Two of the fiercest liberals in Congress, Dennis Kucinich and Marcy Kaptur, are about to engage in one of the biggest political oophagies in recent memory.
What’s an oophagy? That’s the process wherein embryos within a mother’s uterus – let’s say a shark – all fight and eventually consume one another in a battle to see who will actually be born and who will die a horrible death never escaping the womb. Oophagies are pretty rare in nature, occurring mostly in vicious predators like sharks, some small larvae … and, yes, politicians.
Right now the state of Ohio is witness to one of the most disturbing examples of political cannibalism that we have seen in years and it’s disappointing because while both political embryos deserve to live, only one of them is going to survive.
Thanks to the highly controversial, likely unconstitutional and even politically short-sighted actions of the state Republican House and Senate all of the voting districts in the state of Ohio have been re-written in a way to all but guarantee Republicans stay in safe seats.
This is actually pretty poor form for the newly Republican state legislature because the usual political process is to use re-districting to protect long standing incumbents of either party and let the young kids and newly elected fight it out in the arena. However, in John Kasich’s Ohio the GOP district planners decided to combine two key districts, forcing two long serving Democratic liberals, Marcy Kaptur of Toledo and nationally known liberal gadfly Dennis Kucinich of Cleveland’s West Side into a political oophagy where only one will survive.
Kaptur has been representing the stretch of land between Cleveland and Detroit since 1983 and her liberal credentials and work ethic are pretty much without reproach. Along the same lines Kucinich has a long and successful career in Northeast Ohio that has liberals across the nation clamoring for his re-election.
Kucinich was once dubbed the “Boy Mayor” for ousting a Republican incumbent in 1977 to become mayor of Cleveland at only 31 years of age. Later in life he entered Congress in 1996 and has run for president in both 2004 and 2008. Now both of these candidates and their constituents face an uncertain future as these two left wing predators tear each other apart to see who gets to represent an incredibly safe democratic District for the next few decades. Kaptur has already accused Kucinich of coordinating his campaign with a Super PAC out of Texas that has run ads on his behalf, while he has accused her of not paying taxes and supporting Bush’s wars. Neither of these charges really hold much water, but the fact that they are being lobbed says a lot about how serious these contenders are.
No party is strong enough to stop two competitors from devouring each other if that’s what it takes to win.
On next Tuesday’s primary we’ll see who eventually survives this battle. As of right now, polls suggest the race is pretty close. Unlike Kaptur however, Kucinich has another plan if he loses. There has been a drive to get him to run for Congress out of liberal Washington State and his campaign has not entirely squelched rumors that he would enter that race if things don’t go well for him in Ohio. Can an Ohio Congressman be born again in Washington State? Unlike oophagies in nature, our political cannibalism has been known to give people second chances, so we’ll wait and see after next Tuesday.
This article originally appeared online at Politic365.com.