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	Five notable Kucinichian moments September 27, 2003. Kucinich appears at the Oakland Box Theater, in Oakland, California, to court the hip-hop vote. Attendees are impressed. The Reverend Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, a St. Louis minister serving as Kucinich’s national director of community outreach, later claims he heard one audience member say of the candidate, "Yo, I love this fool." G-Stack, a member of the Delinquents, tells Kucinich, "Dog, I hope you become president, and I am votin’ for you." December 11, 2003. Kucinich, who has been divorced twice, describes his ideal woman during a November 2003 debate and jokingly suggests that FOX TV turn his search for a mate into a reality show. ("I certainly want a dynamic, outspoken women who is fearless in her desire for peace in the world and for universal single-payer health care and a full-employment economy. If you are out there, call me.") The Web sites PoliticsNH.com and LiberalHearts.com subsequently sponsor "Who Wants To Be a First Lady?", a contest in which single women compete for a chance to dine with the congressman. About 80 women vie for this honor. On December 5, after a debate between two finalists and a subsequent vote that draws 20,000 responses, Gina Marie Santore, a 34-year-old sheriff’s assistant from Maple Shade, New Jersey, is named the winner. On December 11, Santore is flown to Concord, New Hampshire, where she and Kucinich share a breakfast of oatmeal in a hotel restaurant. "She represents American women who are deeply concerned with politics," an impressed Kucinich says afterward. "She’s so smart ... she’s so knowledgeable." January 19, 2004. In the Iowa caucuses, Kucinich finishes fifth with one percent of the vote. John Kerry, John Edwards, Howard Dean, and Dick Gephardt top him with 38, 32, 18, and 11 percent, respectively, but Kucinich beats Wesley Clark and Joe Lieberman (neither of whom campaigned in Iowa), as well as Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton. On caucus day, however, Kucinich predicts that no candidate will secure the nomination before July’s Democratic National Convention, telling the Associated Press that, come the end of July, he’ll emerge as the party’s nominee. "It is inevitable, really," Kucinich says. Eight days later, in the New Hampshire primary, Kucinich finishes sixth. February 12, 2004. Kucinich visits The Tonight Show and participates in a send-up of The Dating Game, featuring actresses Cybill Shepherd and Jennifer Tilly and KABC radio talk-show host Kim Serafin. When Kucinich picks Tilly — who had asked him, coyly, "How’s your hanging chad?" — a disappointed Shepherd attempts to make out with him, then lifts her skirt to show the congressman her pink underwear. Afterward, Tilly and Kucinich dine at a Los Angeles raw-foods restaurant. June 13, 2004. An acrylic-and-oil portrait of Kucinich, painted in 1985 by artist Greg Spalenka for a Cleveland Plain Dealer Magazine cover story, fetches $1775 on eBay; proceeds go to the Kucinich for President campaign. Spalenka offers this description of the painting’s genesis: "Dennis stopped by my studio in New York City at the time, where we talked, and looked at some of the illustrations I was creating for publications around the country. He had the demeanor of a politician and the heart of a caring spirit. So when it came to the concept of how to represent Dennis in a portrait, I positioned him in a thoughtful pose to symbolize his visionary progressive outlook." — AR

But neither Sabato nor Sifry takes into account Kucinich’s zealous faith in the power of positive thinking. For Kucinich — who surmounted occasional homelessness as a child to become mayor of Cleveland at the age of 31 — conceptual frameworks rather than practical considerations dictate what can and can’t happen. The congressman cites the Romantic poets as major personal influences. He keeps an anthology of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s work — open to Prometheus Unbound — on the desk of his Capitol Hill office, and often closes stump speeches with a line from Tennyson’s "Ulysses": "Come, my friends,/ ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world." In addition, Kucinich is close to Marianne Williamson, a prolific New Age author whose organization, the Global Renaissance Alliance, advocates the creation of a Department of Peace. (The Global Renaissance Alliance also champions the use of "peace circles," in which participants use prayer, silent meditation, and visualization exercises to create a "grid of mystical power that will shield the world from its own insanity, and move through the fear to the love." The group’s former peace-circles coordinator served as California coordinator for the Kucinich campaign and later as an assistant to Kucinich’s national-campaign manager.)

These views haven’t hurt Kucinich in his congressional district, which includes Cleveland’s liberal West Side: in 2002, he was re-elected with 74 percent of the vote, and tallied 85 percent in this spring’s Democratic congressional primary. But for most of the nation’s voters, this New Age tinge made it easy to dismiss him as a marginal eccentric. Yet Kucinich insists he never finds it frustrating or disheartening to advocate views that don’t jibe with the cultural mainstream. "You just have to keep your heart open," he says. "And as long as you do that, anything can happen. Success always comes to those who have the ability to envision different ways of looking at things." Before Kerry gained a mathematical lock on the nomination, Kucinich’s continued optimism had a neat and unassailable internal logic: he could still become president for the simple reason that he still believed it was possible.

ALTHOUGH KUCINICH admits he won’t be the Democratic nominee, he now insists that he can become the Democratic Party’s ideological architect — an equally quixotic ambition. How, exactly, does he intend to do this? Partly through a Web-based petition drive aimed at shaping the Democratic platform to suit his priorities: immediate transfer of US military authority in Iraq to UN forces; universal health care; withdrawal from NAFTA and the World Trade Organization; repeal of the Patriot Act; creation of a US Department of Peace; and comprehensive affirmation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights. (Kucinich, who spoke at last weekend’s Boston Gay Pride celebration, has been a consistently vocal supporter of full-marriage rights for gays and lesbians.) His campaign is also planning daily workshops on progressive issues during the July national convention, as well as evening "street actions" and an anti-war candlelight vigil on the closing night of the proceedings. Asked how observers will be able to gauge whether he succeeds, Kucinich answers — true to form — in doubt-free terms: "When the delegates are canvassed, and it’s declared that they stand for getting out of Iraq. For ending the Patriot Act. For health care for all Americans. For fair trade."

Yet again, the jaded might say that Kucinich is milking his Warholian 15 minutes a bit too long. His chances of shaping the party’s platform aren’t much better than his chances of being elected president were. The vast majority of delegates at the FleetCenter will have one priority — helping John Kerry beat George W. Bush — and while some of Kucinich’s positions may exercise considerable appeal, it’s a safe bet that this year’s Democratic platform will be the one Kerry’s camp deems most likely to serve that goal. If Kucinich had more delegates, something unexpected and dramatic might happen. But even some Kucinich boosters concede their candidate probably lacks the leverage to have much effect. "I hope he raises a fuss, because after all, he represents a very large part of the Democratic Party, which is not represented by John Kerry," says Howard Zinn, who belongs to a long list of prominent left-leaning Kucinich endorsers. "But how he can actually make that representation practical and meaningful at the convention.... Can he have an effect on the platform? I don’t know. These conventions are controlled by the dominant force in the party, and Kerry is the dominant force."

Of course, Kucinich himself is more sanguine. As he sees it, a Kucinich-engineered makeover of the Democratic Party is not only possible, but has the potential to spur a revolution in American government. "If our party took a clear and strong stand to support universal, single-payer, not-for-profit health care, I think you’d have people lining up on Election Day to vote Democrat," he says. "It’s both pragmatic and principled to do that. The question is, will we? I think the Democrats are ready for a real shift. And I think a Democratic sweep" — taking control of the House, the Senate, and the White House — "could be generated out of this convention if it’s done right. It’s the message that I have been carrying, right from the beginning, that may prove to be the winning combination for the Democrats."