"How hard is it to say, `It's against the law' and `He's lying.'"
Elizabeth Edwards, in a speech in North Carolina, Jan. 24, 2006
Last night, in the charming setting of North Carolina's Fearrington Village known as "The Barn," I heard Elizabeth Edwards give a barn-burner of a speech.
She was scathingly critical of the current administration and its policies, as you might expect in front of this friendly crowd of local Dems. But she also pulled no punches in being critical of Democrats whiffing the ball, over & over again, in our responses. She was relaxed, warm & witty, and offered some wonderful insights and anecdotes on the state of politics today.
The Scene
Fearrington Village is a lovely planned community just south of Chapel Hill. It's home to about 1,800 residents, a large number of whom are retirees. I arrived about a half hour ahead of the event, and the large meeting hall called "The Barn" was already nearly full to capacity. The room is beautiful, decorated in rustic tree branches with tiny white lights and white bunting draped everywhere. I had some time to relax and look around--- the crowd seemed to be mostly senior citizens, mostly white, and they seem surprised at this large turnout for what is their usual monthly meeting of the Fearrington Democrats Club.
The Barn at Fearrington Village
I settle in with my laptop and immediately get pleasant, curious questions from the folks around me. I'm about the youngest person in the room, as far as I can see, and the only one who seems to have brought a camera and a computer. "Are you a reporter?" the silver-haired lady next to me wants to know. I laugh and say, no, I'm a soccer mom from nearby Cary, but I'm going to write up the event tonight for a blog called Daily Kos and its spin-off, Street Prophets. She nods her head knowingly, although admits she has not yet ventured into blogland. I dig out a piece of paper and write down the URLs for her, and she promises to check it out, even if only to see what I do with the notes I'm taking.
The chairman of the Fearington Democrats Club comes up for some brief announcements. He mentions that although the stage behind him is set up with musical instruments, it's not for a "hot & heavy Dem rally and party," which gets a big laugh, but for an upcoming musical show planned at Farrington Village. He introduces some of the local dignitaries and local Dem candidates who are present, and Mrs. Edwards arrives, as on cue, to warm applause.
She has a gracious smile and seems comfortable and relaxed. She's wearing a bright pink jacket over a trim black dress with a long necklace of multiple strands of seed pearls, and her hair is worn in a silvery short bob. She laughs as the chairman introduces her by remarking that they will soon be neighbors, as the Edwards are building a new home over in Orange County.
The chairman goes on to remind the crowd that eight short years ago, a young man also spoke at the Fearrington Democrats Club monthly meeting--a man who also carried the name of "Edwards" and who wowed the crowd and went on to become a national senator, and later, vice presidential candidate. The chairman announces that they've one-upped that young man tonight, though, by having Elizabeth Edwards here to speak this evening.
The Speech
Mrs. Edwards takes the microphone then, and offers words of thanks and some brief allusions to her recent battle with breast cancer, mentioning that she's spent lots of time at home these past few months, resting and watching lots of TV---and laughs that she mostly sticks to home & gardening channels to keep her blood pressure low.
Remarking that not every speech she gives is to such a supportive crowd, she announces that she will take advantage of being among friends--- and rant! This earns her appreciative applause & cheers from the audience.
She starts off by telling a story from early on in the campaign trail. Shortly after John Edwards was tapped for the vice presidential spot on the ticket, there was an event at Radio City Music Hall where all the candidates and their families were going to be invited to go up on stage and join in singing This Land is Your Land.
She and her daughter Cate figured this was their first and maybe last chance to perform at Radio City Music Hall, and they were determined to make it good, especially amid all the other stars & celebrities who would be there. So Elizabeth & Cate went back to their hotel room and huddled together, bent on memorizing all the verses of the Woody Guthrie classic song in that one evening.
The next day they were feeling smug, and mentioned that they had learned every line, while many of the other celebrities, looking at them a little strangely, admitted they didn't know the song. Wow, she and Cate thought, taking the stage, we're going to look so good-- when suddenly this bright white screen appears in the back of the auditorium and they realize, of course, that the words would be right there, on the teleprompter.
But although this early campaign event helped her become more savvy about performances and stages and celebrities, she said she didn't consider the effort a waste of time, because learning all the verses to This Land is Your Land turned out to be a real gift, and she recited for us her favorite verse out of the song:
As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tresspassin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!
And she used that reference to segue into her criticism of the Bush administration.
She said George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have been looking at that same "sign," only for them, the sign with rules and laws--about warrants and wiretapping--was not made for him & Cheney.
She went on to say that as frustrated she was at this administration's posturing, deflecting, and story-changing, she was just as frustrated about the Dems inability to stand up together.
"How hard is it," she said, "to say, `It's against the law!' and "He's lying."
She went on to list out several of this administration's lies--George Bush was lying, Dick Cheney was lying, Karl Rove was lying.
The audience burst out in applause.
She said, yes, these are ugly words, but they are the right words for this administration.
The view from inside The Barn.
She urged Democrats to stop watering down our message. We need to say things to the American people in a clear way--that the current Republicans have created a "culture of corruption."
We need to say to the American people that your votes and your needs don't count--because your politicians are for sale. The symbiosis that used to happen between the American people & their leaders is now happening between politicians and their lobbyists.
Mrs. Edwards is speeding up now, talking faster and more energetically as she goes on to list out many of the current outrages, Tom Delay, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, the K-Street project, and more.
The crowd is nodding energetically in agreement, as she goes on to smack down Homeland Security--it was supposed to be up to the job of protecting us- this is what voters were promised, but it was being led by "a horseshow official who had to be told to roll up his sleeves to look busy."
And instead of answers, we get excuses: "no one could have anticipated the levees breaking," echoing eerily like Condi Rice saying the White House didn't anticipate high-jacked planes being flown into buildings."
Our Dept of Defense is busy spying on protesters handing out peanut butter & jelly sandwiches outside Halliburton headquarters, but it's not protecting our ports, our chemical plants, or our nuclear plants.
This administration finds time to spy on peaceful protesters and private citizens, but can't provide local first responders with what they will need to serve this country in a crisis, and it can't protect our troops by supplying them with basics like body amour.
Next, Mrs. Edwards touches on health care. She points out that America has 1st rate health services-- people come here from all over world for health care, but our own citizens are shut out---there are millions of Americans with their faces pressed up to glass of our health care clinics.
She briefly brings up some of the discrepancies in tax payments; the disproportionate enforcement of tax codes and some of the loopholes in the earned income tax credit. She cites that two thirds of the people whose refunds are frozen are frozen improperly, and that this most often happens to those who can least afford it. She ends with a quip that maybe this was the president's idea of a war on poverty--a war on the poor, instead.
The last section of Mrs. Edwards' speech focused on who the Democrats are, and how we need to communicate that image to the American people. Just because the Republicans say something about the Dems--and say it over and over and over again--doesn't make it so. They may say all Dems do is complain, that we stand for nothing, for example.
So what do Dems all too often do? We make it easier for the Republicans to smear us. We go on talk show after talk show and read out long lists of programs and policies we support, instead of saying who we are.
Democrats are the party of those who are working, those who have finished working, and those who want to work. We fight for their wages, we fight for their jobs, we fight for their pensions.
We are the party of principle, guided by what is right and what is moral. We're the party of the sick, the old, the young--the party of social justice and fiscal responsibility.
She pointed out that all the time the Republicans were out telling the public that Democrats had no moral core, they were showing over and over again how little moral core THEY had.
Mrs. Edwards closed her prepared remarks with a call to unity. Democrats don't always agree on programs, policies, or language. But we do agree to do the right thing, the moral thing, the noble thing, and when we do, we restore our country.
The end of her speech was met with long applause, cheers, and a standing ovation.
The Q&A
An extended question & answer session followed. I was impressed with the audience's knowledgeable questions and with Elizabeth's insightful responses.
I've excerpted here just a few of the conversations I thought were most interesting:
Q: What do you think will be the defining issue for 2008?
A: Finding strong candidates and making it clear what we stand for. We need to run a clean camp--John took no lobby or pac dollars in 04, for example. We need to work to clean up the systems and make politicians accountable.
She went on to give a great analogy:
Elections are not decided on particular issues--few people can quote you chapter and verse of the difference in candidates' health care plans, for example. But it's like two people who come to your house to sell you life insurance. They're both talking about products and using terms like "actuary" and "annuity prospectus" and let's face it, once they leave you have no idea what they're talking about-- but one makes you feel good, one you have confidence in.
That's what the money issue and the corruption issue can do for us in elections--it erodes voters trust in the Republicans. We need voters need to have confidence in the Dems.
We need to have candidates who stand for something! That is what engenders trust. We need a message, and we need to talk about that message--and to communicate it to the American people, not keep giving them a laundry list of programs.
Q: Harry Reid's recent apology really disgusted me--when do we stop pulling our punches? We end up sounding "mealy mouthed."
A: Harry Reid's job as whip was to make things move, make people get along. When you've been in DC a long time, you start thinking in terms of policies and procedures, and everything you say ends up couched in this elite language of the Senate. We need our leaders to stop worrying about sound bites and op-eds in the WAPO--the WAPO doesn't vote in elections.
Leaders get removed from the people and more worried about what the DC culture will say about them. They need to hear from their constituents--to have thousands of ordinary people sending them e-mails to help them keep in touch with what's important to the people. Did you send one? (big laugh)
Q: When Clinton won two elections, he won on the economy. The Dems have not made much progress with this in the last two elections, their strength--economics. How can we as a party be talking about economics, a thing that really affects people's lives?
A: Elizabeth begins with referencing What's the Matter with Kansas? and people who seem to vote against their own self interest.
She cites people in Ohio and in West Virginia, both states full of lost jobs and financially poor people in bad situations. We lost (and she adds parenthetically, "if" we lost!) because people didn't vote for policies, they voted "based on that flier handed to them in church that said John Kerry was going to ban the Bible, that we'd be holding gay weddings on the White House lawn."
We lost because we didn't talk about the "moral issues" of poverty (and here she references and recommends Jim Wallis's book, -- God's Politics.) We didn't talk about how Jesus' work is not to harass gays--it's to go help the needy.
She reminds us, too, that there were other distractions in last election-- re-fighting Vietnam and dealing with Iraq, for example. In the last election, the country wasn't as clean a plate as Clinton had
Q: How can the Democrats win a southern state?
A: First, you have to compete! She talked about how much she likes John Kerry, and how he would have made great president, then she describes how during the campaign he went around with maps and fund raiser information and showing why he didn't think he had to win a southern state. She even mentions that even though John Edwards is a North Carolina native son, she doesn't think he was chosen for his "southern-ness" but for more as a counterpoint to Kerry, with Edwards' mill town son background, etc. The campaign didn't put money into southern states.
Q: Mrs. Edwards, would you care to speculate on possible Dem ticket for 2008?
A: She smiles and says, "No." (this gets much laughter.)
She goes on to point out that at this point in the 2004 campaign, the overwhelming favorite was Joe Lieberman. She states, without dissembling, that John has not made a decision, and she even honestly thinks Hillary hasn't made a decision. The only name she drops is a potential on the Republican ticket--Arkansas Governor Mile Huckabee, who could be a real sleeper for the Republicans.
Q: In the language of politics, the Republicans are better at sound bites and framing, People don't always follow policy, they hear sound bites. How can we do better?
A: We need to be really careful about our own language, and not use their frames like partial birth and death tax. Too often, we use their terms--we're the "Democratic Party" not the "Democrat Party" for instance.
She describes how the Republicans have used marketing people for some time, while we have not, and we need people to come up with ways to help us say things. She mentions the effectiveness of Howard Dean's "sleepless summer" term--- we need a few words that can get people behind us. The Republicans can make point in 3 seconds, we take 30 to argue, and we lose.
Q: If you could reform the presidential primary system, what would you do?
A: Before she'd been through the process herself, she said, she thought we needed more diverse states participating in process. Once NH is over, it's hard to change the tide. We need to integrate other states into the process and maybe gradually rotate them, but it's hard to ask for Iowa to give up and get out of the process.
She describes some of her and John's experiences during the primaries in Iowa, and had nothing but praise for the way the people attending the local caucuses were prepared, informed, and educated about the issues. She reports that they were tough on the candidates and had taken a great deal of responsibility to educate themselves-- she was floored with the degree of information.
Q: Mrs. Edwards, short of money, what can a single individual do to best help elect a Democrat?
A: She tells stories about how she doesn't go anywhere without asking people if they're registered to vote. She mentions being in line at the supermarket and noticing the name tag for the teen who's bagging the groceries, for example, and talking to them about voter registration.
She laughs with the audience and says, keep voter registration forms in your purse, if you must, but this is the single most important thing we need to do. These kinds of working-class people have a vested interest in voting, but often, but no one has asked them. "Our" voters are not always registered and don't always vote. If all of "our" voters--the working, the finished working, the want-to-be-working people--if they all came to the polls, we'd win.
The Wrap-Up
After final remarks and warm applause, Mrs. Edwards was presented with a charming children's storybook called Moonbeam Cow with has a special connection to Fearrington village, which is home to a number of Galloway cows with their distinctive middle white stripe.
The meet & greet and closing of the session was full of comments about getting home in time to tuck in Emma Claire & Jack, about Cate working up in New York City, and about how babysitting schedules sometimes determine speaking engagements for both her & John.
She briefly mentions that she's working on a book of her experiences on and off the campaign trail, but this is far from a hard-sell. In the entire program, she doesn't ask anything from her audience, and the only thing set up in tables at the back of the room are plain pads of paper for people to sign up for Elizabeth's e-mail list from her and John's website, One America.
Mrs. Edwards, when I got to meet you and shake your hand, I said, "thank you" for being such a clear and passionate voice. When I mentioned I wanted to blog this event, you reminded me that yes, you do read & participate in Daily Kos, and I hope you know how much we all thank you, not just for your work on the campaign, but for the way you work everyday as a citizen, a mother, and an American to strengthen our country.
cross-posted at Street Prophets