Dennis Kucinich and Thursday's Iowa Debate

Two things wrong with that.  The concept that only landed gentry should be eligible to participate in the political process is an idea that we threw out, not in the last century, but in the century before that.

And if a storefront is necessary before you can do business in Iowa, then Amazon.com is ineligible to do business in Iowa.  Ebay is ineligible to do business in Iowa.

You see what I mean?  

The Kucinich campaign is a very internet-connected effort, which does not spend money needlessly. It is, in fact, running the kind of energy-efficient campaign most of the American public wants.

The criteria used to keep the Kucinich message from Iowa voters, and from the American people, is arbitrary, capricious, and downright silly.  But also dangerous.  We cannot as a nation have corporations such as the Des Moines Register determining our political dynamic.

Why would the Des Moines Register do that?

For the same reason that the AARP excluded Kucinich from its Presidential Health Care forum earlier this fall here in Iowa.  The AARP did not want people to hear his message of national, not-for-profit health care, already embodied in a bill before Congress (HR 676).  Why?  Because AARP sells health insurance.  The Conyers/Kucinich plan to guarantee health care to everyone in America excludes private health insurance, because that is the only way a national health care plan can work financially. And that makes that plan a direct threat to that part of AARP’s business.  

I might add that AARP’s willingness to hear about the health care plans of the other presidential candidates tells you that none of those health care plans would be a threat to AARP.  Okay?

And clearly the Des Moines Register newspaper likewise does not want people to hear Dennis’ other messages –

-- on how he is the only Democratic presidential candidate to vote against the Iraq War and against every funding bill for that war;

-- that he has introduced articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney (now in committee for review) and that he is drawing up similar ones against President Bush;

-- that he has promised that ALL of our troops will be out of Iraq within three months of his becoming President, but also that the United States will be withdrawn from NAFTA and the WTO by the summer of 2009, to name a few.

For some reason the Des Moines Register does not want Iowa voters or voters across America to hear that message.  

But that message is getting out.

Kucinich polled second in a California straw poll earlier this fall, behind John Edwards. Edwards received 29% of the total votes cast, Kucinich received just under 24%, and Obama and Clinton came in third and fourth, with 22.5% and 16.8% respectively. The other Democratic candidates were all in the low single digits.

Kucinich polled first in both the ABC and MSNBC "who won the debate" polls a few months ago, to the extreme embarrassment of ABC, who put up a second poll, which he also won, which forced them to drop the internet links to those results. Now, that link is still up, but it opens to a blank white page, the color of whitewash.  

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