The recent controversy over Barack Obama's San Francisco remarks and Hillary Clinton's response to them as well as her very recent attempt to label Al Gore and John Kerry as elitists isn't the first time a democrat has said those things about John Kerry and Al Gore.
I was present at the Nashua Rotary Club meeting in 2007 when Joe Biden was the guest speaker. It was the same day that Karl Rove announced his resignation. Biden was asked about Rove by an audience member. Did he take the opportunity to trash Rove( a softball served up perfectly if you ask me) no, he took that question and used it as a way to trash Al Gore and John Kerry.
I was blogging for the blog BelowBoston.com and I had a digital voice recorder going and we had a digital camera going as well.
You'll find both on the flip
Here's the link to the diary I wrote back on August 14th 2007http://www.soapblox.net/...
Here's the transcript of Biden's remarks:
First of all, regarding your question, What's the plan for bringing our ....I assume you were referring to Karl Rove who announced his retirement today. And he became, he turned into an art form what the Democratic Party bought into: which was that somehow we are fundamentally divided. That we as Americans are, have, fundamentally different aspirations, that we have fundamentally different values.
I reject that.
I reject that out of hand.
And I reject that and I've been the odd man out of my Party.
I have travelled this country. I was just down in Oxford Mississippi, where they talk at you all like this( spoken with a thick southern drawl).I promise you, do you think a woman raising 2 kids in Oxford MS. has no different aspirations for her children than someone raising 2 children here in Nashua?
No difference.
This is a phony division that has been set out.
Ask yourself a rhetorical question:
Whether or not you like him, and he had a lot to like and a lot to dislike about him - does anybody doubt that if Clinton had run again in 2000 that he would not have won WV, KY, MO,ARK etc?
So what happened?
Where all of a sudden is the epiphany?
That somehow we became divided?
I'll tell you where I think it came from and why it has to end: the Democratic Party the last 2 times out has allowed itself to be manipulated OR has actively refused to engage in, compete, in 2 areas:
- the first area is- we did not nominate the last 2 times someone who could, in fact, lay on the table unimpeachable credentials on National Security.
Anybody thinks, those few who are Democrats in here, anybody who thinks we are going to elect a Democratic President who cannot table this campaign unimpeachable credentials on national Security, you're kidding yourselves.
It is THE over-riding, over- arching, single, consistent, concern of people from Seattle WA, to Portland ME, to Miami FLA, to San Diego, CA.
And it's not about the war.
It's about getting out of that war. But what are you going to do?
What are you going to do?
Do you have the depth and breadth of knowledge in foreign policy and national security to take us where everybody knows will be a pretty difficult decade.
We didn't table that credential.
But the second we didn't do ... How is it that the Democratic Party- the Party of ethnics, basically, how did we, how did my Party get to be the Party of anti- God?
How did that happen?
I'll tell you how it happened: We Democrats became afraid to talk about Faith.
We are uncomfortable talking about it.
And when they came at us on this grounds that we are not, we are not, people of faith, guess what?And the last 2 candidates didn't respond?
People began to buy it.
Let me ask you a rhetorical question.
I don't think it's about Faith.
I think it's about whether or not the President of the United States believes and communicates he or she believes that there is something bigger than they are- number one. And number 2, RESPECTS other people's views.
No-body ever accused Bill Clinton of being the Citadel of virtue, even from the beginning.
But how was it that he got 58% of the Catholic vote? How was it he got almost half of the evangelical vote?
It wasn't because they wanted him to believe or thought he believed as they did. When he sat next to you in a Catholic Church or in a fundamentalist church he communicated that he respected your view. Whether he agreed with it or not.
Fair or unfair, when Al Gore sat in that church, when John Kerry sat in that church, the perception was that "maybe he doesn't really respect my view".
The elites of my Party, the elites of my Party took over.
Look, I happen to be a practising Catholic. I've never talked about it in my entire career.34 years. But I'll tell you what, I can hardly wait for one of these guys on the other side to tell me about family values.
I can hardly wait for them to tell me, a guy who has taken the train every day for 34 years to get home to help put my kids to bed. I can hardly wait for them to tell me, married to the same woman for 30 years when some of them have been divorced 3 times, what values are.
I can hardly wait.
Sustained applause
We Democrats sure are good at beating up on each other.
And not just on the blogging level either.
No.
At the very highest level, a US Senator pretty much said that the sitting Vice-Presdient of the US( Al Gore) didn't bring foreign policy credentials to the table during the 2000 election or even a fellow memeber of the Senate Foreign relations Committee - John Kerry - didn't have the foreign policy credentials necessary to get elected.
Then he, Joe Biden, Democrat, moves on and trashes their faith practices. Trashes the faith practises of fellow Democrats.
Nice.
Want to see the video atttached to Biden's rant?
Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/...
We Democrats do a great job beating each other up when we accuse each other of being "elitist".
Whatever happened to just saying that person is wrong on ......?
No, we have to go the extra step and characterize each other as elitist.
We play right into the GOP's close to 40 year effort to tie that word around our neck.
Thanks Hillary, Thanks Joe.
You sure know how to tie a tight knot.