Can we be critical?

I was asked this question at the Presidential Debate in Philadelphia and have had that question bumping around inside my head ever since. I didn't quite know how to answer it because this is a time of outright political partisanship which cannot be betrayed, I thought, by thoughts of why Dennis should not be always listened to. I mean the forces are arrayed so strongly against him and the media cannot help but repeat endlessly that he is unelectable and thus everyone feels compelled to parrot those thoughts so . . . how can I be so full-throated in my acceptance of whatever Dennis says?

It was definitely a good question and one that stuck me in the throat and made me uncomfortable. I returned home after the debate all fired up with having met Dennis and Elizabeth Kucinich and having found them to be the kind of people one would like to believe belong headquartered in the White House not because they will return it to some mythic past but will alter it forever. It is possible to stand near them and think that they can be elected because so much of what they stand for is about what all of us who are progressives believe this country and all countries should be about. Not because we want to impose these ideas on others but because underneath it all, we feel they speak to a humanity in us that transcends all kinds of divides. That they are the true uniters when it comes to speaking the truth and saying what matters and genuinely wanting to end the brutality of our lives and replace it with what it is we all want. Whether we look at this with some kind of scorecard of progressive demands, e.g., a not-for-profit health care system, an end of wars of all kinds, a world in which workers' rights, the environment and the need for goods are all considered important and based on fairness.

Yet the question remained, can I be critical of Dennis or of the platforms or of anything in the position I have taken as a blogger asking why not Dennis? Then I read an article, the cover article, of the most recent issue of The Progressive which is about Dennis by John Nichols. It asked in another context a similar question: Can Dennis give up his dream of becoming the next president and challenge the Democrats solidly enough to pay attention to the needs of the rank and file Democratic voter who has wanted and voted for an end to this war and so many other issues that have not been honored by the Democrats sent to Congress with this mandate.

If Bush thought in 2004 that he had political capitol to burn, the Democrats were handed a check that could have been cashed and paid them the presidency in 2008 as well as a cooperative Congress had they listened to who elected them to do their jobs. Instead they took the check and tore it up. It was not what they wanted. They wanted real money and real cash and they wanted to let the world know that politics was going to stay the same no matter who had voted or said what.

If Schumer has his reasons for voting for the torture of "enemy combatants" and I am not sure just what those reasons are, we can surmise the reason for Diane Feinstein's capitualtion having a lot to do with her husband's money coming from being a military contractor. Constant war is good business, I fear. But we know that there has been no cry for their recall from their constituents, of which I am one.

So, we have sent Democrats off to war, as it were, and they ended up fighting for the other side just as we have seen them do for so long that it should have come as no surprise. Just as the protests against the war have seen none of our elected officials make an appearance (except for Dennis on occasion) it is often a fact of life these days that it makes no difference how much most of us want a change that change seems to be that annoying amount of coins in our pockets that we never know what to do with. It is not the abstract noun of meaningful movement from where we have been to some place new and different and difficult because of how it stirs up the cobwebs and makes everyone rethink the way they do things.

That takes me in a circuitous route back to the original question I asked myself at the start of this entry: Can I be critical of Dennis? The answer then becomes no. The no means, I cannot be critical of Dennis and his reasons for running for office because he is the only one who stands between me and utter and complete despair. Were there no Dennis Kucinich in this race, who would be saying any of the things that need to be said, that we need to have said for us by someone who has been elected and who risks all in the saying of them.

I often wonder from a writer's point of view what it is that can keep someone moving forward as Dennis does. He goes to a rally and he shouts out what is the best anyone can say about workers' rights and about health care reform and the crowd cheers, go crazy with him and then the unions and the progressives desert him when it comes time to give support. Why? Now that is the real question. Not can we be critical of Dennis but why isn't Dennis critical of us?

Why doesn't he come back at us and ask us to do what we are shouting at him in approval of? Why doesn't he bow to our rejection of him and go home? Why does he persevere in the face of the media's diminishment of his run for office as if it were a foregone conclusion that he would never be president? Why does he go forward as if he has not been slammed so many times that were it someone like me, I would be a mess of jelly sitting in the corner asking what had I ever said that causes such hostility?

Perhaps he understands something that none of us does, not me, not John Nichols, not the people in all those newspapers who belittle him and that is that this is a fight, a real fight that needs to go forward against all odds. Not because it is comfortable or safe and certainly not because he has any assurances of success but because he believes in us and in our needs which are no different from his or the women in Iraq or the men in Sudan or the children in India. We are all of a fabric that depends on each other. I know he knows that and that I do believe is what keeps him moving forward for us, for him and for those to come.

That is the answer to my questions, at least for now. I hope we can all hang onto that thought and not become the parrots of the media but remind them that they too are a part of this fabric and have some responsibility to more than themselves and the advertisers.