http://www.blackagendareport.com/009/009d_bd_kucinich.phpThe potential appeal of Dennis Kucinich to black voters is not limited to his stands on foreign policy. Whether it's health care, Social Security, the environment, the record of the congressman from Cleveland matches the best of the Congressional Black Caucus across the board. In an October 2003 article for Black Commentator, BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford called Al Sharpton and Kucinich, at a gathering of Democratic presidential candidates, “the only two civilized men in the room.”
“Kucinich... is labeled a kook when he argues for ‘health care for people, not for profit’ – although this is the premise on which all the other wealthy societies begin their discussions of health matters.
“Kucinich...points out that U.S. government policy is facilitating the impoverishment of America. 'We need to cancel NAFTA, cancel the WTO, which makes any changes in NAFTA…illegal.' ...even 'staunchly' pro-union Rep. Dick Gephardt cannot bring himself to 'challenge the underlying structure of our trade,' as Kucinich puts it.”
The 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns of the Rev. Jesse Jackson were breakthrough moments not because the candidate's face was black, but because Jackson brought to the American table the real and pertinent concerns of the era's black consensus – poverty, joblessness, education, and in foreign policy, opposition to the apartheid regime in South Africa. Twenty years down the road, black Democrats in presidential primaries are nothing new. Even Republicans now throw up their own black candidates to try to peel off ten, twenty or thirty percent of the black vote. It didn't work in Pennsylvania or Ohio. It almost succeeded in Maryland, and will be attempted again.
“He's the blackest candidate in the ring.”
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