Road to Impeachment and Peace Runs Through Cleveland
Congressman Dennis Kucinich is facing a tough primary in five weeks in his working class district in Cleveland, Ohio.
He's up against better funded opponents and the concerted effort of the corporate and media powers of Cleveland that
have opposed him since long before he took that seat away from a Republican.
Kucinich is a progressive candidate who inspires passionate support from many in Cleveland who might not turn out to
vote for a DLC Democrat. If he loses his primary, the Democrats may lose the seat. And if he loses the primary, the
Democrats will, without any doubt, have lost something more valuable: their spine.
Kucinich fared poorly in the presidential primaries. But he tended to win surveys that asked about issues and then
matched you up with the closest candidate. He often won post-debate polls following those debates that the corporate
media allowed him to participate in. He usually finished first or second in polls conducted by progressive activist
groups. And quite often, just as four years ago, his speeches won the loudest and longest applause. But, rightly or
wrongly, most people who agreed with Kucinich more than any other candidate, tended (at least in the few states that
decide these things) to back another candidate for president.
Whether we're glad that Kucinich's voice was a part of the Eternal Campaign for many months, or not, we can agree that
off the election circuit for many years now Kucinich has had our backs. He has stood alone or in rare company on Capitol
Hill for positions backed by 90 percent of Democrats outside the Beltway. He has been there for working people, for
labor rights, for the poor, for minorities. He has been there for immigrants, for the sick, for the homeless. When he's
asked to bash immigrants, he quotes the words from the Statue of Liberty. And when he was asked to support the erosion
of our rights and the build up to a fraudulent war in Iraq, he sued the President in court, published a report showing
White House claims about Iraq to be lies, and organized two-thirds of the Democrats in the House to vote No.
"What would it be like," Kucinich asked in the presidential debates, in reference to his opponents' shifting positions
on NAFTA, the PATRIOT Act, the invasion of Iraq, the bankruptcy bill, etc., "to have a president who is right the first
time?"
Now, we have to ask ourselves what it would be like to have a Congress without anyone who is right the first time. There
are other leaders in Congress, of course. There are mavericks on the right like Ron Paul, whose pro-peace supporters
will understand the need to keep Kucinich in Congress and can be counted on to help with it. And there are leaders on
the left. Barbara Lee stood alone against attacking Afghanistan. But no member of Congress has been as reliable a leader
as Kucinich. None has come close. If the peace movement spends 2008 distracted from real action by an obsession with
presidential politics, but does not get behind Kucinich's congressional race in a national way, then we truly will have
lost our bearings.
The impeachment movement has developed new leaders, including members of the House Judiciary Committee like Robert
Wexler. But, as Wexler will tell you himself, Kucinich showed the way. Kucinich introduced articles of impeachment
against Vice President Cheney in April 2007, and again in November. Only after that second effort did others begin
pushing for hearings on the topic. On Monday, the day of Bush's last State of the Union address, Kucinich planned to
introduce articles of impeachment against Bush. In fact, he has prepared a lengthy resolution containing some 50
articles of impeachment. (We can hope someone will do the same for Cheney soon, to cover the full range of his abuses as
well. But it's hard to imagine even hoping such things in a world where there is no Dennis Kucinich in Congress.)
Kucinich did not introduce the new resolution against Bush on Monday. He told me that he had been to a meeting with
Chairman John Conyers and members of the Judiciary Committee last week, and that he was encouraged that they would hold
hearings soon. He was choosing, he said, to give them a few weeks before pushing forward. I'm much less encouraged than
Dennis is that the committee will hold hearings that will amount to anything. Whether the hearings amount to anything, I
think, will depend entirely on whether they use the I word. And I think a further push from Kucinich or anyone else
could only help to make that happen.
At the same time, there are concerns that go unsaid that we should be aware of. What might lead the most courageous and
principled member of Congress to hesitate in taking an incredibly popular step? His party's leadership is fiercely
against it, but that's never seemed to stop him before. What's new, I think, is this: Kucinich is up against a corporate
funded and corporate media driven campaign to knock him out of his position, a campaign attacking his national efforts
as being somehow in opposition to the needs of Clevelanders. (Try asking Clevelanders if they want impeachment, and then
say that!) And, after having our backs for all these years, after being the first and sometimes only voice to speak for
us in Washington, Dennis Kucinich is probably unsure whether we in turn are going to back him up. I don't know, and this
is all speculation, but I'm guessing that if any sizable fraction of the 70 percent of us who think the nation is headed
in the wrong direction under Bush and Cheney were to go make a contribution at http://kucinich.us we'd be seeing
articles of impeachment on the floor of the House sooner rather than later.
Or maybe Dennis is right. Many times, I know, he has been right when I was wrong. Maybe Conyers will start moving on
impeachment in the next couple of weeks. Rob Kall, editor of OpEdNews.com, tells me that he asked Conyers today about
impeachment, and Conyers said "Impeachment is not off the table." Asked who was blocking it, Conyers told Kall it was
not Pelosi or anyone else, it was just Conyers himself. Of course, Conyers has said both of those things for years, and
they've meant nothing. But maybe that will change, and if it does, part of the credit has to go to the congressman who
led the way.
John Conyers, like Dennis Kucinich, stood by his constituents and the people of this country for years, and was
reelected time and again. Now, of course, he's willing, like Nancy Pelosi, to refuse the cries of his voters for
impeachment (Detroit and San Franciso have both passed resolutions demanding it), but many of the members of Conyers'
committee with less seniority would be doing nothing more than he is were they the chairman or chairwoman. One thing we
all need to consider nationally is how we can elect someone enough times to give them enough seniority to make the key
decisions in our government, and yet not allow that person to lose their integrity along the way. One easy partial
answer is to keep electing those who show the most resiliency, and that means making sure Dennis Kucinich stays in
Washington another two years.
Recently MSNBC rewrote its criteria specifically to exclude Kucinich from a presidential debate. Doing so exposed the
pretense that such decisions are always based on cold hard numbers. Five years ago, the media's attack on Kucinich's
first presidential run began before the candidates could be differentiated by polls or money. Kucinich has been the
fiercest opponent of media conglomeration on Capitol Hill, and the media has responded in kind. He's also been one of
the most effective challengers of the corporate media's corruption of political discourse. The loudest applause I recall
in any presidential debate during the 2004 campaign came when Kucinich told Ted Koppel:
"I can tell you, Ted, you know, we started at the beginning of this evening, talking about an endorsement. Well, I want
the American people to see where the media takes politics in this country. To start with endorsements...
(APPLAUSE)
"We start talking about endorsements, now we're talking about polls, and then we're talking about money. Well, you know,
when you do that, you don't have to talk about what's important to the American people. Ted, I'm the only one up here
that actually...
(APPLAUSE)
"... I'm the only up here on the stage that actually voted against the PATRIOT Act and voted against the war-the only
one on this stage. I'm also...
(APPLAUSE)
"... I'm also one of the few candidates up here who's talking about taking our health-care system from this for-profit
system to a not-for-profit, single-payer universal health care for all.
(APPLAUSE)
"I'm also the only one who has talked about getting out of NAFTA and the WTO and going back to bilateral trade...
(APPLAUSE)
"... conditioned on workers' rights, human rights, and the environment. Now..."
KOPPEL: Congressman?
KUCINICH: ... I may be inconvenient for some of those in the media, but, you know, I'm sorry about that.
(THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE, and Koppel looking like he'd swallowed a lizard).
I can hear you applauding again, brothers and sisters. Let's not be springtime patriots. Let's not just cheer for good
lines and go home. Let's not accept the transference of all power to the executive branch and look only at the
presidential race, forgetting the leading defender of the power that the Constitution gave to the legislature.
If you care about keeping in Congress someone with the vision needed to reverse global warming, if you care about peace,
if you care about jobs or health care, if you care about the rule of law, if you care about the freedoms established by
the Bill of Rights, give what you can today to http://kucinich.us
ENDS
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David Swanson is an organizer of the www.AfterDowningStreet.org coalition.