The great war correspondent Chris Hedges has posted a beautiful endorsement of Dennis Kucinich for President on Truthdig, and he makes it perfectly clear that Kucinich is the only candidate campaigning for exactly what almost everyone who posts on progressive blogs like Diatribune and Daily Kos wants to happen:
He was alone among the major candidates to vote against the Patriot Act, against authorizing the war in Iraq, and he wants to repeal the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and withdraw from the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Healthcare is the only issue on which the "leading candidates" present definable positions that an ordinary human being like me can actually understand, so it's a little surprising that the "Big Three" Democrats have so many supporters on Diatribune and Daily Kos, since only Kucinich is campaigning for the universal single-payer system that most progressive bloggers want to see:
Kucinich is the only candidate in the race who advocates a single, not-for-profit health-care system for all citizens, in essence a national Medicare. He coauthored H.R. 676, which would provide universal health coverage. This coverage would, he said, not only assure that people will not suffer or die from lack of medical care, but would also stem the epidemic of personal bankruptcies, half of which are attributed to people who cannot pay their medical bills.
It's easy to blame Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and the "centrist" Democrats of the DLC for policies that represent a compromise of a compromise of a compromise of a compromise, but has the liberal blogosphere really done any better, divided between the three "major" candidates who have compromised on Iraq, Iran, healthcare, Social Security, free trade, taxes, and every other issue that anyone on the Left actually cares about?
Chris Hedges has seen enough wars to recognize a class war when he sees one, and he's obviously frustrated with the "major" candidates who have already surrendered without a fight. What kind of choice do we have between the happyface feel-goodism of Obama and Hillary Clinton's corporate free-trade sell-out and Edwards, whose only claim on the support of ordinary Americans is that he's a little like Kucinich?
Hedges asked Dennis Kucinich what it feels like to be the only candidate who's fighting a decent fight for ordinary Americans against Big Pharma and Big Oil and the rest of the military-industrial complex that owns the "major" candidates, and Kucinich gave him a good answer:
I asked him if he was ever frustrated, given his lonely status as an outsider. He was excluded from a Dec. 13 Democratic debate in Iowa sponsored by the Des Moines Register. His lack of corporate money has seen his campaign subsist on $2 million while Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama each raised $100 million in 2007 for their presidential bids.
“What you do in life is you stand up and fight for those things you believe in,” he said, “and you do it without question or pause, to take a phrase in one of my favorite songs. I don’t have any complaints.”
I respect some of the real fighters on the blogs like nyceve who support Edwards, but when I read the pro-Hillary and pro-Obama diaries, all I can say is...
Don't you guys ever get tired of talking about nothing?
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