Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Kucinich Would Win If People Dared To Vote On The Issues

Kucinich is the only candidate who really has a vision that is from the heart and not from the pocket book.

Kucinich is the candidate who transcends the political cynicism of the plutocracy propaganda. Those words "plutocracy" and "propaganda" probably turn off some people who just can't quite grasp what is going on in politics today. But the propaganda becomes clear when you learn that Kucinich is the candidate who speaks for the most people on most of the issues, yet his candidacy is marginalized by the media, the Democratic Party leaders, and by the Democratic Party rank and file who even acknowledge that he presents their views on the issues but they just can't vote for him because he is not seen as "electable".

I think it is plainly evident that when people speak on the issues and are not blinded by the hype of “electability”, “stature,” “charisma”, or “star power,” then Dennis Kucinich would be the next president of the USA.

Kucinich is the candidate who speaks for the majority of the American people. See the poll below if you don’t believe it. Yes it is unscientific; yes it is limited and skewed to internet users; but even given all of that, you must ask your self why the poll shows nearly 58% ranking Kucinich first place on the issues when the candidates name is NOT known. The next highest candidate gets less than 8% of first place rankings? Why is that? Don't you find this to be shocking?

We should look at all the issues to evaluate the candidate of our choice. I think everyone agrees with that.

So which issues do you look at most importantly? No candidate can be expected to agree with each of us on all the issues, but how is Kucinich wrong on the issues that you hold to be most important?

When people look at the issues in a “blind taste test” asking where they stand on an issue without a candidate’s face attached, the results are startling only to those who live within the media black-out of Kucinich and the propaganda of “horse race” elections. Kucinich speaks for the people. What is shocking is that the people don't get to know that due to the media filtering and manipulation of the reporting. For example, a recent PBS News Hour report on a Democratic debate made is seem that it was a debate between Obama and Clinton with the other candidates merely looking on.

Go to this website http://www.dehp.net/candidate/index.php to see how your views line up with the candidates on 25 issues:

I found the results to be quite accurate in my case, correctly scoring and ranking my agreement with the candidates in order of my preference on the issues: Kucinich 103, Gravel 77, Obama 56, Edwards 55, Clinton 55, Dodd 53, Biden 48, Richardson 47.

Here are some basic stats based on the submissions to the questionnaire at the time of calculation: http://www.dehp.net/candidate/stats.php

At the time of 134,346 people answering:

Measuring how many people had the candidate as their first rank according to how they responded to the issues, NOT KNOWING THE CANDIDATE’S NAME:

Candidate | Number of first | Percentage of
------------ | place ranks -----| people responding
Kucinich - 77,824 -- 57.93%
Gravel - 9,522 -- 7.09%
Paul - 9,182 -- 6.83%
Romney - 5,912 -- 4.40%
Clinton - 4,903 -- 3.65%
Hunter - 4,195 -- 3.12%
Giuliani - 4,069 -- 3.03%
Obama - 3,942 -- 2.93%
Biden - 2,522 -- 1.88%
Richardson - 2,416 -- 1.80%
McCain - 2,256 -- 1.68%
Tancredo - 2,117 -- 1.58%
Edwards - 1,472 -- 1.10%
Dodd - 1,164 -- 0.87%
Huckabee - 986 -- 0.73%
Cox - 941 -- 0.70%
Thompson - 582 -- 0.43%
Brownback - 341 -- 0.25%
Total: 134,346 -- 100.00%


At the time of this response snapshot, nearly 58% of respondents had their positions on the issues rank Kucinich as most agreeing with them. The second highest candidate Gravel has a little over 7%.

When the responses are preference weighted for the top three candidates with a responder’s first rank getting a 3, second rank a 2, and third rank getting a 1, the following order appears:

Candidate | Weighted number ----- | Percentage of all
-------------| of top three ranks ----- | weighted responses.
Kucinich - 266210 -- 33.44%
Gravel - 160516 -- 20.16%
Obama - 61435 -- 7.72%
Clinton - 43352 -- 5.45%
Paul - 38148 -- 4.79%
Romney - 30525 -- 3.83%
Edwards - 27404 -- 3.44%
Hunter - 26314 -- 3.31%
Richardson - 22538 -- 2.83%
Biden - 21518 -- 2.70%
Dodd - 18236 -- 2.29%
Giuliani - 17854 -- 2.24%
Tancredo - 17717 -- 2.23%
McCain - 17286 -- 2.17%
Huckabee - 8031 -- 1.01%
Cox - 7368 -- 0.93%
Thompson - 6358 -- 0.80%
Brownback - 5266 -- 0.66%
Total: - 796076 -- 100.00%


Even with weighting the top three, Kucinich is still by far the number one ranked candidate on the issues by those responding. The difference between these two lists shows the vast number of Democrats who have positions that rank Obama and Clinton as second or third behind Kucinich and Gravel. Remember, these are ranks on the issues WITHOUT the names of the candidates attached, not on a rank of the candidate by name or personality. This shows that the Democratic Party leadership is not following the rank and file of the Party's views.

Iraq was of course the issue ranked most important by the most people, and clearly Kucinich speaks for the most people on this issue, even though the Democratic controlled congress does not follow Kucinich's lead and is still supporting the war.

Here are my important issues:

Kucinich was the first candidate to oppose Iraq and have the good judgement and level thinking to stand against it when 9/11 hysteria was giving in to Bush: right on that.

Kucinich is the only one for not-for-profit health care for all: right on that.

Kucinich is the only one for a Department of Peace to begin the education process away from war and violence as a way of solving both international and domestic issues: right on that one too.

Kucinich is the only candidate who says it is wrong to use war as an instrument of foreign policy (this is probably over the heads of the other candidates): and he is right on that issue.

Kucinich openly opposes nuclear weapons and commits to nuclear disarmament: right again.

Kucinich is the only candidate who is unequivocal about reparations for slavery: right on that one.

Kucinich is the only candidate against land mines, cluster bombs, and uranium munitions: right on that one again.

Kucinich is the candidate who says on his first day in office he will get out of NAFTA and WTO, and join the international criminal court: right again.

Kucinich is against the death penalty: right on that too.

Kucinich is the only candidate who has a plan for universal day care for pre-kindergarten for ages 3 to 5 (Clinton announced her program long after Kucinich had already announced his but her’s will start at age 4): right here too.

Kucinich is the only candidate who says that every American should have the right and opportunity to go to college and he has a program to make that real: right once more.

Kucinich is the only candidate with a comprehensive public works program focusing on green issues: right there as well.

Kucinich is the only candidate I've heard say that the war on terror is fake and that we should instead hunt down so-called "terrorists" as the criminals that they are using the international police structures and not aggrandizing these criminals by calling them combatants in a "war" which is really a sham: right, right, right.

Kucinich is for equal marriage rights: right on that too.

I also find it interesting that Kucinich is asking for the media to look into what it means that Hillary Clinton stands up in a debate and says she regrets that she was "lied" to and misled by Bush. Well, why couldn't she tell Bush was lying? I mean, his lips were moving, weren't they? So far the media is giving Clinton a free pass on this question and instead touts her so-called “experience.” Actually, Obama is quite right to point out he has been in elected office for more years than Clinton or Edwards have been. Of course Obama doesn't point out that Kucinich has been in elected office at the city, state, and federal levels longer than Obama and so has the widest experience at all levels of government.

Yet the propaganda machine doesn’t discuss his experience or his having the positions on issues that reflects the widest swath of the U.S. citizens. If only people would vote the issues by voting their conscience, rather than running scared and voting for horses in a horse race! Then we would have a leader who actually reflected the people and not just the wealthy.

1 comment:

Twilight said...

Inspiring post, Mr. Wonderwheel!

Inspiring, yet I still feel despair because people seem unable to act on what appears so clear to us, and from what you have discovered, to them too.

I blogged about DK myself recently.
There's not a lot we can do to change minds which are frozen solid, but we do at least try.