Change.org compares my politics to those of the myriad of 2008 presidential candidates.
National politics is depressing, and it has been for a while. My political consciousness was raised early by seeing a headline of the Nixon resignation in the Chicago Tribune as a kid and following the ups and downs of Jimmy Carter’s presidency. I wonder now if that is the reason I am a progressive, because the timing of my respect for the office of President came when a liberal Democrat was in the Oval Office. Everything else is compared to him.
My expectations for what a liberal candidate should be like have been lowered again and again, occasionally finding glimmers like Paul Simon, Paul Tsongas and now Dennis Kucinich. For many reasons, I have never managed to vote for the winning guy. American politics bottomed out for me in 2004 when John Kerry was selected to run against George Bush. Tired of voting for the lesser of evils, I wrote in “Barbara Lee” knowing that not only did she have no chance of winning (she wasn’t even running) but that the write-in laws in Indiana didn’t count the vote (she wasn’t on the official write-in list). The presidential crowd is a deeper pool this time around, so I don’t know if Barbara will again get my vote.
The Change.org candidate selector confirmed what I already knew: Dennis Kucinich is the best match for me. He sometimes sounds like he is running for high school president instead of the U.S. variety, but he is also very sincere and genuinely progressive. He tries to offer solutions with some details and generally doesn’t waver with his ideology. Dennis was a guest blogger on the Huffington Post a while back, writing about the War in Iraq. Not everything is a perfect match, such as his support of an amendment to ban flag burning and his extreme position on free trade. There isn’t much about his politics though that I would complain about, especially in comparison to what we have been through the past couple decades.
What was a little surprising about the quiz—which is quite limiting with just 20 generalized questions—was the placement of Al Gore. All of the democrats are virtually indistinguishable, except for something not measured by Change.org, the level of superficiality (John Kerry being the worst offender). But I expected Gore to be closer to Kucinich than, say, Hillary Clinton. Instead, he combines a softer stance on pretty much everything with some fundamental differences involving crime. Ron Paul, the Republican Dennis Kucinich, is typically Republican on issues like Social Security, taxation, schools, and environment. Paul is a bit more in line with my beliefs when it comes to civil rights and social reform.
Dennis, by the way, will be appearing on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” this Tuesday, October 16th. He has accepted Stephen Colbert’s challenge to Empty his Pockets!
6 replies on “I am 92% Dennis Kucinich”
Arghh! 87% Hillary. I’m a Jon Edwards guy . . .
Apparently I’m more extreme than Ron Paul and Mike Gravel.
Representative Dennis Kucinich voted “NO” regarding a Constitutional Amendment to ban flag desecration in 2005. That vote was a reversal of his earlier votes.
Also, NAFTA and the WTO is still somewhat new. So, why would canceling them be considered extreme?
If you are seeking a president that will promote the interest of the people, rather than the interests of corporations and lobbyists, then look no further than Dennis Kucinich!
… and yet when I asked about of the Kucinich campaign in 2004, the answer I got was some respect-for-patriotism justification. I’m glad to read that position has been reversed, but I really want to know why he supported it at all. Ever.
I believe in working within a system. Believing NAFTA is exploitative and wanting to nuke it are two different things. I think a better strategy is to reform the international trade agreements to make community trade the norm.
I feel so sorry for you that Kucinich is your best choice. The Democratic party is in ruins, my friend. I would classify myself as an independent who leans right. I lean right, at the present moment, because, as an independent, I simply vote for what makes sense – not necessarily what I would like, but what makes sense.
Currently, the liberal Democratics are shunning any candidate who has, what I believe to be, moderate views of the war in Iraq. Guys like Lieberman get thrown under the bus because they see the sheer lunacy of publicizing a pull-out date while everyone who said they’d pull the troops out have done an about face with slick comments like, “We can’t promise when we’ll pull them out because, once in the White House, we don’t know WHAT we’ll find.”
I mean, come on… can anyone just be honest and call disingenuous what it is… disingenuous? I think you admirably touch upon that when you speak of the superficiality level but, to me, in a time of war, I want a strong leader who, like him or not, doesn’t jump to the side of the track that suits his ego best on a given day.
Whether you’re rabidly against the war or not, things have been steadily getting better. ESPECIALLY since news media outlets haven’t been emboldening terrorists with pictures and reports of death and destruction on a daily basis.
But this comment is not about the Iraq war for its very easy to digress with that topic in the mix.
The point is that with Harry Reid saying, “We lost the war” and Durbin referring to US troops as Nazis or Pol Pots regime, and Dean who the Dems finally hid under the staircase, and Obama, not wearing a flag pin or putting his hand on his heart…
… I mean, hello? Sure there are subversives in America, probably even terrorists. But the majority of Americans still love the U.S. and while Democrats have been SAYING they do, it’s the conservative Republicans who have been DEMONSTRATING that they do.
Zell Miller, “What happened to my party? Where has my party gone?”
Crooks on both sides, for sure… opportunism and evil do not discriminate but the Democrats have just been incorrigible and unacceptable to anyone who doesn’t have a fetish for schoolyard politics.
Thanks for your time,
Sam
One of the primary attractions to Dennis Kucinich as a candidate is that he hasn’t jumped “to the side of the track that suits his ego best on a given day.” I happen to agree with the position he has been expressing since early 2002, a note that hasn’t changed. I also appreciate that he puts some effort into not only criticizing but offering plans.
But you are correct about the Democratic Party. It has been fairly striking to me how the rhetoric of partisan politics shifts with distribution of power, not implicit ideology. That, for me, is a big problem.