I attended my first Dean meetup last night. It was a relatively small crowd due to the rainy Miami weather and the fact that Barnes & Noble decided at the last minute we weren't welcome (are they owned by CBS?!). I met one woman with an interesting story, a story that gives me even more hope for my ABB04* wishes. She began,
"I am a Republican, but I am here because I am fed up."
This woman, British-born by way of Jamaica, now a U.S. citizen for 20+ years has always voted Republican, including Bush in 2000. She continued,
"I am disgusted by what he has done to this country and my sister told me about Dean, that I should check him out, so I am here! My daughter is a single mother in the army reserves and she is being sent to Afghanistan. Why are they sending a single mother overseas - she's not even active duty? My son is in the navy, currently stationed in Italy and he warned me that Bush would turn out to be a warmonger, but I didn't listen. Now I know he was right beyond his wildest dreams. I am a cancer patient and John Ashcroft and his band of moral crusaders want to stop my doctor from prescribing medical marijuana. And finally, my sister who has lived in Vermont for one month, says Dean has done incredible things in that state. What he has done there is something we need for this country."
We talked for over an hour about many other topics. One of the more interesting topics to me (I work in education) is the story of why her sister left Florida with her husband and two school-age children to move to Vermont last month. There are educational opportunities for her children (who are both "superior genius") in tiny Vermont that exist nowhere in the vast state of Florida. In Vermont, public education is well funded and there are many progressive educational programs, including a school for extremely gifted children and Vermont's highly successful "Success by Six". Here in Florida, all we have is Jeb Bush's massive standardized testing scheme that does absolutely nothing to promote the quality of public education. In fact, after the voters in 2002 approved an amendment to limit class size in Florida classrooms, Jeb Bush tried to find ways not to implement it.
We all know there are millions of regretful Bush voters in our country. He only received 48% of the vote in 2000, and recent polls say only about 40% would vote for him again, a number that continues to fall as people like this Republican for Dean realize what their 2000 vote has wrought.
*ABB04 = Anyone But Bush in 2004!