John Nichols: Congress Will Be Diminished by the Departure of Dennis Kucinch

[marmar]

from The Nation:


Congress Will Be Diminished by the Departure of Dennis Kucinch
John Nichols on January 3, 2013 - 10:12 AM ET


Dennis Kucinich has had many political lives. Elected to the Cleveland City Council in 1969 at age 23, he was in 1977 elected as that great American city’s “boy mayor.” Kucinich’s refusal to bend to the demands of the downtown banks and the utility corporations that wanted him to privatize public services led to a withering electoral assault that would eventually force him from office.

For much of the 1980s, Kucinich was a political pariah, running and losing races in his native Ohio and slowly fading from the national limelight he had once enjoyed.

Then, in the “Republican revolution” year of 1994, Kucinich stunned local and state (and even a few natrional) observers by emerging as one of only a handful of Democratic legislative candidates to upset a sitting Republican state senator. Two years later, he ran for Congress against one of Newt Gingrich’s Republican lieutenants and won a Cleveland-area House seat.

The Kucinich who came to Congress in the 1990s was every bit as incorruptible and uncompromising on principle as the “boy mayor” who fought Cleveland’s crony capitalists in the 1970s. He opposed trade deals, deregulation schemes and, most notably, the wars of whim of Democratic and Republican presidents. By 2000, he was arguing that Democrats should include in their platform a proposal for a “Department of Peace” that would use diplomacy, development aid and environmental initiatives rather than drones, occupations and crackdowns on basic liberties to create real security for the United States and the planet. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blog/172003/congress-will-be-diminished-departure-dennis-kucinch

[snot]

1. We're losing one of the best. Thank you, Dennis; and

here's hoping you soon find another way to continue your good work.

[bvar22]

2. Blast for the Past:

[font color=firebrick][center]”Unlike the other candidates, I am not funded by those corporate interests.
I owe them no loyalty, and they have no influence over me or my policies.”
---Dennis Kucinich [/font]
[/center]


Thank You , Dennis,
for your service,
for your tireless dedication to Democratic Party Values,
for your Leadership,
for your principled STANDS on traditional Democratic Party issues, policy,and values,
and for providing a model of what ALL our "Democratic" Reps should be!

---bvar22
an old FDR/LBJ Working Class Democrat
who STILL believes in the traditional Democratic Party Values & Ideals



You will know them by their WORKS,
not by their rhetoric, promises, or excuses.
[font size=5 color=green]Solidarity99![/font][font size=2 color=green]

[MuseRider]

3. Hoping this will not be the last

we hear from him. I hardly think that will be the case. A Dennis Kucinich on his own might just be a really good thing. Let's hope.

Thank you Dennis Kucinich.