Battle of the liberals

Can anyone beat out Kucinich?

By Mary Leonard, Globe Staff, 9/21/2003

WASHINGTON -- Hurricane Isabel washed out his joint appearance with Ralph Nader here Thursday, but Representative Dennis Kucinich roared with gale force winds into Cambridge Friday to keynote a Peace Action dinner. From there, he was off to Los Angeles, where antiwar activists are hosting two of 1,000 nationwide fund-raisers today for the Ohio Democrat and presidential candidate who proudly wears the liberal label.

"Everybody loves Dennis because he is the peace candidate," said Pat O'Brien, a Cambridge Quaker and a local coordinator of the Kucinich for President campaign. "Howard Dean opposed the Iraq war, but Dennis organized 133 votes against the war resolution in the House. He's the real deal."

Kucinich occupies a space on the Democratic left where no other candidate in the 10-person field resides with such passion and specificity: He would cut the Pentagon budget and create a Department of Peace; tear up NAFTA and end US participation in the World Trade Organization; abolish the federal death penalty; permit gay unions; and give government-paid health insurance to all. He's a vegan endorsed by Vermonter Ben Cohen, a founder of Ben & Jerry's.

Like Kucinich, Al Sharpton and Carol Moseley Braun are Democratic candidates who prove that not everyone is afraid of the liberal label these days. But most Democratic Party progressives (who have deleted that much-maligned L-word from their vocabulary) aren't paying much attention to them. Partly, they're comfortable enough with the economic and social policies of other candidates such as Dean, Richard Gephardt, John F. Kerry, or John Edwards. Many also dismiss Kucinich, Sharpton, and Moseley Braun as lacking the broad public appeal to beat President Bush.

"Underscoring everything I hear in Democratic and independent circles is, `Who can win?' " said Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy and civil rights group. "Progressives are much more pragmatic than in previous years. They will support anyone who can beat Bush."

Dean energized traditional Democrats by taking on the president when Bush was riding high in the polls.

"Dean was much more an anti-Bush candidate than an antiwar candidate, and that hit a chord with the base of the Democratic Party," said Robert Borosage, co-director of the liberal Campaign for America's Future, adding that other candidates could overtake Dean "if they take the gloves off."

The centrist Democratic Leadership Council, on the other hand, warns that the party will be doomed if it doesn't correct its leftward course.

"The key to victory is to keep those angry Democrats energized and to appeal to swing voters -- moderates, independents, and even some Republicans -- who like President Bush but could be convinced to replace him with a Democrat," DLC leaders Al From and Bruce Reed wrote in a summer memo to Democrats.

But that was the advice the DLC gave Al Gore and Joseph I. Lieberman in 2000, and liberals still are licking their wounds.