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.