AHC: President Dennis Kucinich

This is an incredible challenge, but the idea is to get Dennis Kucinich as president anywhere between 2000-2008. The POD can be before that if necessary (for example, no disastrous mayoralty of Cleveland), but he still has to more or less have the same ideology and personality that he had IOTL.

Bonus points if it involves him winning outright, rather than being chosen as someone's VP and having them die in office. Bigger bonus points if he wins in 08 (though that might be ASB).
 
(1) He makes the same decision as mayor that it's better to (?) default on some bonds than reduce the pensions of city employees who are already retired and counting on them. I'm not sure all the facts, but Dennis matter-of-factly defends it pretty much like he did in OTL.

(2) Dennis gets elected considerably sooner than '97, and after a couple of terms in the House, he then gets elected to the Senate.

(3) and then as a seasoned legislator, Dennis runs for the presidency in 2000, which was a light year for Democrats. Was it really only Al Gore and Bill Bradley? I think it was. This time it's an exciting three-way race.

(4) Dennis wins the nomination and the presidency! Maybe one or two missteps by Bush, plus he runs a strong campaign. His mistakes become texture, whereas somehow Bush's do not.

But . . . Dennis is still out of the political mainstream.

Sadly, tragically, infuriatingly, September 11th still happens. Dennis responds differently than Bush, but with about the same amount of medium to medium-high effectiveness.

The mid-2000s go better under a Kucinich administration, in large part due to just plain good luck. And when Dennis gives his farewell address the evening of January 18, 2009, he's considered a reasonably successful president.
 
Bradley ran to Gore's left in the 2000 primaries. Why would a guy running even further to the left do any better than Bradley did IOTL?

I can't come up with a way for OTL's Kucinich to win in his own right.
 
some due to good luck, in my ATL Kucinich just flat out runs a better campaign.

And to make things more interesting, it's not just a single one-dimensional number line. There's the more complicated left and then there's the more functional left. For example, the method of medium step, feedback, medium step feedback, say in increasing the number of good jobs, is almost the undiscovered universe and it shouldn't be.

So, Kucinich gets elected. He realizes he's not quite in the mainstream, trims his sails a little, skillfully underplays his hand. And does a credible job as president.
 
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