Hi folks,

Thank you all so much for the great response to the roll-out of DFA 2.0 as some of you call it, otherwise known as Democracy for America. We have already raised 40k without asking, and some of our partners have kicked in a lot in the cause of corporate responsibility (SEIU) and working to get George Bush a one-way bus ticket to Crawford. (AFSCME).

The grassroots part of this, which encourages and helps local folks to run for office is the key piece of this, and the meetups in April will focus on this. We want to have Chapters of Democracy for America in every state, and work through you to support grassroots candidates who can win, or who can credibly spread the message of empowerment, and teach Americans that there is another set of values besides the right wing values of the Bush Republicans that we can offer, and that are better for out kids and out lives.

I don't want to give any of you a heart attack, but I plan to formally endorse John Kerry on Thursday, along with all 34 Congress people who endorsed me during the campaign.

One of the goals of the campaign was to send George Bush back to Texas, and the only person with a chance of doing that is John Kerry. I have spoken with him on numerous occasions. He is committed to universal health care, he has an excellent environmental record, and for that and many other reasons, he is a far better choice for president that the current resident of the White House who apparently (as revealed on Sixty Minutes over the weekend) ignored warnings of the potential of a terrorist attack before 9/11 in addition to costing us 2.3 million jobs!

I any case, I encourage you to support Sen. Kerry, but if you are not ready to do so, I hope you'll put lots of energy into the other two goals: reforming the Democratic Party to nurture it's recent backbone transplant, and making the grassroots stronger to get progressive voices on every school board, county commission, City Council, etc. in the country. Many thanks for all you do!!

Howard Dean

Posted by Howard Dean at 03:09 PM