On December 7, 2003, Howard Dean delivered an address entitled
Restoring the American Community.
Governor Dean's remarks to his audience in Columbia, South Carolina, included the following statements:
The Republican Party would never win elections if they came out and said their core agenda was about selling America piece by piece to their campaign contributors and making sure that wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of a few.
But these politics do worse than that - they fracture the very soul of who we are as a country.
In America, there is nothing black or white about having to live from one paycheck to the next.
Hunger does not care what color we are.
There are no black concerns or white concerns or Hispanic concerns in America. There are only human concerns.
Every time a politician uses the word "quota," it's because he'd rather not talk about the real reasons that we've lost almost 3 million jobs.
Every time a politician complains about affirmative action in our universities, it's because he'd rather not talk about the real problems with education in America - like the fact that here in South Carolina, only 15% of African Americans have a post-high school degree.
America can do better than this.
It's time we had a new politics in America - a politics that refuses to pander to our lowest prejudices.
Because when white people and black people and brown people vote together, that's when we make true progress in this country.
Jobs, health care, education, democracy, and opportunity. These are the issues that can unite America.
The politics of the 21st century is going to begin with our common interests.
If the President tries to divide us by race, we're going to talk about health care for every American.
If Karl Rove tries to divide us by gender, we're going to talk about better schools for all of our children.
If large corporate interests try to divide us by income, we're going to talk about better jobs and higher wages for every American.
If any politician tries to win an election by turning America into a battle of us versus them, we're going to respond with a politics that says that we're all in this together - that we want to raise our children in a world in which they are not taught to hate one another, because our children are not born to hate one another.
We're going to talk about justice again in this country, and what an America based on justice should look like - an America with justice in our tax code, justice in our health care system, and justice in our hearts as well as our laws.
The politics of race and the politics of fear will be answered with the promise of community and a message of hope.
And that's how we're going to win in 2004.
Of course the Democratic Party did not nominate Howard Dean as its Presidential candidate; the Democratic party did not implement Dr. Dean's strategy of uniting whites and blacks around common economic interests; and the Democratic party did not retake the presidency or increase its presence in the House and Senate.
Instead of Howard Dean's arching vision that embraces all races and all regions, liberal Democrats still engage in politically correct one-downmanship, forever squabbling that my minority group is more victimized and oppressed than your minority group.
Unless we get a masochistic thrill from continuously losing elections (and some of us do), progressive Democrats must move beyond identity politics and its litmus tests for political correctness.
Instead of demonizing southern white men (the way Republicans demonize gays) Democrats need to transform ourselves into the party of economic justice, with a message transcending race and regionalism.
Because we ain't got no other alternative.