the world.” He’s lit a fire, and I don’t feel like ignoring it.

For these reasons, as a matter of conscience and long-term strategy, I will proudly cast my vote for Dennis Kucinich in the 2008 Democratic Primary on February 5.

Stregnth Through Peace,

Ryan