Governor Howard Dean's Speech Announcing 'Democracy For America'San Francisco Edition, March 18, 2004
(statements by Dean supporters omitted here) (When he is introduced, the crowd gives Gov. Dean a rousing, prolonged welcome with loud cheers and applause. At one point they clap in unison and chant, "Dean! Dean! Dean! Dean!". The applause lasts for over a minute.)
Gov. Dean: Thank you. Thank you. (audience laughs, applauds, and drowns out some of the next lines:) Gov. Dean: ...a great turnout like this, maybe it's not too late to get back in-- (audience SCREAMS cheers and applause) (he says something which is drowned out by the still-cheering audience, someone yells:) Audience Member: Dr. Dean! Gov. Dean: You ("can"?) have fun in this business, 'cause you're ("creative"?). And you're all sure-- you're all sure gonna have a lot of fun. We're gonna-- we're not done with this, however. I want to thank all of you who did support the campaign. We did not win the nomination, but we changed the debate, and we're gonna take back America. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: You made the Democratic message much tougher, and you got our party ready to beat George Bush. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: And, more importantly, you have changed politics forever by showing that it's possible for ordinary Americans with small donations to build a movement that comes from nowhere, and that takes this country back, and that's what we're gonna do. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: The President and right-wing extremists are justifiably worried about the power of ordinary American citizens-- they're worried that we will propel a Democrat into the White House in 2004. They're worried that we will actually take the country back. Well... Gov. Dean And Audience Together: ...We Will! (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: Let me talk a little about how we're going to do this, and talk about what we're facing in 2004. Pretty clear to me that George W. Bush is a failed President. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: On George Bush's watch, this country has lost 2.3 million jobs, the first President since Herbert Hoover to have a net loss of jobs on his watch. Manufacturing jobs have gone overseas... (Some in audience hiss) Gov. Dean: ... on George Bush's watch. We had the possibility of making trade and globalization work, but he refuses to implement the labor standards, the human rights standards, and the environmental standards that are required for fair trade and jobs in America, as well as decent as decent human rights standards for workers abroad. (Audience interrupts Dean with applause) Gov. Dean: George Bush has opposed fair wages, he's opposed decent unemployment benefits, he has opposed decent overtime protections for ordinary Americans... (Audience hisses) Gov. Dean: Today the minimum wage is 30% lower than it was when Richard Nixon was President... (Audience hisses louder and some boos) Gov. Dean: A ("single mother"?) working full time for minimum wage gets $11,000 a year, $4,000 below the poverty line. We can do better in this country... Gov. Dean and Audience together: ... And We Will. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: But George Bush doesn't think it's his job to worry about moderate-income people or low- income people working for minimum wages, he thinks it's his job to worry about the CEOs of the biggest companies in the world, making on average 531 times what an ordinary worker makes in this country. We can do better than that, and... Gov. Dean and Audience together: ... We Will. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: How about George Bush's tax policy? (Audience boos loudly and hisses) Gov. Dean: George Bush-- his policy has represented an enormous transfer of wealth, our taxpayer dollars, taken from middle class people, and given them to the wealthiest Americans, and the largest corporations in the world. He has also created the biggest deficits in the history of the United States of America. That is money that our kids are going to have to pay back. We can do better... Gov. Dean and Audience together: ... And We Will. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: The men who run the Enron-style economy are not conservatives. What they are is reckless right-wingers who know nothing about managing money, and don't care about managing ours. They're taking it, and giving it to pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies. We - Can... Gov. Dean and Audience together: ... - Do - Better - And - We - Will! (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: We can create new jobs in this country by-- not by piling up new debt. People don't invest in countries where the balance sheet looks like it did in Argentina four years ago. People don't invest in countries where they know the value of the dollar's gonna come down and interest rates are going to go up because deficits have reached half a trillion dollars a year. Let's be clear. The Bush tax cuts didn't have any effect on average Americans except to drive up their property taxes, and drive up their health insurance premiums, and drive up their college tuitions. 60% of Americans got $304 on average. The people who got-- make a million dollars a year got an average of $113,000 a year in tax cuts. (Hisses, boos, and disbelieving noises from the audience) Gov. Dean: But the President never mentions that over the next 6 years, the typical American family is going to accumulate $52,000 in additional debt. He never mentions that property taxes have gone up by hundreds and thousands of dollars because he's cut education, fire, police, and homeland security. State budgets-- and lord knows you know this in California-- are strained, local school systems are strained, college tuitions-- higher. The President cut half a million children off health insurance, and a million adults. No wonder our healthcare premiums are going up. We can do better! Gov. Dean and Audience together: And We Will!! (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: 43 million people in this country have no health insurance, the last industrialized country on the face of the earth-- and I can't resist doing this one more time-- (Audience laughs and then cheers, applauds and whoops) Gov. Dean: It seems to me that we ought to be able to join the British ... (Audience joins in!) Gov. Dean and Audience together: ... the French, the Germans, the Japanese, the Irish, the Italians, the Danes, the Dutch, the Greeks, the Israelis, the Canadians, the Swedes, the Norwegians... All Together In Unison Loudly: EVEN COSTA RICA! (Audience cheers and applauds loud and long) Gov. Dean: And when we send George W. Bush back to Crawford, Texas, we'll have a President who understands ordinary Americans, and will join all those other countries that have health insurance for every single one of their citizens, and we'll have health insurance for every American here, as well, and join the rest of the world. We can do better, and... Gov. Dean and Audience together: We Will. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: We now know, and school boards know, and governors know, and taxpayers know, and members of Congress know, that President Bush's 'No Child Left Behind' bill left every child left behind. It left every teacher behind, it left every property tax payer behind. The Secretary of Education said that (the) leading teachers' organization was a "terrorist organization". (Audience boos and hisses) Gov. Dean: Let me tell you that the people who are anti-public education in this country are in Washington. The Secretary of Education presided over a school system in Houston that falsified their dropout rate, falsified their college aspiration rate, falsified their school violence rate- send them back to Texas! We can do better, and-- Gov. Dean and Audience together: we will! (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: Under this President, whose Chairman of the Federal Reserve advocated cutting Social Security benefits so we could extend the tax cuts and the largest deficit in the history of-- (Audience boos loudly and hisses) Gov. Dean: ...in the history of America. Under this President the levels of personal debt have risen so high that more women declared bankruptcy in America last year than graduated from college. We can do better-- Gov. Dean and Audience together: --And we will! (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: When George Bush was running for President of the United States in the year 2000, he promised that his model judges would be people like Antonin Scalia-- (Audience boos and hisses) Gov. Dean: --who apparently likes duck shooting with Dick Cheney... (Audience laughs) Gov. Dean: ... and Clarence Thomas. Unfortunately, that is the only promise that he managed to keep. (Audience laughs) Gov. Dean: (The) President has turned his back on the alliances that have helped protect our security abroad for sixty years. He launched a unilateral, preemptive Iraqi war, whose mission-- stability in that area and greater security for America-- remains unaccomplished. In the process he's misled our citizens about the facts, something that many Americans will not forgive. The credibility-- the biggest issue in this campaign is rapidly becoming, not jobs and not even the war in Iraq. The biggest issue in this campaign is rapidly becoming the credibility and the believability of the President of the United States. (Audience cheers and applauds loudly) Gov. Dean: The President said Iraq was importing uranium from Africa. That was not true. Audience member: He lied! Gov. Dean: The Vice President said they were about to acquire nuclear weapons. That... Gov. Dean and Audience together: ... was not true. Gov. Dean: The Secretary of Defense said he knew just where the weapons were, near Tikrit and Baghdad. Gov. Dean and Audience together: That was not true. Gov. Dean: Too many other people in this administration have now admitted that the evidence that they gave us was - ... Gov. Dean and Audience together: ...- not - true. Gov. Dean: The President said we were all safer, now that Saddam was in jail. (Some hisses from Audience) Gov. Dean: I think 200 Spaniards and 566 American-- brave American soldiers-- Audience member: Yes! Yes! (members of Audience start clapping) Gov. Dean: ... will tell you the opposite. (Audience cheers and applauds loudly) Gov. Dean: The President claimed there was a tie between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. Now it appears that that was not true. The President of the United States and his administration deliberately concealed the cost of the Medicare prescription benefit program, which is an enormous taxpayer bailout for HMOs, insurance companies, and drug companies... deliberately concealed that from Congress. I think the pre-- the people of this country want a President who's gonna tell the truth and we're gonna change Presidents in November ("this year"? drowned out by:) (Audience cheers and applauds loudly) Members of Audience: Impeach! Impeach! Impeach! Impeach! Gov. Dean (over audience): The first-- Gov. Dean: --the first round of the Bush television ads was widely condemned for exploiting people who had died and lost their families in 9-11, in addition to exploiting firefighters who had no intention of supporting the President. What was troubling in these ads, and it was even more troubling as far as I'm concerned, is that he sought to blame the previous administration for a weak economy, over three years into his administration. You can tell a President's failed to lead, because when you blame your predecessor for the fact that you have failed to do anything about jobs in nearly a four-year term, that is not leadership, that is running from your record, and this President is running from his record. (Audience cheers and applauds loudly) Gov. Dean: Now how are we going to take this agenda off, this right-wing agenda? The first thing (that) we're going to make sure that the Democrats do not do any more, is you do not meet this agenda halfway. There will be no compromise with the right-wing (last couple of words drowned out by:) (Audience cheers and applauds loudly) Gov. Dean: Let me tell you how I think we can win. In order to beat George Bush, we've got to stand up for our principles, and not paper over our differences with the most radical administration in our lifetime. In order to win, we have to aggressively expose the ways in which this President's policies have benefitted the most privileged, and excluded everybody else. To win, we have to confidently advance a policy agenda rooted in hope and real American values: opportunity, integrity, and community. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: The first step in changing this country is to send this President back to his beloved ranch in Crawford, Texas. (Audience laughs, then applauds) Gov. Dean: The nominee of this party is gonna be John Kerry. And I will do everything I can to make sure that John Kerry succeeds in sending George Bush back to Crawford, Texas. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: But - that - is - not - enough! (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: Changing Presidents is not enough! We are going to fundamentally change the Democratic Party-- (Audience interrupts, cheering and applauding loudly) Gov. Dean: We are-- we are gonna bring people together at the grassroots level, just like you have come today; make sure that that connection that we established during our campaign is all over America so that the people in San Francisco are connected with the people in Georgia and Pennsylvania and Michigan, so that we can take back this party and then take back this country for ordinary Americans. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: So here's what I propose. Out of 'Dean for America' we will create a new enterprise, 'Democracy for America'... (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: We-- just some of the mechanics-- the same people who did our Web work for DFA have started their own company-- ten of them, and they're going to do our Web work for DFA Two. (Audience cheers and applauds briefly) Gov. Dean: This is an amazing story-- I mean this is amazing-- the power-- your power is extraordinary. Nicco "Melee" (sp??), who's the webmaster, who some of you know something about, who are really into the tech stuff and (several words drowned out by audience applause)... who put up the website at 2 o'clock this morning, he sent us a small contribution to make sure the credit card worked. Five minutes later our first real contribution came in. This is two o'clock in the morning... (Audience laughs and claps briefly) Gov. Dean: Without-- we-- we are trying not to email people and ask for money. We've done a lot of that... we've got-- we've taken in $15,000. (Audience cheers and applauds loudly) Gov. Dean: We are gonna be-- Democracy for America will be committed to the same core principles that the campaign was. First: We're committed to promoting strong, grassroots involvement in campaigns and democracy, with ordinary citizens, not just as donors, but as candidates, as organizers, as active participants. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: Half of Americans today don't bother to vote. They see what the problems are, but they're cynical about the ability of the system to make any changes. Only through doing, will people recognize the power that they have to change this country. For some of you, that will mean running for office-- for school board, city council, state legislature, maybe even the United States Congress. Others, we want you to participate as grassroots partners, supporting these candidates, taking leadership roles, and organizing. I happened to be on a conference call with a lot of organizers the other day. Evidently in Pasadena, the entire Democratic Party has been taken over by Dean for America (a couple of words drowned out by:) (Audience cheers and applauds loudly) Gov. Dean: Secondly: We're committed to promoting an America where candidates and officeholders tell - the - truth about policy (remaining words drowned out by:) (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: The era when candidates and officeholders mislead us about fundamental matters, like jobs, and war and peace, is over. We can do better, Gov. Dean and Audience together: And We Will. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov Dean: Third: We are absolutely committed to fighting the influence and agenda of the two pillars of George Bush's administration: one, the far right wing and their radical, divisive and extremist views; and two, selfish corporate special interests. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: Fourth: We are committed to fighting for a progressive political agenda. We will fight for health care for every single American, just like that in all other countries. We will fight for a real investment in early childhood so we can stop sending people to prison, and start sending them to college. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: We-- (laughs) not hard for me to say this in San Francisco-- we will fight for equal rights for every single American! (Audience howls and cheers and applauds loudly) Gov. Dean: And, we will fight for fiscal responsibility so that we can have social justice and decent social programs-- not just in good times, when there's money, but also in difficult times. Republicans not only don't care about 96% of ordinary Americans, they - do - not - know how to manage money anymore. You can't have social justice unless we get balanced budgets. We need jobs, we need social programs, we need health care, and we need health insurance. We can do better, and... Gov. Dean and Audience together: We Will. (Audience cheers and applauds) Audience: (claps in time to:) Dean! Dean! Dean! Dean! Dean! Dean! Dean! Gov. Dean: Finally, we will promote a national security policy that makes America stronger by working with other allies, and advancing progressive social values around the world. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: We'll begin by taking back the White House. Our new enterprise will help in every way possible. We'll focus on key battleground states, mobilizing our national network of supporters, and groundbreaking organizing tools we developed during the rest-- during the previous campaign. We will support candidates across America who stand for our principles. That begins with the members of Congress who had the courage and vision to stand with us during our race for the White House when no one else would. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: But we will continue to support other incumbents and challengers in tough races in regions across the country. We will help give some financial support through a political action committee. I'll travel to speak on behalf of candidates. We'll put our grassroots network to support-- to work supporting these folks because it's not enough to send George Bush back to Crawford, Texas. Tom Delay is soon to follow! (Audience cheers and applauds loudly) Audience: (claps in time to:) Dean! Dean! Dean! Dean! Dean! Dean! Dean! Gov. Dean: We will encourage members of our grassroots network, as I said, to run for office, and offer them tools to achieve this. We want to change the conditions in America so that people no longer think that running for office is the sole province of those who are well-connected, and who have lots of personal money. If there's any lesson to be learned from our campaign, that the-- maybe the way to do campaign finance is not to wait for those folks inside the Beltway in Washington to do it; simply do what we did-- raise $50 million from ordinary Americans in five and ten and 1500 dollar increments. We can teach other people to do that. We don't have to be afraid of the special interests any more, because our special interest is going to be the American people. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: My Dean For America-- Democracy For America will maintain interactive websites where supporters can plug in, join the discussion and get involved. I don't want to oversell this. We had 600 people working for us; we're gonna have eight now. 'Cause we-- I mean our intention is to raise about $3 million so that we can help other candidates, and that does not include having a big bureaucracy in Burlington. It's a very small bureaucracy in Burlington. (Audience laughs) Gov. Dean: Well, we're going to have a lot of the same talent working for us on contract, that put together Dean for America, doing some of the same things. We've gotta keep ourselves connected, not just community-by-community, but nationally. I was up in Seattle, somebody handed me a newsletter that they are putting out in the Seattle community. That kind of newsletter ought to be all over the country. We can do these things, but we've gotta do it by keeping in touch with each other and supporting each other in difficult times. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: Over the last three weeks I've been into a lot of meetings with other organizations, and so have a lot of our staff folks, and we've discovered that a lot of people are doing the kinds of things that we want to do. We are not going to raise money and compete with those groups. We're going to work with them. So we're going to have partnerships. First partnership I'm going to announce, is the partnership with the Service Employees International Union, for corporate responsibility... (rest of his sentence drowned out by:) (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: And the second partnership I'm going to announce, is a partnership with a group called 21st Century Democrats, which is very active in government... (portion drowned out by applause)... recruit and train candidates. That's what we do, we're going to work together to widen that net and raise money for each other, so that we can do more and more of that. The third group we're going to work with is the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, to stand up (pauses, interrupted by applause) for organizing, but also to put out the message that this is not the year to vote for independents or third parties. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: I have a lot of experience in Burling-- in Vermont running with third parties. And, I know that Ralph Nader has done a great deal for this country, he really has. He has a long legacy of doing (pauses, interrupted by applause) ... But the effect of a reelection of George W. Bush would be to undo his 40-year career fighting for consumers and the environment. We cannot let that happen. We've gotta... (rest drowned out by:) (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: One project I really want to pick up for the Dean for America campaign is something called "Dean Corps". (Applause) Those of you who were in Iowa know all about this We have discovered, that while it's true that young people don't vote a lot in national elections, they also serve their community at a higher percentage than any other age group in the country. They do things for the environment-- we put together this group of kids in Iowa-- they would go down with their Dean shirts on, and instead of campaigning and handing out literature and making phone calls, they'd go out and clean out the nearest stream, from the tires and the cars and stuff like that. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: They would raise money for teachers' supplies, so they wouldn't have to help their low- income kids in the low-income schools out of their own pockets. Teachers wouldn't have to do that. They would go and collect food supplies for food shelters. Kids get that the connection with community is everything. The biggest loss that we've suffered under George W. Bush is not our jobs, and our money, and even our lives in Iraq. The biggest loss that we've suffered is the destruction of the American community because he does not understand Americans. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: One of the extraordinary things that happened in our campaign is we built an enormous community of 700,000 people around this country. People still can't figure out the Internet. They think it's a great way to raise money, and I can tell them right now, if you don't have anything to say, nobody's going to send you anything. (Audience laughs, then cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: What they don't understand is that the Internet is a community. It's a community of people who don't happen to be collocated in a geographic location. We need to keep that community going, 'cause that community is the essential tool in giving people back hope. So many of those uninformed folks in the media wrote about the anger in this campaign-- (Audience laughs) Gov. Dean: --this is a campaign about hope. It's about giving ordinary people power to (drowned out by:) (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: But it is also about overcoming adversity. One of the thing-- one of the-- there's not a lot of nice things about being 55, (Audience laughs) as opposed to 18, but one of the things that-- my father always used to tell me, is when you're older, you have the advantage you can look backwards as well as forwards. And I think a lot of the younger folks in this campaign, who worked their hearts out, need a little wisdom from those of us who have a little different color hair... (Audience laughs)... and that is, that change is fun, and it's hard work, but it also requires perseverance, every single day, every single month, every single year. We are gonna succeed. We are gonna change this country. But... (Audience applauds) Gov. Dean: ...in order to do so, we're going to have to understand that there will be setbacks. I was never discouraged when I was running for President. Even though we lost a lot of primaries, I was never discouraged. The reason I was never discouraged is because I knew we would come back every single time. And here we are, a ("month"?) back from Wisconsin, to back here! (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: America has always been-- this is the political cliche, the only one I can think of that I like, that it has always been the beacon of hope for the rest of the world. And the reason for that, (is) because Americans are less cynical than anyone else on the face of the earth. One of the most extraordinary things that I discovered-- people always ask me, 'what'ja learn from this campaign'-- I learned a lot of things. And one of the best things I learned, is how fantastic the American people are. And, the other thing I learned is that American people come in every shape, size, color, ethnicity, religious group, and 95% have a shared agenda. You can-- people say, 'well what are you going to do for this group, or what are you going to do for that group?' You know what? Education, health care, hope for their children, jobs (Audience applauds during the next few words) ...a sense of community, respect in the world again, the United States (being?) the moral leader in the world again... (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: ...Equal rights under the law so they stop hassling people at the airports 'cause they come from Southeast Asia... (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: People want-- people just want a fundamentally fair country because the American people are fundamentally fair people. But we do not have an administration that's as good as the American people, and we can do better, and... Gov. Dean and Audience together: We Will. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: So we will prevail. It will take time. We can never let up. We can't do it all at once. I'm not the nominee of this party. But having a Democrat, having John Kerry is far preferable to what we have, and I'm cheerfully going to work for his election, I ask you to do it too, and I'm cheerfully-- (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: Because ("if your"?) agenda is health insurance for all Americans, if it is fundamental fairness, if it is decent public schools, if it is regaining and retaining the moral leadership of the world, then the first step is to send George Bush back to Crawford, Texas. (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean: So, go to the website, this one's easier to remember, democracyforamerica.com, we're not going to ask you to-- for money, we promise... (Audience laughs) Audience members: We'll give it to you anyway! Gov. Dean: But, if you give it to us, there's only 8 staff members, it'll be well spent on the ("stuff"?)
and support outside the headquarters in Burlington. Audience member simultaneously: -- of the people! Gov. Dean: ... we are gonna win. We are gonna win in 2004, not just by changing Presidents, but by changing America. Thank you so much for all you do! (Audience cheers and applauds) Gov. Dean (through audience cheers and applause): Thank you so much for all you did for me! As Thomas Fowler(?) says, 'keep the faith'! Sí se puede! Sí se puede! Gov. Dean and Audience together: Sí se puede! Sí se puede! Sí se puede! Gov. Dean: Yes we can! We can do better! And - Gov. Dean and Audience together: We - Will! Gov. Dean: Thank you very much! (Audience cheers and applauds) |
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