Why Can’t Kucinich Catch On?
On the two key issues for 2008, Dennis Kucinich seems to be in tune with Democratic voters. He wants to get us out of Iraq, and he favors a single-payer not-for-profit health care plan.
But his campaign is stuck in the second tier of candidates in single digits. Why? Is he too short? Is his name too hard to pronounce and spell? Does he make voters uneasy by unconventional moves such as his recent visit to Syria? Do they tune out because his solemn air makes them uncomfortable?
Amid all the talk about a woman or Afro-American in the White House, there seems to be a resistance to taking Kucinich seriously because, in some way, he is not stereotypically presidential–too ethnic, too working-class, too head-on in confronting issues without softening the edges.
He voted against the Iraq war and, in 2004, paid his dues by earning double-digit percentages of the vote in the Maine, Minnesota, Hawaii and Oregon primaries. But this time, he comes off as a “tweener,†not as slick as John Edwards or eccentric enough like Mike Gravel to show up on a Bill Maher panel.
If we were living in a Frank Capra movie, he might have a chance. Growing up so poor that his family was often homeless, fighting his way up in Cleveland politics and slipping back so far that in 1982 he reported $38 on his tax return, coming back to win a seat in Congress and the heart of a beautiful, idealistic young woman, Dennis Kucinich is an exemplar of what used to be the American Dream.
But these days, Frank Capra movies seem to be appropriate only for Christmas, not Election Day.
Cross-posted from my blog.
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7 Responses to “Why Can’t Kucinich Catch On?”
Credentials have never been the primary magnet for attracting attention or votes.
I’m not sire JFK would have been elected if he hadn’t been an attractive and witty man with a well-known
surname representing money and power. Women swooned.
Reason is not what we seem to use in selecting candidates or winners.
[...] he not tailor made for Democratic primary voters? He voted against the Iraq war and, in 2004, paid his dues by earning double-digit percentages of [...]
Kucinich would be a foreign policy disaster.
Kucinich would be a foreign policy disaster
Compared to who?
doma,
I’m not quite as sarcastic, ie., credentials do in fact matter, but stature and presence are of equal import when appealing to the non-fervent-idelogues population. Those people want someone who “looks” Presidential…….and bloggers are never going to outvote them. In my grocery store check out line surveys, Kucinich was most memorably described to me as “that Alfred E. Neuman guy”. Like it or not, folks, he ain’t goin nowhere.
Kucinich is so far left it’s impossible for him to achieve significant (much less substantial) approval from the US electorate. “Department of Peace” is sheer lunacy.
[...] He voted against the Iraq war and, in 2004, paid his dues by earning double-digit percentages of the vote in the Maine, Minnesota, Hawaii and Oregon primaries. But this time, he comes off as a “tweener,†not as slick as John Edwards or eccentric enough like Mike Gravel to show up on a Bill Maher panel. MORE [...]