Tweedledum & Tweedledee vie for president

Presidential politics are fought out in the middle. Candidates cannot be too far Left or too far Right. And that is why progressives vote against someone rather then for someone. It’s another sad fact of democracy in America.
It is why Dennis Kucinich of Ohio has absolutely no chance to win the Democratic nomination for president. He is simply too far Left for most voters.
Kucinich rightly opposes the Iraq War. He would bring the troops home now. But that will not win him the nomination. A cautious, centerist approach is the way to win presidential nominations.
Boobus Americanus will not vote for progressive candidates even if it means voting against their own economic interests. What matters to the masses are candidates’ stands on such social issues as abortion and gay marriage.
None of the leading Democratic presidential contenders will even think of withdrawing troops before the end of a first term in 2013. Each offers a Rube Goldberg national health plan tied to Big Pharma and insurance companies.
(Kucinich advocates a singlepayer health plan that civilized nations long have had. He is pro-union and opposed to the death penalty. He would pull America out of NAFTA and WTO. People say he is too short at 5 feet 7 inches tall to be president, forgetting that James Madison, the shortest president in history, was 5 feet 4 inches tall.)
Hillary Clinton? The late columnist Molly Ivins skewered her: “I’ve had it with every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting son of a bitch.” Clinton has the money, star power and gender. But she is gutless.
Clinton is a war hawk, her position on Iraq little different from the catastrophic policy of President Bush. She has moved so far to the right that she sounds like a Republican. (She has called for criminalizing the burning of an American flag!)
Asked her stand on driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, she had four weaseling positions ranging from yes to no. She is against removing the $97,000 cap on Social Security contributions because it would burden the middle class. Some middle class. Only 6 percent of Americans make more than 97K a year.
Barack Obama? Decent. Smart. He dares to point out the class warfare rampant in America. He would raise capital gains taxes on the wealthy, close corporate tax loopholes and abolish tax breaks on hedge fund and equity managers who make billions. He notes that CEOs make in 10 minutes what it takes workers 10 months to earn. Yet, there is Obama spreading the Bush canard that Social Security is in a crisis.
John Edwards? He strikes a genuine populist note. He is for low income workers and financially struggling students. He’s pro-labor. But on Iran he is almost as warlike as Vice President Cheney.
As for the Republican candidates, they are a sorry bunch. They are all white and proponents of the status quo. They all seem to be running for dictator. As New York Times essayist Frank Rich, one of the treasures of the national discourse, puts it: “They’re falling over each other to expand Gitmo, see who can promise the most torture and abridge the largest number of constitutional rights.”
Homophobia reigns among them. They support the ridiculous military policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
John McCain? He is the best of a bad lot. He knows what torture is: condemnable. But his backing of the war in Iraq is absurd. He proclaimed Baghdad safe after walking through it with body armor and surrounded by soldiers. He was smeared by Bush in 2000 but is still a Bush lick-spittle. A tragic figure.
Mitt Romney? As governor of Massachusetts he favored pro-choice, gun control, gay rights and stem cell research. As candidate for president he has repudiated all those stances. He may be the biggest political flip-flopper in history.
Rudy Giuliani? He’s running on 9/11, a study in myth-making. He is hawkish, fiscally conservative, dodging scandals and dogged by noxious associations. He supports the occupation of Iraq. He panders to the South, asking what’s wrong with flying the Confederate flag. He thinks it is great to be rich. He tosses out a welter of statistics, many exaggerated or wrong.
He is a Second Amendment advocate, telling the NRA what it wants to hear. Waterboarding is fine by him. His foreign policy adviser should tell you all you need to know about Giuliani: right-winger Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary.
In any case, the frontrunners in both parties are Tweedledum and Tweedledee.