A reason to vote Democratic?
From Howard Dean’s blog
“Governor Dean electrified the AFL-CIO forum tonight — he received the largest and most enthusiastic response, showing a deep command of the issues and powerful grassroots support within labor. Here is his closing statement:
“The real question here tonight is which one of us can beat George Bush. Here’s is how I plan to do it.
I opposed the war in Iraq, not because I am a pacifist, but because I didn’t think the evidence was there.
I opposed No Child Left Behind because it was an unfunded mandate that doesn’t help kids and it leaves more of them behind.
I opposed the tax cuts because I want a balanced budget and investment in America so we can have jobs in this country again.
You can’t beat President Bush by trying to be like him, we tried that in 2002 and it didn’t work. The way to beat this President is to stand up and be proud to be Democrats.
Look to what Harry Truman put in the 1948 Democratic Party platform: Health insurance for everybody. We need to stand up for ourselves again and take on the President directly.
We’re going to stand up and be proud to be Democrats. We’ve got the numbers, and this time, the person who gets the most votes is going to win the White House.”
Hey, Dean is sounding like LBJ! Given the craven calculating type of Democrats we’ve seen way too much of lately, this is a welcome change. But, you ask, if elected, will he turn out to be just another Bill Clinton-type weasel? Maybe. But I doubt we’d worry much about him starting wars because he thought Jesus told him to.
He’s got some serious momentum too. Dean MeetUp, an online way to organize meetings, had 69,000 Dean supporters signed up as of Sunday. Tonight, when I checked, it was up to 77,000.
“Something’s happening here / What it is ain’t exactly clear”…