Dennis the Annoyed

But can Kucinich win the nomination? Frankly, no — not because of his positions, but because he can’t raise enough money to compete simultaneously in all the early primaries now bunched together in January and February under the new, truncated electoral calendar (although he’s raised millions of dollars more than expected). However, Kucinich may be a significant factor in Iowa, where he generates wild applause in union halls when he throws out his cancel-NAFTA, cancel-WTO, repeal-Taft-Hartley red meat — and where he just might wean away enough union members from Gephardt to throw the victory to Dean.

In the latest Des Moines Register poll of likely Iowa caucus-goers released two weeks ago, Kucinich is at 3 percent — right where he was in the same poll in July. That may not sound like much — but all the polls show Iowa a close contest between Dean and Gephardt. Kucinich supporters tend to be more deeply committed than those of other candidates, meaning they’ll have more sitzfleisch — Yiddish for staying power — to keep them in their seats right to the end of the lengthy caucus process, giving them importance beyond their numbers. If Kucinich does manage an unexpected impact in the Iowa caucuses — and, given the grassroots enthusiasm he’s generating there with help from singer Willie Nelson and the FarmAid crowd, that’s not entirely inconceivable — it would send a message to the party’s national leadership and the eventual nominee that the party’s left cannot be ignored. Moreover, a surprising showing in Iowa would keep Kucinich’s candidacy — and his undiluted left-populist, anti-war message — alive into New Hampshire, thus insuring continued pressure on the other candidates (especially the often-vacillating Dean) to correct their rhetorical fire.

Kucinich’s supporters like to cite the formula urged by the Texas sage Molly Ivins: Vote with your heart in the primaries, and vote with your head in November. When you think about it, that’s not bad advice at all.