Howard Dean's Speech to Supporters in New Hampshire
January 27, 2004
TEXT
The following is the text of Gov. Howard Dean's speech after the
New Hampshire Democratic primary, as recorded by The New York Times.
nytimes.com
GOV. HOWARD DEAN. Thank you. My goodness. Thank you.
Wow. Thank you. Well, that was - Michael - we really are going to win this
nomination, aren't we? You are amazing. You are amazing.
First, let me just say a couple of things. You are unbelievable
and I really appreciate it. First let me thank the people of the State of New
Hampshire. I really - you took us into your homes and your living rooms,
meet us at the Marimack[sp?] Restaurant. I really appreciate all
that you've done. The people of New Hampshire have allowed our campaign
to regain its momentum and I am very grateful. And the people
of New Hampshire have allowed all of you to hope again that
we're going to have real change in America.
For those of you who believe that America needs real change
and someone in the White House who's really delivered change, we're all
together in this. Stand with us to the very end, which is Jan. 20, 2005.
For those of you who think that America needs a president who's
willing to stand up for what's right, not just what's popular,
we are all together again. Stand together, all of us. To those of you who believe
the best way to beat George Bush, in fact the only way to beat
George Bush is to stand up to him all the time, not just when it's convenient,
not just some of the time, tonight the people of New Hampshire have asked for change, a real change.
We can change America, and we will. We can have jobs again
in America, and we will.
We can join every other industrialized nation on the face of the
earth and have health insurance for all Americans, and we will.
We can invest in families with small children and have those kids
grow up to go to college instead of prison, and we will.
We can demand for our young people a better future, a solution
to global warming, getting us off foreign oil by investing in renewable
energy, and we will.
We can regain the moral leadership of this country as it held from
the end of World War I until the time of the Iraq invasion, by having a
foreign policy based on cooperation not confrontation, and we will.
We can return our school systems to the control of local school boards,
fully fund special education and get rid of the federal mandates of no
child left behind, and we will.
We can get rid of the president's pharmaceutical bill and instead have
a pharmaceutical bill that helps seniors instead of insurance
companies and drug companies, and we will.
We can give the 50 percent of Americans who've quit voting in this country
because we don't give them a reason to vote a reason to vote
again, and we will.
We can take back America and stand up for working families
and middle-class families again, and take our government back for the people
who built it instead of corporations and special interests, and we will.
And this time we can have a president who really is a uniter not a divider,
and we will.
A lot of you have heard me say this, I'm going to say this to America.
The biggest loss that we've suffered under George Bush is not the 2.9
million jobs that have disappeared since he's been president. And it's
not the loss of our moral leadership in the world where a majority of
people in most countries don't respect us anymore. The biggest loss
that we've suffered in this country since George Bush has been
president is our loss of our sense of community, the sense that we're all in it together.
When I was 21 years old, it was the end of the civil rights movement
and America had suffered greatly. Martin Luther King had been killed;
Bobby Kennedy was dead. A lot of other Americans, maybe not so famous,
including four little girls in a Birmingham church, died so that
every single American would have equal rights under the law.
But it was also a time of great hope. Medicare passed so the seniors
would never again have to fear being bankrupted because they became
ill. Head Start passed, the first investment in children under the age of 5,
the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the first
African-American justice to the United States Supreme Court.
We felt like we were all in this together, that if one person was left behind,
that America wasn't as strong as it should be or as good as it could be.
We were all in it together.
You know the president ran as a uniter, not a divider. And there wasn't
any evidence for that anymore than there was for those weapons of
mass destruction or all those bombs.
President used the word quota five or six times on the evening news
to talk about the University of Michigan affirmative action program. Not
only did the most conservative Supreme Court since the Dred Scott
decision disagree with him on that one, but the word quota, every
politician and every pollster in America knows, is a race coded word
deliberately designed to appeal to people's fears that they may lose their
job or their place in university to a member of a community of color.
In other words, the president played the race card, and that alone
entitles him to a one-way bus ticket back to Crawford, Tex.
I am tired of being divided in this country. I'm tired of being divided by race
. I'm tired by being divided by gender when the president thinks
he knows better than an American woman what kind of reproductive
health care that she ought to have. I'm tired of being divided by income.
I'm tired of being divided by sexual orientation. I'm tired of being divided by religion.
When we say we want our country back, what we mean is that we want
the country that all of us were promised when we were 21 years old,
a country where we were all in this together, where we could believe,
where we could hope again that America would be a better place as we
grew older. We want the country back that J.F.Kennedy talked about
when he talked about passing the torch to the new generation and
leaving a country to the new generation better off than the country
than the country that we found it.
Wow. I just noticed a whole lot of people came out here from San Francisco.
I can't believe all these people. Florida. Anybody here from
Alaska?
You know something? We are going to take our country back.
The other day I was in Manchester and I was giving a speech
in Manchester to a lot of the hard-working volunteers that have worked so hard.
And I want to thank some of those people. I want to thank, first of all, Karen Hicks[sp?],
our state director, who's been absolutely
unbelievable. Where is Karen Hicks? Come on up here. Come on,
come on. Not only Karen Hicks, but how about all those incredibly
hard-working people, staff members and volunteers, hundreds of them from
all over this state. Thank you so much for all you have done.
And there's a long, long, long list of incredibly deserving people including
an enormous number of people, others - and I hardly dare single
any of them out. I don't know, is Fran Eggbers[sp?] here, the super volunteer?
Carol Moore[sp?]' another one, unbelievable. Meg, you and
Gary have been so great, thank you so much for all your help right from
the beginning. Is Michael King here? Michael King, our very first
person, signed up right from the beginning, thank you. Now I know if I keep
doing this I'm going to get in a lot of trouble.
I do want to thank my brother Bill and my brother Jim for coming up here.
And my wonderful mother, who came up and campaigned the
day before her birthday. And I would be remiss if I did not thank my fantastic wife, Judy Dean.
Let me close by saying something that -- let me close by saying just
a couple more things. The first is this. The other day I was in
Manchester, giving a speech to a group of volunteers who had worked
really hard and a whole lot of people who had -- paid staff as well --
who had really worked hard for this. And we did what we needed to do
tonight, and I want to thank them for what they have done.
(Applause.)
But I also want to just tell one quick story. As I was speaking, a guy
yelled out, "We believe in you, Howard!" And I said, "Far be it from me to
rebuke any exuberant -- (cheers) -- any exuberant supporter.
But it's not me that you have to believe in. It's you." (Cheers/applause.) And
that is really how this campaign works.
And before I close, I do want to thank one other person, the person who
introduced me, who I should have thanked in the first place, and
that is Jim Casey (sp), the labor commissioner in the state of New Hampshire,
who's been with us right from the very beginning. I really
deeply appreciate all your help; and also Andy Stern (sp) from the SEIU.
They've been enormously helpful. (Cheers/applause.)
I want to thank AFSCME. (Cheers/applause.) I want to thank the painters.
You guys have been great. The labor support has been terrific.
The CWA and the UAW have been absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much
for all your help. (Applause.) I want to thank Stan Spero (sp), the
basketball coach at Southern New Hampshire University. (Laughs.) Terry Jones.
But let me finish the way I always do, because it's always true.
And we are going to win the nomination. We are going to win the nomination.
(Cheers/applause.) And the reason we're going to win the nomination is
because of you, because, sooner or later, all Americans are going to
learn what you've already learned -- that the biggest lie told by people
like me to people like you at election time is that if you vote for me,
I'm going to solve all your problems.
The truth is, the power to change this country is in your hands, not mine.
(Cheers/applause.) Abraham Lincoln said that a government of
the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from this earth.
You have the power to take back the Democratic Party and make it stand
up for what Harry Truman asked for in the 1948 Democratic Party
platform -- health insurance for all Americans -- to make us proud to be
Democrats, so never again will we apologize for standing up for
environmental protection; never again will we apologize for standing up
for the rights of working men and women to organize --(cheers/applause);
that never again will we be afraid of a president with a 70 percent popularity
rating who sends us to war without again will we be afraid to stand up for
our children and ask that this president not give us pretty names like
No Child Left Behind, but give us the
money, our taxpayers' money, back into our own communities
to stand up for families of working people. (Applause.)
You have the power. You have the power to take back our country
so that the flag of the United States of America never again is the sole
property of John Ashcroft and Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh and
Jerry Falwell, but the flag of the United States of America belongs to
all of us again, every single American. (Cheers/applause.)
And, most of all, to you and every other American who's been abandoned
by this administration, struggling hard to pay for college, to keep
food on the table, working extra jobs now that don't pay any more overtime,
thanks to what this president has done, that every single
American, not just you, but all of you have the power to take back the White House
in 2004. And that is exactly what we're going to do.
Thank you very much. (Cheers/applause.) Thank you for all your help. Thank you
for all your help. Thank you for all your help. Thank you
so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. (Applause.)
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
