Liberal Pundits Crucify Dennis Kucinich

    On Salon.com’s Wednesday edition of “War Room”, writer Alex Koppleman, MSNBC Countdown host (and former DNC chairman) Lawrence O’Donnel, and Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas proceeded to bludgeon Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich over his impending  “No” vote on President Obama’s healthcare reform bill.  Kucinich has repeatedly stated that unless health care reform includes a robust public option plus an ERISA waiver to enable individual states to enact their own single-payer systems  he would not support the bill. Moulitsas compared Kucinich with Ralph Nader, invoking the tired old fable that Nader’s candidacy cost Al Gore the 2000 election. Funny, I thought it had been established through post-election recounts sponsored by the New York Times and other media outlets that Gore had won Florida only to have the election stolen from him via the Supreme Court’s precedent-smashing Bush vs. Gore decision. The Daily Kos founder also indirectly accused Kucinich of something approching genocide, personally blaming him for the 40,000 people a year who perish due to lack of health insurance coverage. Considering that Obama’s reforms won’t be enacted until 2013, and possibly even longer if a Republican wins in 2012, this puts Kucinich’s “murderous” veto into Vlad The Impaler territory.  O’Donnel and Koppleman chipped in with snipes at Kucinich’s lack of realpolitik credentials, pointing out that his proposed legislation generally goes nowhere, while invoking the spectre of a well-funded centrist challenger who will finally jettison this utopian socialist star-gazer for good. Let me humbly point out that Kucinich has been serving his Cleveland congressional district for seven consecutive terms, so his constituents apparently must think he’s a very effective legislator. Or maybe they’re all utopian socialists too. Moulitsas’s liberal boilerplate b.s. must play well in the blogoshere, but in the real world it smacks of Karl Rove-style  hyperbole and slander. It’s beyond sad to watch liberals bloggers straining to appease Obama’s political apparatchiks in order to defend a health care bill that guarantees private insurers $350 billion over 10 years without universal coverage, caps on premiums and co-pays, no public option, and restrictive abortion language that may well obliterate a woman’s right to choose.