PA-07: Bill Clinton Rallies for Joe Sestak (w/ pictures and quotes)

Today, Bill Clinton came to Valley Forge Military Academy to rally for Joe Sestak, candidate for Congress in Pennsylvania's 7th district. If you don't know Joe, he's an excellent candidate, a retired Vice Admiral in the U.S. Navy, running against the 18 year incumbent, Curt Weldon.

Clinton spent the early afternoon making this appearance with Joe, and giving an incredibly good speech like only Bill Clinton can. I was lucky enough to attend, took pictures, taped the speeches, and I'd love to share them with you.

The event and Clinton's speech were so rich with content that I'm afraid that one diary won't cover it. I transcribed some of the best quotes and prepped pictures but I plan to transcribe the whole speech if I can over the next day or two and I'll post more when I've got it. For now, here are some visuals and quotes that should give you a good sense of how things were in PA-07 today.

It was a beautiful day and things are looking very good for Sestak, and this means things are looking up for us because:

1. he is an exceptional candidate, and
2. he's turning a red seat blue

Below are some pictures from the beginning of the event, before Sestak and Clinton arrived. We arrived early and all the local tv stations were there already. The crowd grew and grew. There were many local politicians in attendance sitting all around us and excitement was in the air.

Campaign manager, Bill Walsh, also a retired Navy man who served under Sestak and was in command of the U.S.S. Monterey, did the introductory speeches and gave a shout out to the various elected officials and labor leaders in attendance. The campaign signs were in abundance and as we waited for the guests of honor to arrive the crowd got fired up.

Finally the Fleetwood Mac music started and we knew Clinton was in the house. Joe Sestak, his wife Susan, and their daughter Alex appeared on the stage with the rock starrish Clinton at their side and the place went wild.

Sestak gave a short speech during which he posed some questions to President Clinton. Basically he was asking how the heck we got where we are now, and what we need to do about it.

Clinton then stepped up to the podium, and he was in rare form. Below are some quotes from his speech and some more pictures.

I want to thank Joe and Susan and Alex, all of them, for undertaking this great endeavor. For thirty-one years he served our nation with great honor in the United States Navy. The navy is not free of politics, but at least it has organized systems and there is a genuine, generally, a genuine connection between efforts and results...
...
I was a little bit worried about him until I realized that he has seven siblings and six of them are still in this district. And between their spouses and nieces and nephews, I understand there are at least twenty people in this crowd who are not related to him...

It isn't conservative to add 3 trillion dollars to the national debt.

It isn't conservative to give a rich person like Bill Clinton five tax cuts and cut aid to the middle class people...

It is not conservative to ignore the air, land, the water and the changing of the climate so that we can give our children and our grandchildren a better life than we had.

None of that is conservative.

This is not conservatism. This is radical, right-wing ideology.

The administration talks about hydrogen power... that's great, that's thirty, forty years away. But I just left Denmark where in the last eight years they increased the size of their economy by fifty percent but you know how much their energy usage has gone up?
Zero. Nothing.

Same exact energy use, fifty percent economic growth.

If we were serious about becoming energy independent through concentration on clean energy, we would improve the national security of this country, fight climate change, and generate millions of new jobs.

You know, the number of lobbyists in Washington, DC, has doubled since I left.
...
Mr. Abramoff, you remember old Karl would say he had a casual acquaintance with him and it turned out he had 485 contacts with him at the White House. I knew Karl was shy but even I had a hard time believing, you know, you've got to meet someone 486 times before you feel like you know them?

There's a difference between ideology and philosophy.

If you have a philosophy you are generally inclined, if you're a conservative, to hold to traditional institutions and then you weigh things and you're open to evidence and argument.
...
But if you have an ideology you know the answer already. So the evidence becomes irrelevant.

That's why they govern and campaign by attack. Assertion and attack.

Because evidence and argument are the enemies of ideology.

Stay tuned for a follow up diary or diaries with more of Clinton's speech and more pictures. (Boy it takes a long time to transcribe these things, especially when the tape captures the rowdy crowd better than the speaker!) But it will be worth it. I think it was so relevant, enjoyable and targeted that you will want to read the whole thing.

Another interesting note: the local newspapers have not covered this event very well so far, IMHO, since, conveniently, Laura Bush was here today to campaign for Curt Weldon, and this appears to have trumped Sestak and a former President. Hmm. Also, Clinton received the 2006 Liberty Medal along with Bush 41 tonight in Philadelphia, and he is also stumping for other candidates in the area.

Go here to contribute to Joe Sestak's campaign and help turn a red seat blue.