Truth, Common Sense: Why Kucinich Will Never Be President

Dennis Kucinich will never be elected president no matter how often he runs for two main reasons: he tells the truth and he has common sense, as this interview with Chris Hedges of the Philadelphia Inquirer illustrates. Kucinich refuses to compromise his principles in his fight for the people of this country. He takes on corporate America and the entrenched leadership of his own party.

Excerpts:

Hedges: Have we evolved into a corporate state?

Kucinich: I Look at it as the political equivalent of genetic engineering. That we've taken the gene of corporate America and shot it into both political parties. So they both now are growing with that essence within. So what does that mean? It means oil runs our politics. Corrupt Wall Street interests run our politics. Insurance companies run our politics. Arms manufacturers run our politics. And the public interest is being strangled. Fulfilling the practical aspirations of people should be our mission.

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Hedges: - and Ralph talks a lot about how he believes that corporate interests were determined that his issues weren't going to be heard. Eighty percent of newspapers are controlled by what? Six or eight corporations? How do you - they've in many ways shut down the ability, I mean they shut you down quite physically in Iowa.

Kucinich: Well, Iowa is a couple of factors that came into play. The American people - I never looked at it as being about me - I mean the American people are entitled to the fullness of the debate. It's not democratic to try and shut one point of view out. And since it's very obvious to anyone watching that my point of view is profoundly different from any other point of view being offered inside the party, what they're actually doing is unwittingly contributing to the destruction of the Democratic Party itself by saying that "these are the only points of view that we will deem acceptable within the Democratic Party." And those points of view are generally reinforcing the corporate mentality inside the party. And that's very destructive of the democracy. It actually contributes to the undermining of the hope for legitimate debate within a democratic society. And one of the major issues that I feel is somehow somewhat linked to what's going on in Iowa, is the issue of health care. I'm the only one in this race who's talked about the necessity of a single-payer, not-for-profit health-care system, Medicare for all. Now this plan would bring health care to those 46 million Americans who don't have any health insurance and the tens of millions of American who are underinsured, who would no longer have to worry about their economic position being undermined by the insurance companies. Insurance companies make money by not providing health care - we all understand that. When you consider that half the bankruptcies in this country are linked directly to people not being able to pay their medical bills, when we consider that the bankruptcy laws were changed so that people would be locked into a sort of debtors' prison for a good part of their lives, you come to understand the imperative of HR 676, the bill that I coauthored, as being the path toward economic self-sufficiency. Many homes in this country are finding that their budgets are totally undermined by their health-care costs. And so my solution is apart from any other candidates. It's very interesting how little, despite a real effort, how little coverage the not-for-profit health-care system receives, how little coverage this proposal receives.

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Hedges: Where is it going to come from? How is the state going to be wrested back?

Kucinich: There has to come a moment of awareness. Something will happen to cause people to become aware of what's happening, of what's happened to the government. This is why impeachment is so important. Impeachment would bring up the whole train of abuses that have caused our government to become less democratic. The lies to take us into wars, the eavesdropping, the wiretapping, the rendition, the torture, I mean it all becomes one piece. If people see the whole thing at once, it then creates a kind of awareness that will create some change. I have no doubt about that at all, none whatsoever. What's happened is that people just see bits and pieces and it is never being tied together. I feel we are losing our democracy to lies that took us into war, lies that caused the destruction of essential civil liberties, lies that are driving us into debt, corruption on Wall Street and a Democratic Party that has lost its will to fight these people.