Outstanding write-up of Dean's Cornell speech....loaded with good stuff.

I was very impressed when I read this today. It must have been quite a talk. He says some things I have not heard him say quite this way before, goes into things more thoroughly than he usually does. Apparently he talked a lot about blogs and using them to communicate. He says not to work for candidates who won't listen to what you have to say.

http://www.cornellsun.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/02/24/421d84959299b
SNIP..."Howard Dean, recently elected Democratic National Committee chair, spoke yesterday to a packed Anabel Taylor auditorium about how he would remake the Democratic Party into a "party of change and reform." He described a new "two-way campaign" that would give "ordinary people the power to influence their government and their politicians directly by allowing their politicians to find the way to listen ," such as the utilization of weblogs, a method taken from Dean's campaign for Democratic presidential nominee....."

SNIP..."It's the Democrats that are the conservative, fiscally responsible party -- certainly not the borrow-and-spend, borrow-and-spend, borrow-and-spend Republicans," Dean said in the lecture. He added that the city of Washington, D.C. was told by the White House to take $11.7 million out of their homeland security funds to cover the cost of hosting the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration, concluding that Republicans are much weaker on defense than Democrats.

Dean also linked the defense issue with the issue of labor unions in the U.S.. He argued that most of the U.S.'s trade treaties have only benefited multinational corporations and have actually lowered the standards of living for working people.."

Great statement on the abortion issue:
SNIP..""The difference between Democrats and Republicans is that the Democrats think that women should be able to make up their own mind about what kind of health care they have," Dean said on abortion rights. He argued that many women who perceived themselves to be pro-life were actually pro-choice: they believed abortion to be immoral but would not be willing to dictate what other women should do in those situations...."

SNIP..."The great shame of this administration is that they believe it's more important that Republicans to be in office than they believe in empowerment of ordinary Americans to change their government. It is not worth winning every time if you're willing to use any means to do it, because you destroy the very thing you've set out to protect," Dean said."END SNIP

the two-way campaign.

And I'll say it again: that plus his intent to actually give power BACK to The People was what made him at once the most dangerous man in America (someone who HAD to be stopped) and the man who could have won this election in a landslide that would've eclipsed Reagan's (assuming a sufficient absence of election rigging and vote suppression, of course).

I'll never understand why Kucinich supporters never got that about Dean, and couldn't see that for all the fine ultra-liberal policies Kucinich espoused, what Dean was offering was FAR MORE revolutionary and in fact probably a requisite step to most if not all the things Dennis wanted. And no one could explain it to them, either, since so many of them had SUCH a head of anti-Dean steam plugging their ears because of Kucinich's rather ugly and incredibly petty animosity towards Dean, plus the PACK of LIES they read and believed about Dean (either from DK's campaign, some Greens, and other purporterdly very liberal sources, like some of those anti-Dean diatribes from the purportedly ultra-liberals in Vermont).

I'll also say this: There are NO politicians of national stature who have anywhere near the honesty, integrity, overall character, clarity, insight and vision for the future and America that Dean does. Absolutely no one. And that's been true all along as well.

Dennis made the mistake thinking that all anti-Iraq war protesters were left wing extremists who were anti-all-war. He didn't think that moderates, like myself, could be against the Iraq war because it was based upon a lie and still support wars that may be necessary to stop an invasion or other aggression. Dennis thought all thosed opposed to the Iraq War should support him over Dean and he could never understand why many of us supported Dean and not him. Personally, Kucinich always came across to me as a kook.

FYI, I do have a friend at work who supported Kucinich in the Massachusetts primary, but also liked Dean. He is more leftwing than me.

--like what detractors of Dean say about Dean, no? Kucinich was against the Iraq war when it counted, namely leading the resistance against it in Congress where he had a great deal to lose, unlike candidates who weren't actually holding office at the time.

And it wasn't just this stance, but the whole package of clear and unequivocal support of universal health care, bilateral trade instead of NAFTA/WTO, an end to the War on Some Drugs and the prison-industrial complex, etc.

Not that I didn't appreciate Dean's "You have the power" position, but Kucinich had the answers on what exactly we'd want to do with that power.

Dean wasn't in Washington to vote on the Iraq war. Kucinich was and at least Kucinich was true to his anti-war principles to vote against IWR. But Kucinich didn't get into the Prez race until long after Dean had won the support of many of us who had opposed the Iraq War. Kucinich's actions against Dean during the primary smelled of jealousy and revenge, especially when he asked his supporters in Iowa to support Edwards, one of the pro-war candidates, instead of Dean.

I was never a Kucinich supporter. First, I'm a moderate who leans left, not a leftwing extremist, who seem to be Kucinich's most ardent supporters. I oppose leftwing deficit spending as much as I do rightwing deficit spending.

I'm also a feminist and didn't care for Kucinich's anti-abortion position, which he held for many years and only changed his opinion after he 1) got a divorce and 2) decided to run for the Dem Prez nomination. Kucinich was a Catholic and that was the main reason he had for opposing abortion. Being a former Catholic myself, I deduce that Kucinich's change of opinion on abortion happened shortly around the time of his divorce. I guesss that is when Kucinich finally realized that the Catholic Church oppposes divorce as well as abortion.

As Dennis keeps saying about universal health care--we are already paying for it; we just aren't getting it. All his program proposals were tax and deficit neutral.

As I keep saying about Iowa--Edwards and Kucinich were in single digits, ferchrissake! People who might not make threshold make deals with each other, not the frontrunners who will make threshold in any case.

This is what he has to say about abortion--
http://www.kucinich.us/issues/rightsreproductive.php

I had a journey on this issue a few years ago that caused me to break from a voting record that had not been pro-choice. After hearing from many women in my own life, and from women and men in my community and across the country, I began a more intensive dialogue on the issue. A lot of women opened their hearts to me. That dialogue led me to wholeheartedly expand my views and support a woman's right over her body.

He is one candidate who could have really bridged the cultural conservative gap on this, without compromising basic principles.

so true... Thank you for this -- I'm forwarding it to friends right now.

He is so effective in cutting through the crap and crystallizing the ESSENCE of things. We are damn lucky to have him as a spokesman, illuminating - so easily - core Democratic values.

Thanks for posting this MF!

Just kidding. Sort of funny though, he speaks so clearly. That thought just popped into my mind. A wee bit of irony or something.
;)

"You ever wonder why Republican campaigns are all run the same? Guns, God and gays. That's all they do. Why is that? It's because they never have anything constructive to say about jobs, healthcare and a real defense policy," Dean said. "They bring up those issues because they want people to vote against their economic interests... We need to stop letting them tell America what we stand for, and we need to tell America what we stand for ourselves."

I'm not sure he would have made a good President. I have to say I don't know enough about him to have voted for him. But, I think he was born to take over the Democratic party. Doing this might just make him more important to us than the Presidency.

zalinda

I disagree he would have made it to president, but damn I think dem chair is the perfect job for him. No one is going to get the message out like this guys can. Just reading his stuff gets me excited to be a dem.

"Dean began by speaking on what he thought was the most important issue today: the proposed privatization of Social Security. He said that President George W. Bush was trying to appeal to 20- and 30-year-olds through privatization, but claimed that in fact that generation would end up having to pay the $2 trillion bill for it.

"I think that privatizing Social Security has much more to do with the enormous amount of money that corporate Wall Street poured into the President of the United States's campaign than senior citizens."

Who knows, maybe he wouldn't have won the Presidency had he gotten the bid over Kerry. But can anyone read that and say he wouldn't make a great one?


www.BlackEyedSundays.com

Being the President is much more than speeches or policy making. You have to work with people that don't share your views. Not that Dean couldn't go the extra mile to cross the aisle, I don't think the the repubs would have even tried to work with him. Dean was/is not really known in DC, and therefore would have been treated like an outsider. If in the 2 years of his Presidency, nothing was accomplished, it would be next to impossible to take over the House and Senate in 2006. Kerry was the better choice as he has a relationship with the Senate and has worked with House members before.

With Dean in charge of the DNC, I think we have a great shot at getting back the House and Senate in 2006.

zalinda

"...'Do not work for candidates who don't care what you think,' Dean repeated twice to resounding applause...."

Say Amen!

This is why it would have been a cold day in hell before I would have ever worked for Kerry's top-down campaign.

It's also why they lost. They wouldn't listen to anyone who had the sense enough to tell them NOT to repeat the mistakes of the failed Dukakis campaign.

Let that be a lesson to the rest of the Dems.... you'd better listen from the ground up and as well as dictate from on high, because otherwise you'll lose just like Kerry and Dukakis did.