Category: Dennis Kucinich For President

There are few legislators who fall into the category of “awesome,” but they include fellas like Russ Feingold, Bernie Sanders, and, of course, Dennis Kucinich.

Kucinich’s story itself is damned interesting. Here’s a guy who grew up in a large family one could classify as “housing challenged,” became the youngest mayor of Cleveland. He refused to allow the electric company there to be privatized, and it led to a price on his head. Really. He lost reelection when the banks trying to buy Muny Light forced default. 20 years after, though, Muny Light expanded and thrived. Kucinich had saved its ass and nearly got shot in the head for it.

Right now, he’s railing about naming rights, which is a detail many folks wouldn’t have thought of. But why in hell should any company that took TARP money get to buy naming rights? Why should taxpayers pony up so that they can go to the “Fed-Ex Staples K-Mart Wells Fargo Bank of America Stadium?”

Dear So-And-So,

I wanted you to be one of the first to know: on Saturday, I will hold an event in Washington D.C. to thank everyone who has supported my campaign. Over the course of the last 16 months, I have been privileged and touched to witness the incredible dedication and sacrifice of so many people working for our campaign. Every minute you put into helping us win, every dollar you gave to keep up the fight meant more to me than I can ever possibly tell you.

On Saturday, I will extend my congratulations to Senator Obama and my support for his candidacy. This has been a long and hard-fought campaign, but as I have always said, my differences with Senator Obama are small compared to the differences we have with Senator McCain and the Republicans.

I have said throughout the campaign that I would strongly support Senator Obama if he were the Democratic Party’s nominee, and I intend to deliver on that promise.

When I decided to run for president, I knew exactly why I was getting into this race: to work hard every day for the millions of Americans who need a voice in the White House.

I made you—and everyone who supported me—a promise: to stand up for our shared values and to never back down. I’m going to keep that promise today, tomorrow, and for the rest of my life.

I will be speaking on Saturday about how together we can rally the party behind Senator Obama. The stakes are too high and the task before us too important to do otherwise.

I know as I continue my lifelong work for a stronger America and a better world, I will turn to you for the support, the strength, and the commitment that you have shown me in the past 16 months. And I will always keep faith with the issues and causes that are important to you.

In the past few days, you have shown that support once again with hundreds of thousands of messages to the campaign, and again, I am touched by your thoughtfulness and kindness.

I can never possibly express my gratitude, so let me say simply, thank you.

Sincerely,
Hillary

Of all the left-wing nutbars on the radio who yak into my ear all day long, Thom Hartmann has been the weirdest, at least from my perspective. Hartmann’s line has been that Presumptive Nominee Barack Obama should consider Hillary Clinton his number-one seed for veep. His argument, and it unfortunately makes sense, is that an Obama-Clinton ticket would be the most efficient way to heal the party. Hartmann has been steadfast in this argument now for weeks.

But Mrs. Clinton lost him last night.

Today, Hartmann is expressing his disappointment that she refused last night to acknowledge that the nomination had been clinched. Indeed, Monster Tweety chose instead to make the insane statement that intended to consult with her people and decide what to do next. Hello? 2,118? Remember? Barack Obama tied up the nomination at around 10 p.m. last evening? Hello?

Mr. Hartmann has nailed it on the head today: Last night the only opportunity Hillary Clinton will ever have again to annoint Obama and to speak directly to her supporters to begin the healing process. She chose to congratulate Obama on the race he had run, not the race he had won, and to reserve concession for another day. She will never again have a stage and an audience that large by which to deliver the message that it’s time to fall in line. Last night was it. And she blew it.

She can’t be his veep pick. How do you have a veep pick who has been witnessed, in public, endorsing the Republigoat opposition? How? How do you do that? How do you have a veep pick who won’t even acknowledge the nomination? How? This talk of her being veep is absurd. I said it at the beginning of things, and I’ll say it now: Hillary Clinton is a very good senator.

Mr. Obama now needs only 10, count ’em, 10 delegates to be the nominee.

I have Keith and Tweety on. I’m on pins and/or needles.

9:36 p.m. Am now listening to Monster Tweety on the TV machine. Her opening was the most conciliatory I’ve heard her. By the way, there’s a quality of political speaking that I’m coming to characterize as “Stop Naming Dwarves” (see Friends, The One With The Metaphorical Tunnel). The most clear example of this is the naming of states where one has run, a la Howard Dean’s “I Have A Scream” speech. By the way. The ‘Yes She Will’ chant is and always has been tired and stupid. 9:39 p.m. Ah, there’s the ‘count every vote’ thing. 9:40 p.m. OMFG. Did she just say “stay the course?” Isn’t that a phrase a Democrat should piss on and then sprint away from? 9:37 p.m. Dear gods, they’re chanting “Denver Denver Denver.” Geniuses. Let’s pray for a floor fight. Good idea. * Stop Naming Dwarves * 9:49 p.m. Ah, the non-concession concession speech. Hey, look, they got the Numa Numa guy to stand behind Monster Tweety. 10:10 p.m. Look. At that. Crowd. That is beautiful. 10:15 p.m. Obama says he will be the nominee. Oh, yeah. 10:18 p.m. Listen to him praise Monster Tweety. That’s sportsmanship. 10:38 p.m. Oh my god, I think I just came. 10:56 p.m. I have just donated a few bucks to the Obama campaign. You can too. Go on. Donate some bucks to the next President of the United States of America.

I swear, if it turns out that Obama is the nominee this week, I swear I’ll vote for him in November.

Hey-ho. Let’s go.

Why isn’t Jim Blanchard running for President?

On another note, if I were chairing this meeting, I would tell all of these asshats in the audience that if they don’t knock off the applause, I’m clearing the room. All this applauding is making the Democratic Party look like a bunch of morons. You don’t see applause in a Judiciary Committee meeting. It’s friggin’ unseemly.

How awesome, how utterly awesome, is Robert Wexler? Outside of Universal Studios and my Snowbird Granny, he’s the best thing about Florida.

Now. On to the “count every vote” meme discussed by the previous speaker, whose name I did not catch.

Let’s say you live in Fredonia, which holds elections every four years. President Firefly’s name is the only one on the ballot, and if you don’t vote, the Fredonian Security Forces come to your house and throw you in jail. But they count every vote, every single damned one.

So by the thinking I heard earlier this morning, Fredonia’s election results are completely valid.

Casting this as an issue of vote counting and voter disenfranchisement just doesn’t fly. The primary was fundamentally flawed. There were no Fredonian Security Forces, but, at least in Michigan, some names were not on the ballot, and in Florida, voters were told that they could stay home. As was mentioned here, had Florida’s primary been held in the normal fashion, turnout could have been doubled from its already stellar result.

In fact, as TPM asks today, if these delegations are seated no questions asked, doesn’t that disenfranchise the voters who were told not to bother voting and didn’t? And, by the way, those numbers may be nothing to sneeze at: “…as many as one million voters in Florida and probably more than a half million voters in Michigan did not vote who otherwise would have if they had not believed that the results would not be counted.”

Seriously, the only way to actually solve this problem is to nudge harder for the supers to pile on so we can get us a nominee and then just seat everybody.