Don't mess with Kucinich
Dennis Kucinich is under fire from the moderate left!
Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas threatened to back a primary challenger to Kucinich's re-election if he was instrumental in blocking the current health care reform bill:
"What he is doing is undermining this reform," he added. "He is making common cause with Republicans. And I think that is a perfect excuse and a rational one for a primary challenge."
Over at Salon Alex Koppelman accused Kucinich of being an ineffective legislator:
In fact, according to the web site GovTrack, of the 97 bills Kucinich has sponsored since taking office in 1997, only three have become law. 93 didn't even make it out of committee.
Others have accused him of attempting to create an impossible utopia.
The thing that worries me about all of this is not that Kucinich hasn't been able to pass any substantive legislation (although that's certainly upsetting) but that some people actually think it would be a good idea to throw out one of the few people left in congress who make any sort of rational sense.
The fact that Kucinich hasn't been able to pass any of his significant proposals isn't because he's an ineffective legislator, it's because almost everyone else in congress is totally ineffective, counterproductive, and borderline insane.
Calling for his removal would be like calling for the removal of the only supervising adult in a pre-school because they failed to teach the kids how to solve differential equations. It's not the adult's fault, and you'd be removing the only supervision the kids have left.
Would you rather let the kids run wild instead? We've seen what happens when you do that.
Let Piggy speak!
Except unlike Piggy, this guy has balls! Did you know that the Cleveland mafia actually put a hit on him because he wouldn't cave into their demands? Sorry Markos, but I don't think this guy's afraid of your threats.
If the world listened to Kucinich:
- We'd be out of Iraq and Afghanistan (and we would never have gone there the first place, he was the only democratic candidate in the '08 election to vote against the war).
- Everyone would have health care, be it private or through a public option.
- The War On Drugs would be over, meaning the blood-bath here and in Mexico wouldn't exist, and we wouldn't be the country with the largest prison population and incarceration rate.
- The PATRIOT Act would be repealed.
And whole bunch of other wonderful things (with the exception of his stance on gun control).
It certainly wouldn't be a utopia, but without a doubt it'd be closer to it than what we have now.
I don't know about you, but I'm grateful to know that there's still a Kucinich left in congress. Someone whose proposals might not be passed or even understood, but at the very least it helps me to sleep at night knowing that he's there to inject some sort of reason into the discussion.
