Kucinich should go Green.

There's currently a poll on the Weekly Standard's website asking, "Who will be the next Democrat to drop out of the 2004 race?" I clicked for the increasingly desperate Sen. John Edwards and then read the results (as of Monday morning): Carol Moseley Braun was first with 44 percent, followed by Rep. Dennis Kucinich at 19 percent and Edwards just a point behind.

I doubt if Braun or Kucinich will pack up before better-financed candidates like Edwards or Sen. Joe Lieberman, who are running traditional campaigns, relying on fundraising, an infrastructure of well-paid jackals (consultants) and vacuous television advertisements. Braun is probably the most brain-impaired contender, but she's hoodwinked groups of women like NOW to endorse her candidacy and will trudge on. Kucinich, on the other hand, is smart, passionate and driven and doesn't need a ton of money to stay on past the first round of primaries.

Like Jerry Brown in '92, Kucinich will sleep on floors, doesn't need to hire pollsters and will pester the likes of Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt for many months to come. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see Kucinich wind up as the Green Party candidate next fall, which would be dandy by me, taking away votes from whatever stiff the Democrats eventually nominate. I don't agree with virtually any of Kucinich's views (extreme protectionism, immediate pullout from Iraq, single-payer healthcare, etc.) but I'd love to see him debate President Bush and the Democratic nominee in the general election. (It was absurd that Ralph Nader was excluded in 2000; he'd have made mincemeat of both Bush and Al Gore.)

Matt Taibbi wrote an excellent article about Kucinich's quixotic campaign in the Oct. 27 Nation, probably the first I've read that really explains why the onetime mayor of Cleveland is running for president, and the mainstream media's prejudice against a troublemaker like him. Taibbi tees off on Edwards to open his piece, "Who's Afraid of Dennis Kucinich?" and it's an artful beginning.

He writes: "The parallel movements of the Southern Senator are a powerful leitmotif in the Kucinich campaign. In the epic novel of this election, whose tragic theme is the unavoidable humiliation of the sane in a kingdom of idiots, Edwards appears as Kucinich's foil, his Dostoyevskian opposite. For every step Kucinich takes, Edwards is seemingly there to remind him that a man cannot succeed in a world designed for children. The Southern Senator is a kind of anti-Kucinich: tall, handsome, bubbly, seemingly not sure why he is running for President. The ideas that drive his candidacy seem like items from a sales-drive PowerPoint presentation, or frat dares."

I think Taibbi's wrong on why Beltway pundits dismiss Kucinich, claiming that it's because he's short and not particularly attractive (like most Americans), when it's probably the congressman's refusal to schmooze with reporters, practice soundbites and lay out a decent buffet at campaign events that turns them off. And even the reporters covering the various campaigns and debates, most of whom will vote for the Democratic nominee, aren't ready for Kucinich's barely disguised call for at least a moderate policy of socialism. Not when these Beltway creatures are affluent, have kids in private school and already receive excellent health benefits from their employers.

Taibbi describes a rapturous reception Kucinich received at the University of New Hampshire last month, at which numerous students signed up for the campaign. Admittedly, the author is smitten, but what other writer has come with a description of Kucinich like this: "He outlines a revolutionary plan, centered in his creation of a Department of Peace, that would 'make nonviolence an organizing principle of society.' He quotes from Jung, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Thomas Berry, Morris Berman. Dennis Kucinich is the only presidential candidate whose speeches need to be annotated."

That's a stretch, but Taibbi's made his point rather eloquently. It'd be productive to have a bona-fide left-wing candidate running for president to present a clear alternative to Bush. As I've written in the past, the ideal Democrat, one the media might take more seriously than Kucinich, is Russell Feingold, but the principled senator from Wisconsin just didn't have the stomach to be on the same stage, week after week, with the likes of John Kerry, Al Sharpton, Edwards and Wesley Clark.

Root, Root, Root for the Marlins

Last Friday morning, after the Red Sox had succumbed to the Yanks in the seventh game of the ALCS, I received more than 100 emails, roughly divided between Sox/Cubs fans and devotees of Derek Jeter, Don Zimmer and Karim Garcia. Fair territory from my point of view: If you write about baseball in a New York newspaper and openly root for Boston, swallowing the consequences is part of the deal.

One missive, however, stood out for its sheer weirdness.

From Luis (cleaned up for clarity and grammatical errors): "One of my worst nightmares was reading your column next week if the Red Sox had won. But the fact that they lost and you're a right-wing conservative makes gloating about the results so much more delightful. I'd have given anything to see your face last night when Aaron Boone blasted Wakefield's pitch into the left field seats. I thought seeing your face when Hillary won her senate race would've been priceless, but I'm sure that was nothing compared to how you must've looked last night. I know it must kill you to have a Clinton-loving liberal like myself gloating during your time of deep depression. But I couldn't help it. I get such joy out of conservatives like yourself getting a taste of your own medicine. Go Yankees!"

Well done, Louie. Actually, although disappointed, to a lifelong Sox fan nothing compares to the '86 World Series. I felt worse for my sons, who were stunned waking up to find out the results, after going to sleep with the Sox leading.

Hatred's a hard emotion to harness, Luis, but isn't it a little strange to connect conservatism with the Red Sox? After all, the Yanks, as liberals like Pete Hamill and Jack Newfield never tire of pointing out, are known as the U.S. Steel of the major leagues. And the team's owner, Gen. Dwight D. Steinbrenner, was convicted (and later pardoned) of an illegal contribution to Richard Nixon. Plus, he's rich and spends willy-nilly on players?no complaint from me; it's his team and money?which ought to rile a "Clinton-loving liberal" like your sorry self.

Oh, and for the record, I agree that Sox manager Grady Little should be canned by Boston management, but not for allowing Pedro Martinez to keep pitching in the 8th inning. Had Little not made so many bone-headed decisions during the regular season, his team probably would've won the A.L. East. Additionally, Little's hare-brained running plays in the first couple of games in the ALCS that resulted in double plays, saved Yanks pitchers from disastrous innings. Had the Sox knocked out Andy Pettitte (Astros-bound) in Game Two, a seventh contest might not have been even necessary.

Let's Raise Lots of Money

Reading a New York Times editorial last Thursday, it was without shame that I recalled my scoutmaster of Huntington's Troop 12, Mr. Wilson Mott, reminding his Boy Scouts on several occasions, "Nobody likes a sore winner." Hardly an original snippet of advice, at least 35 years ago, and you'd think after waging a tireless and tiresome crusade for several years over "campaign finance reform" that the Times' isolated braintrust would've quietly savored their (at least temporary) victory last year.

But no. The Oct. 16 editorial, headlined "President Bush's Run for the Money," expresses indignation that George W. Bush is raising a record amount of cash contributions for his 2004 reelection campaign. Yes, there's a grudging reference to Bill Clinton's '96 campaign, when bagman Terry McAuliffe collected an enormous amount of money to air commercials against the incumbent's hapless challenger Bob Dole, who'd exhausted his available funds in securing a worthless GOP nomination. Bush, though, is worse than Clinton because he's been more successful at soliciting funds, even though his methods, which conform to the new outlaw of "soft money," "seems well within the law." That's a very pregnant "seems," but no matter.

Here's the paper's take: "Flush from the golden A.T.M. called incumbency, President Bush's money-raising conglomerate has just rung up a record $49 million in political donations for the latest quarter, with not a party opponent in sight? Mr. Bush can spend the windfall against whichever victor emerges next March, pummeled and dollar-starved [did anyone force these Democrats to run for president?], from the Democrats' primary circuit jousts. President Bill Clinton relished phantom primary money in his 1996 re-election, but Mr. Bush beat Mr. Clinton's total for an equivalent period by getting five times as much, and quadrupled the campaign's cadre of major donors since June."

What's the point? That Bush is greedier than Clinton because he took a lesson from the master Arkansas politician and one-upped him? It's too bad that the current president's father wasn't so aloof in his '92 race, when he had not only Pat Buchanan but Ross Perot challenging him, and got his hands dirty raising enough money to compete effectively.

The editorial concludes with a lament that the eventual Democratic nominee will also opt out of a publicly financed campaign and follow Bush's example. "This would be a considerable setback in the long struggle to rein in the power of insiders' money in politics," the paper says, "a struggle dating to the scandalous days of Watergate." Translation: If candidates circumvent the First Amendment-busting legislation of last year, and do in fact have plenty of dough to lavish on television stations in particular (which is good for the economy, by the way), then "the power of insiders" like the New York Times will be diminished.

By contrast, the more sensible Washington Post ran an editorial on the same subject the next day, Oct. 17, which, with a few minor quibbles commended Bush for his up-front listing of major donors. The paper said: "President Bush is breaking barriers with his fundraising in this presidential campaign, and not just with his record hauls. Mr. Bush also has achieved a new level of openness in his campaign finance disclosure. He has gone beyond legal requirements to list individual donors (who can provide as much as $2,000) by providing the names of the big fundraisers who really matter to political campaigns."

In fact, the Post puts the onus on the Democratic presidential candidates who haven't, in the paper's opinion, risen to the same level of disclosure as Bush. "[Democratic] candidates are divided on the question, relatively obscure but of intense importance to the high-tech community in particular, of whether companies should be required to report stock options given to employees as an expense on the corporate balance sheet. Sens. John F. Kerry and John Edwards support expensing options; former Vermont governor Howard Dean, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman and Rep. Richard Gephardt oppose it. Wouldn't it be of interest to know who has the big Silicon Valley fundraisers on board?"

There's little question that both the Times and Post will endorse the Democratic challenger to Bush a year from now, but at least the latter daily refuses to be held hostage by the Democratic National Committee.

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