Kucinich touts Demo left’s message in Westside, Manitou

       Dennis Kucinich, long-shot presidential hopeful and most visible leader of the Democratic Party's left wing, visited Colorado April 10, receiving a warm reception from up to 200 people in appearances in Manitou Springs and on the Westside.
       The Ohio congressman reiterated his campaign calls for a federal Department of Peace, establishment of universal health care and a redistribution of wealth (“Take the money from those who don't need it”) that he says would let government better the environment and create more jobs.
       In his talk at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Hall in Old Colorado City, he explained that he has remained a candidate - even though Massachusetts Senator John Kerry has apparently sewed up the Democrat nomination - to set an example of where the party should be headed.
       “One of the reasons I'm staying in the race is to let the Democratic Party know it's time for the environment, time for health care, time to stand for something,” Kucinich declared, to rolling applause.
       He urged locals to support him in Colorado's Democrat caucuses (April 13). “You can help this party take a new direction,” he said, hinting strongly that failure to win the nomination this time will not end his presidential aspirations. “This is not about one election,” he said. “It's a movement toward a new America.”
       He took numerous questions from the audience. At one point, despite being late for an appearance in Denver, he let an older man with an evidently extensive union background orate for nearly 10 minutes - “We need a new FDR,” the man said at one point, to cheers - before Kucinich eventually shook his hand and called him an “oracle.”
        Asking himself the question of “How do we pay for universal health care?” he said that “nobody asked” how the federal budget could absorb tax cuts or the war in Iraq.
       Kucinich went on to say that considerable savings could be achieved in current health-care costs if profit considerations, including executive salaries, were obliterated.

Westside Pioneer article