The Democratic National Committee Winter Meetings, which will culminate in the election of Howard Dean to the DNC Chairmanship, convened today at the Washington Hilton Hotel. I was there.
After the mandatory (and richly undeserved) lauding of Terry McAuliffe's chairmanship, five principal speakers addressed the Convention: John Edwards, Nancy Pelosi, Bill Richardson, Harry Reid, and Detroit Mayor Doug Palmer. Excerpts from each of their speeches follow.
I was greatly impressed and concur completely with Kos' posting earlier today concerning the Party's cohesiveness. This is a Party which is not going to take four more years of Bushit lying down. It is also a Party whose leadership recognizes the contributions being made by the roots, both grass- and net-.
After McAuliffe's opening remarks, a buoyant and positive John Edwards took the stage. Thanking the assembled delegates for their concern over his wife, Elizabeth, during her ongoing bout with breast cancer, he said:
You know, we've been blessed because we have the support of you, friends and family, and we have the best health care in the world. And by the way, that's why we have to continue this fight, so that every single family in this country has the same kind of health care that we've been blessed with during this difficult time.
He then moved on to the meat of his speech:
George Bush likes to talk about an ownership society. Man, we've got an ownership society, don't we? You know, we've got CEOs flying around on their jets. We've got utility companies that get what they want no matter what it does to the health care of pregnant women and children. We've got oil companies writing the energy policy for this country. George Bush's ownership society is nothing but an exclusive club with the doors closed to the people who work hard for a living. . .
So, speaking for me, all those people who want to know what it is the Democrats are going to do now, here's what we're going to do: we're going to let the Republicans stand with their friends on Wall Street, with big HMOs, big oil companies, big insurance companies, Halliburton. I'll tell you who we're going to stand with: we're going to stand with the nurses, with the teachers, with the factory workers, with the tech workers.
Edwards worked the crowd, showing off his trademark smile:
Nancy Pelosi was next. It's always a pleasure to see her speak. Some highlights from her speech:
Tomorrow, we will elect a great Democrat as the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean. Governor Dean has used the power of technology, the force of his personality and the depth of his ideals to energize the grassroots and to bring more people into the political process.
Strange, since she and Harry Reid were doing just about everything in their power to try to find someone else to take the job...
It's clear Nancy and the rest of the leadership of the Party has been listening to George Lakoff. Take the following language, for instance:
To see the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, just look at the budget the President sent to Congress this week. Democrats believe that the budget should be a statement of our national values. But does the President's budget keep faith with the values Americans hold dear? [delegates: NO!] You be the judge.
Is it a statement of our American value of fairness to give tax breaks to people making more than $500,000 a year while drastically cutting children's health care? [delegates: NO!]
Is it a statement of our value of opportunity to give tax cuts to the wealthy few while underfunding Head Start, No Child Left Behind and student loans and grants? [delegates: NO!]
I didn't think so.
Is it a statement of our commitment to security to give those tax cuts while severely cutting funding for the community police and local firefighters who are vital to our homeland security? [NO!]
I didn't think so.
Is it a statement of our respect for those who serve in uniform to give tax cuts to the wealthy while restricting health care benefits for veterans? [NO!]
The President's budget is not only financially reckless; it is morally irresponsible. Instead of being a statement of our values, it is a blueprint for financial disaster. When President Clinton was president, we had three years of surpluses. Those surpluses allowed us to save Social Security first. President Clinton, under his leadership, we repaid nearly $400 billion back into the Social Security Trust Fund. By contrast, President Bush's reckless tax cuts for the wealthy have driven us deeply into debt, and his answer is to raid Social Security first.
Much discussion has been going on about how we strengthen Social Security; well, you can begin by paying back the money you took out of Social Security to give tax cuts.
Now, he wants to make matters even worse: he wants to privatize Social Security. The President knows that privatization isn't popular, however, but instead of changing his plan, he just changed the name: now, he's calling it personal accounts. He can soften the language, but that doesn't soften the blow to seniors, the disabled, widows and orphans. Democrats recognize that Social Security does face a challenge. We are prepared to meet that challenge with ideas that are entrepreneurial, innovative, and will indeed strengthen Social Security. But we will not let President Bush turn this proud legacy of the New Deal into a raw deal for millions of Americans. Democrats insist that any changes to Social Security must not add to the deficit, must be fair, and must not slash benefits.
Bill Richardson was next. In addition to recommending a grassroots Democratic Advisory Council to advise top Party leaders, he got off the following zinger:
I have a message from all of us from the states for the Republicans in charge here in Washington. You are not part of the solution. Right now, you are part of the problem. The administration is shifting the burden from the Federal Government to the states. Education, no child left behind unfunded; a Medicaid budget of a $40 billion cut. What do you say to an administration that is ravaging our land and water, and they talk about values? Here are the values of the Democratic Party. The values of the Democratic Party, and we are expanding that definition, is also good schools. It is also access to health care for every American. It is protecting our God-given right to clean land and water, protecting the environment.
Harry Reid spoke of the "grassroots revolution . . . sweeping the country" that Howard Dean represents. The best Bush-bashing of the morning was probably his:
People may live in red states, but that doesn't mean they want to put up with George Bush's red ink. It's Democrats who worked so hard to eliminate the deficits, and it's Republican policies that will continue to add trillions to the debt. In effect, a birth tax of $36,000 on every child that is born, and we need to carry that message all over America.
Now, President Bush wants to claim he's being fiscally responsible, but the budget President Bush submitted this week is as phony as a $3 bill. He claims it will cut our budget deficit in half, but that doesn't count the hundreds of billions of dollars he's asking us to pay for the war in Iraq. It doesn't count the $4.9 trillion he's asking us to pay for his Social Security plan, and it doesn't count the costs that he's asking us to pay for his tax cuts.
When this Bush budget gets placed in the Library of Congress, you know, it ought to be filed under fiction.
I wish I had more good photos from this morning, but unfortunately, the lighting wasn't good enough to get the podium from where I was sitting. All I can offer is this grainy photo of Al Sharpton:
All in all, I'm very excited: I think our Party is united behind Howard Dean, is coming to respect the netroots, and is poised to fight like hell and take advantage of the huge opportunities George W. Bush is presenting to us -- unfortunately, at the expense of greatly screwing up the country. But he's given us a target as big as the side of a barn, and, as Kos has been saying repeatedly, if we can't hit it, we don't deserve to win.