Nation-Building >> excerpts from Dean's stump speech | return to front page

From an article in the Times-Argus, is this good selection of excerpts from the standard stump speech that Dean delivers on the trail. It's old news to many regular readers but given that 75% of the readers of this weblog (which passed the 100,000 unique visits mark a few days ago) arrive here via searches on Google and other engines, I think the stump speech is the best way to really understand what Dean is all about.

What I want to know is what in the world so many Democrats are doing supporting the president’s unilateral intervention in Iraq?

What I want to know is what in the world so many Democrats are doing supporting tax cuts, which have bankrupted this country and given us the largest deficit in the history of the United States?

What I want to know is why the Congress is fighting over the patient’s bill of rights?

The patient’s bill of rights is a good bill, but not one more person gets health insurance and it’s not 5 cents cheaper.

What I want to know is why the Democrats in Congress aren’t standing up for us, joining every other industrialized country on the face of the Earth in providing health insurance for every man, woman and child in America.

What I want to know is why so many folks in Congress are voting for the president’s education bill - “The No School Board Left Standing Bill” - the largest unfunded mandate in the history of our educational system!

As Paul Wellstone said - as Sheila Kuehl said when she endorsed me, I am Howard Dean, and I’m here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.

I don’t think we can beat this president by adopting his policies. What we need to do is set up a Democratic agenda - unambiguous, clear, proud to be Democrats. If you put the Democratic agenda next to the Republican agenda, the Democratic agenda wins every time.

We have made a fundamental miscalculation in Washington on how to beat this president. We lost two senators and we almost lost a third one in this past election because their platform was ‘I voted with the president 85 percent of the time.’

If you as a Democrat are willing to vote with the president, the most conservative president in our lifetime, 85 percent of the time, then why not vote for the guy who is going to vote for the president 100 percent of the time, which is what they did.

This president is not popular because of his policies. People like him because he gives a clear and unambiguous message and he is clear about who he is.

Bill Clinton said about four months ago that the American people will always vote for someone who is strong and wrong before they will vote for someone who is weak and right.

We appear to be weak and right because we will say whatever it takes to win. And once you are willing to say whatever it takes to win, you lose.

I want to balance the budget.

There has not been one Republican president that has balanced the budget in this country in 34 years. And if you want someone who can be responsible with your money, to take care of your tax dollars, then you had better elect a Democrat because Republicans cannot manage money.

In our state, I served long enough so that I had the privilege of serving through both Bush recessions, not one recession. And when all that money was coming in between the recessions, when all of that money was coming in during the good times thanks to Bill Clinton, who balanced the budget without a single Republican vote — we gave some tax cuts, but we also saved money in a Rainy Day Fund and were able to pay back a quarter of our debt.

Today, not only is the budget balanced in these very difficult times, but my successor does not have to cut health care, does not have to cut higher education, and does not have to cut K-12 education.

I intend to talk about race during this election in the South. The Republicans have been talking about it since 1968 in order to divide us, and I’m going to bring us together. Because you know what? White folks in the South who drive pick-up trucks with Confederate flag decals on the back ought to be voting with us because their kids don’t have health insurance either, and their kids need better schools too.

I want my country back!

We want our country back! I am tired of being divided! I don’t want to listen to the fundamentalist preachers anymore. I want America to look like America, where we are all included, hand in hand. We have a dream. We can only reach the dream if we are all together - black and white, gay and straight, man and woman.

America!

Stand up for America, Stand up for America, Stand up for America.

Hungry for more? A hefty archive of links to video, audio, and transcripts of Dean speeches and interviews is on the left sidebar of this page!