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The Road to Election 2004
Howard Dean called the governorship "the greatest job in Vermont" when he took the state's top post in 1991. In the decade since, Governor Howard Dean has lead Vermont with a firm fiscal discipline, an unwavering commitment to children's health care and education, and a keen environmental awareness. A common sense moderate who firmly believes that social justice can only be accomplished through strong financial management, Governor Dean has cut the income tax twice, removed the sales tax on most clothing, and reduced the state's long-term debt
Thank you for visiting my website and for your interest in learning more about my vision for a better future for our nation.
As a medical doctor, I support access to quality health care for everyone. During my term as Governor, we provided access to health insurance for virtually all Vermont children - and over 90% of all Vermonters. Because I believe that the development and protection of our children is critical to the future strength of our country, during my term as Governor we took action that reduced child abuse in Vermont by nearly half.
I have serious concerns about the increasingly unilateralist approach to foreign policy we have seen from the current Administration, particularly in the President's posture toward Iraq. Any President must be prepared to use force in defense of our nation's interests. Had I been in Congress, however, I would have voted against the resolution providing the President sweeping authority to wage war against Iraq, because I do not believe the President has made the case that war is justified. I am also concerned about the President's foreign policy priorities. The war on terror - against an enemy that has killed over three thousand innocents on our soil - is far from over, yet we are shifting our focus from the known threat of Al Qaeda to the less certain threat of Saddam Hussein.
Our nation desperately needs a long-term, visionary approach to our current challenges.
But any solutions to our challenges can and must exist without the massive deficit spending that has become the hallmark of the current administration. Fiscal responsibility would be a hallmark of a Dean presidency, as it has been a guiding principle in my tenure as Governor. As Governor, I was able to cut the income tax twice, remove the sales tax on most clothing, reduce the state's long-term debt and still maintain a balanced budget. The Democratic Party must be the party of fiscal responsibility.
I believe I have a proven track record of doing the right thing-fighting the good fight, standing for what's right, even when it means standing alone.
As I travel the country, I am more and more convinced that voters are ready for a change. I hope you will join with me in my campaign for a brighter future for our kids.
Source: Howard Dean for America
Burlington, Vermont -- Today I announce that I am running for President of the United States of America. I speak not only for my candidacy. I speak for a new American century and a new generation of Americans -- both young people and the young at heart. We seek the great restoration of American values and the restoration of our nation's traditional purpose in the world.
This is a campaign to unite and empower people everywhere.
It is a call to every American, regardless of party, to join together in common purpose and for the common good to save and restore all that it means to be an American.
Over a year ago I began to travel the country in the usual way one does when seeking the Presidency.
I believed that, by running for President, I could raise the issues of health care for every American and the need to focus on early childhood development. I wanted to bring those issues to the forefront of the national debate. And I wanted to balance the budget to bring financial stability and jobs back to America.
Most importantly, I have wanted my party to stand up for what we believe in again.
But something changed along the way as I listened to Americans around this country. On my first trip to Iowa I heard people speak of a profound fear and distrust of multi-national corporations. From New Hampshire to Texas I met Americans doubting the words of our leaders and our government in Washington. Every where I go people are asking fundamental questions: Who can we trust? Is the media reporting the truth? What is happening to our country?
The Americans I have met love their country. They believe deeply in its promise, our values and our principles. But they know something is wrong and they want to take action. They want to do something to right our path. But they feel Washington isn't listening. And as individuals, they lack the power to change the course those in Washington have put us on.
What they know is that somehow 7 trillion dollars of our country's wealth disappeared. Nearly 1 in 10 retired people have had to return to the workforce because they have lost their pensions. Young people are returning to live at home after graduating because they cannot find work.
Companies are leaving the country to avoid paying taxes, or to avoid paying people livable wages. And corporations are doing this with the support of the government and a political process in Washington that they rent -- if not own.
This was the fear that James Madison and Thomas Jefferson spoke of -- the fear that economic power would one day try to seize political power.
Theodore Roosevelt said it best, "Every special interest is entitled to justice full, fair and complete....but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench or to representation in any public office."
Today, our nation is in crisis. At home, this crisis manifests itself in this President's destruction of the idea of community. This President pushes forward an agenda and policies which divide us. He advocates economic polices which beggar the middle class and raise property taxes so that income taxes may be cut for those who ran Enron.
He divides us by race by using the word quota, which appeals to the worst in us by instilling fear that people of color might take our jobs or our places in the nation's best universities. Even the most conservative Supreme Court since the Dred Scott decision did not completely agree with the President's attack on diversity and community that includes all Americans.
He divides us by gender by attacking a woman's right to make her own health care decisions. And even by attacking young women's right to have the same athletic opportunities that young men do. He divides us by sexual orientation by supporting senators who have slandered gay Americans, and he appeals once again to the worst instincts within us, instead of that which is good in all Americans.
The tax cuts that are the radicals' weapon are not about tax cuts for working people. They are not even about tax cuts for millionaires. Instead, the tax cuts are designed to destroy Social Security, Medicare, our public schools and our public services through starvation and privatization.
Our President and too many in Washington are giving away our future so that we pass to our children not a flickering flame of freedom but the chain of insurmountable debt.
No parent would do this and America must not do this.
And so for me the long journey of a Presidential campaign has begun with the people I have met affecting me far more than any affect I may have had on them. And because of that, the reasons why I seek the Presidency have changed.
This campaign is about more than issue differences on health care, tax cuts, national security, jobs, the environment and our economy. It is about something as important as our children. It's about who we are as Americans.
Here are the words of John Winthrop: "We shall be as one. We must delight in each other, make other's conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always living before our eyes our Commission and Community in our work."
It is that ideal, the ideal of the American community, that we seek to restore.
An America where it is not enough for me to want health care for my family but the obligation, and responsibility of every one of us as American citizens to insure that each one of us has health care for our families.
An America where it is not enough for me to want good public schools and a better life for my children but an obligation, and a responsibility as citizens to insure that every child in America may go to a good public school and have the opportunity of a better life.
An America where it is not enough to protect my rights under the law but where it is a duty and an obligation for each of us as Americans to make sure every American is equal under the law.
An America where it is not enough to proclaim the words freedom, self-government, and democracy, but where it is a duty and a responsibility to participate together in common purpose with the sacrifice required of each of us to give those words meaning.
If September 11, 2001 taught America anything it is that we are stronger when we are beholden to each other as a national community, and weaker when we act only as individuals. That tragedy gave us an enormous opportunity to focus not only on our common peril, but also on our common dreams. The peril remains, but the dreams must be resurrected -- and they will be in a new American century.
President Kennedy challenged us to "pass the torch to a new generation of Americans." And so, we must issue that challenge again.
So too must we restore the deepest belief of our people that each generation has a responsibility to pass to our children a nation and a world that is better and stronger than the one that was passed to us.
As we experience the crisis of community at home, we are witnessing the effort to repudiate 225 years of American consensus on what our nation's place should be in the world.
Since the time of Thomas Paine and John Adams, our founders implored that we were not to be the new Rome. We are not to conquer and suppress other nations to submit to our will. We were to inspire them.
The idea of America using its power solely for its own ends is not consistent with the idealistic moral force the world has known for over two centuries.
We must rejoin the world community. America is far stronger as the moral and military leader of the world than we will ever be by relying solely on military power. We destroyed repressive communist regimes without firing a shot, not simply by having a strong military, but because we had a better ideal to show the world.
Every American President must and will take up arms in the defense of our nation. It is a solemn oath that cannot -- and will not -- be compromised.
But there is a fundamental difference between the defense of our nation and the doctrine of preemptive war espoused by this administration. The President's group of narrow-minded ideological advisors are undermining our nation's greatness in the world. They have embraced a form of unilateralism that is even more dangerous than isolationism.
This administration has shown disdain for allies, treaties, and international organizations alike.
In doing so they would throw aside our nation's role as the inspirational leader of the world the beacon of hope and justice in the interests of humankind. And instead, they would present our face to the world as a dominant power prepared to push aside any nation with which we do not agree.
Our foreign and military policies must be about America leading the world, not America against the world.
So how did we come to this point?
How is it that our leaders have abandoned our communities and repudiated our idealism and principles?
When confronted with a dedicated band of right wing ideologues, too many Americans have stopped participating, stopped voting, and stopped believing that they can change America.
And we in politics have not given our people a reason to vote or a reason to participate. We have slavishly spewed sound bites, copying each other while saying little. We raise millions of dollars and each year make lofty promises, while every year the struggles of ordinary Americans increase and fewer Americans vote. Our politicians, many of them good people, have been paralyzed by their fear of losing office. Our leaders have developed a vocabulary which has become meaningless to the American people.
There is no greater example of this than a self-described conservative Republican president who creates the greatest deficits in history of America. Or a President who boasts of a Clear Skies Initiative which allows far more pollution into our air. Or a President who co-opts from an advocacy organization the phrase "No Child Left Behind," while paying for irresponsible tax cuts by cutting children's health care.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
The history of our nation is clear: At every turn when there has been an imbalance of power, the truth questioned, or our beliefs and values distorted, the change required to restore our nation has always come from the bottom up from our people.
And so, while the President raises $4 million more tonight to maintain his agenda, we will not be silent.
He calls his biggest fundraisers Rangers and Pioneers.
But today, we stand together with thousands in Burlington, Vermont and tens of thousands more, standing with us right now in every state in this nation. And we call ourselves, simply, Americans.
And we stand today in common purpose to take our country back.
I am a doctor and I was proud to be Governor of Vermont:
where we balanced our budgets
where we made sure that nearly every child in our state had health care coverage
where we are stewards of our land and natural resources
where, on the first Tuesday of March every year, Vermonters gather to make decisions on matters vital to our communities
where we hold these truths to be self evident: that all are created equal and are endowed with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness
And, where we, like all Americans, love our country and want to see her flag stand for freedom and justice for all. That flag is not the property of the either party, it belongs to all of us.
It is from this place that the rest of the journey of this campaign continues. We will ask the American people to participate again in our common future. I ask all Americans, regardless of party, to meet with me across the nation to come together in common cause to forge a new American century. Help us in this quest to return greatness, and return high moral purpose to the United States of America.
We are the great grassroots campaign of the modern era, built from mouse pads, shoe leather and hope.
Like MoveOn.org we seek to build a community of millions and strengthen the voice of the people.
And like the founders of our republic, we seek change.
The great lie spoken by politicians on platforms like this is the cry of "elect me and I will solve all your problems."
The truth is the future of our nation rests in your hands, and not in mine.
Abraham Lincoln said that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from this earth.
But this President has forgotten ordinary people.
You have the power to reclaim our nation's destiny.
You have the power to rid Washington of the politics of money.
You have the power to make right as important as might.
You have the power to give Americans a reason to vote again.
You have the power to restore our nation to fiscal sanity and bring jobs back to our people.
You have the power to fulfill Harry Truman's dream and bring health insurance to every American.
You have the power to give us a foreign policy consistent with American values again.
You have the power to take back the Democratic Party.
You have the power to take our country back.
And we have the power to take the White House back in 2004.
June 23, 2003
Source: Howard Dean for America
Burlington, Vermont -- Today I announce that I am running for President of the United States of America. I speak not only for my candidacy. I speak for a new American century and a new generation of Americans -- both young people and the young at heart. We seek the great restoration of American values and the restoration of our nation's traditional purpose in the world.
This is a campaign to unite and empower people everywhere.
It is a call to every American, regardless of party, to join together in common purpose and for the common good to save and restore all that it means to be an American.
Over a year ago I began to travel the country in the usual way one does when seeking the Presidency.
I believed that, by running for President, I could raise the issues of health care for every American and the need to focus on early childhood development. I wanted to bring those issues to the forefront of the national debate. And I wanted to balance the budget to bring financial stability and jobs back to America.
Most importantly, I have wanted my party to stand up for what we believe in again.
But something changed along the way as I listened to Americans around this country. On my first trip to Iowa I heard people speak of a profound fear and distrust of multi-national corporations. From New Hampshire to Texas I met Americans doubting the words of our leaders and our government in Washington. Every where I go people are asking fundamental questions: Who can we trust? Is the media reporting the truth? What is happening to our country?
The Americans I have met love their country. They believe deeply in its promise, our values and our principles. But they know something is wrong and they want to take action. They want to do something to right our path. But they feel Washington isn't listening. And as individuals, they lack the power to change the course those in Washington have put us on.
What they know is that somehow 7 trillion dollars of our country's wealth disappeared. Nearly 1 in 10 retired people have had to return to the workforce because they have lost their pensions. Young people are returning to live at home after graduating because they cannot find work.
Companies are leaving the country to avoid paying taxes, or to avoid paying people livable wages. And corporations are doing this with the support of the government and a political process in Washington that they rent -- if not own.
This was the fear that James Madison and Thomas Jefferson spoke of -- the fear that economic power would one day try to seize political power.
Theodore Roosevelt said it best, "Every special interest is entitled to justice full, fair and complete....but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench or to representation in any public office."
Today, our nation is in crisis. At home, this crisis manifests itself in this President's destruction of the idea of community. This President pushes forward an agenda and policies which divide us. He advocates economic polices which beggar the middle class and raise property taxes so that income taxes may be cut for those who ran Enron.
He divides us by race by using the word quota, which appeals to the worst in us by instilling fear that people of color might take our jobs or our places in the nation's best universities. Even the most conservative Supreme Court since the Dred Scott decision did not completely agree with the President's attack on diversity and community that includes all Americans.
He divides us by gender by attacking a woman's right to make her own health care decisions. And even by attacking young women's right to have the same athletic opportunities that young men do. He divides us by sexual orientation by supporting senators who have slandered gay Americans, and he appeals once again to the worst instincts within us, instead of that which is good in all Americans.
The tax cuts that are the radicals' weapon are not about tax cuts for working people. They are not even about tax cuts for millionaires. Instead, the tax cuts are designed to destroy Social Security, Medicare, our public schools and our public services through starvation and privatization.
Our President and too many in Washington are giving away our future so that we pass to our children not a flickering flame of freedom but the chain of insurmountable debt.
No parent would do this and America must not do this.
And so for me the long journey of a Presidential campaign has begun with the people I have met affecting me far more than any affect I may have had on them. And because of that, the reasons why I seek the Presidency have changed.
This campaign is about more than issue differences on health care, tax cuts, national security, jobs, the environment and our economy. It is about something as important as our children. It's about who we are as Americans.
Here are the words of John Winthrop: "We shall be as one. We must delight in each other, make other's conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always living before our eyes our Commission and Community in our work."
It is that ideal, the ideal of the American community, that we seek to restore.
An America where it is not enough for me to want health care for my family but the obligation, and responsibility of every one of us as American citizens to insure that each one of us has health care for our families.
An America where it is not enough for me to want good public schools and a better life for my children but an obligation, and a responsibility as citizens to insure that every child in America may go to a good public school and have the opportunity of a better life.
An America where it is not enough to protect my rights under the law but where it is a duty and an obligation for each of us as Americans to make sure every American is equal under the law.
An America where it is not enough to proclaim the words freedom, self-government, and democracy, but where it is a duty and a responsibility to participate together in common purpose with the sacrifice required of each of us to give those words meaning.
If September 11, 2001 taught America anything it is that we are stronger when we are beholden to each other as a national community, and weaker when we act only as individuals. That tragedy gave us an enormous opportunity to focus not only on our common peril, but also on our common dreams. The peril remains, but the dreams must be resurrected -- and they will be in a new American century.
President Kennedy challenged us to "pass the torch to a new generation of Americans." And so, we must issue that challenge again.
So too must we restore the deepest belief of our people that each generation has a responsibility to pass to our children a nation and a world that is better and stronger than the one that was passed to us.
As we experience the crisis of community at home, we are witnessing the effort to repudiate 225 years of American consensus on what our nation's place should be in the world.
Since the time of Thomas Paine and John Adams, our founders implored that we were not to be the new Rome. We are not to conquer and suppress other nations to submit to our will. We were to inspire them.
The idea of America using its power solely for its own ends is not consistent with the idealistic moral force the world has known for over two centuries.
We must rejoin the world community. America is far stronger as the moral and military leader of the world than we will ever be by relying solely on military power. We destroyed repressive communist regimes without firing a shot, not simply by having a strong military, but because we had a better ideal to show the world.
Every American President must and will take up arms in the defense of our nation. It is a solemn oath that cannot -- and will not -- be compromised.
But there is a fundamental difference between the defense of our nation and the doctrine of preemptive war espoused by this administration. The President's group of narrow-minded ideological advisors are undermining our nation's greatness in the world. They have embraced a form of unilateralism that is even more dangerous than isolationism.
This administration has shown disdain for allies, treaties, and international organizations alike.
In doing so they would throw aside our nation's role as the inspirational leader of the world the beacon of hope and justice in the interests of humankind. And instead, they would present our face to the world as a dominant power prepared to push aside any nation with which we do not agree.
Our foreign and military policies must be about America leading the world, not America against the world.
So how did we come to this point?
How is it that our leaders have abandoned our communities and repudiated our idealism and principles?
When confronted with a dedicated band of right wing ideologues, too many Americans have stopped participating, stopped voting, and stopped believing that they can change America.
And we in politics have not given our people a reason to vote or a reason to participate. We have slavishly spewed sound bites, copying each other while saying little. We raise millions of dollars and each year make lofty promises, while every year the struggles of ordinary Americans increase and fewer Americans vote. Our politicians, many of them good people, have been paralyzed by their fear of losing office. Our leaders have developed a vocabulary which has become meaningless to the American people.
There is no greater example of this than a self-described conservative Republican president who creates the greatest deficits in history of America. Or a President who boasts of a Clear Skies Initiative which allows far more pollution into our air. Or a President who co-opts from an advocacy organization the phrase "No Child Left Behind," while paying for irresponsible tax cuts by cutting children's health care.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
The history of our nation is clear: At every turn when there has been an imbalance of power, the truth questioned, or our beliefs and values distorted, the change required to restore our nation has always come from the bottom up from our people.
And so, while the President raises $4 million more tonight to maintain his agenda, we will not be silent.
He calls his biggest fundraisers Rangers and Pioneers.
But today, we stand together with thousands in Burlington, Vermont and tens of thousands more, standing with us right now in every state in this nation. And we call ourselves, simply, Americans.
And we stand today in common purpose to take our country back.
I am a doctor and I was proud to be Governor of Vermont:
where we balanced our budgets
where we made sure that nearly every child in our state had health care coverage
where we are stewards of our land and natural resources
where, on the first Tuesday of March every year, Vermonters gather to make decisions on matters vital to our communities
where we hold these truths to be self evident: that all are created equal and are endowed with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness
And, where we, like all Americans, love our country and want to see her flag stand for freedom and justice for all. That flag is not the property of the either party, it belongs to all of us.
It is from this place that the rest of the journey of this campaign continues. We will ask the American people to participate again in our common future. I ask all Americans, regardless of party, to meet with me across the nation to come together in common cause to forge a new American century. Help us in this quest to return greatness, and return high moral purpose to the United States of America.
We are the great grassroots campaign of the modern era, built from mouse pads, shoe leather and hope.
Like MoveOn.org we seek to build a community of millions and strengthen the voice of the people.
And like the founders of our republic, we seek change.
The great lie spoken by politicians on platforms like this is the cry of "elect me and I will solve all your problems."
The truth is the future of our nation rests in your hands, and not in mine.
Abraham Lincoln said that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from this earth.
But this President has forgotten ordinary people.
You have the power to reclaim our nation's destiny.
You have the power to rid Washington of the politics of money.
You have the power to make right as important as might.
You have the power to give Americans a reason to vote again.
You have the power to restore our nation to fiscal sanity and bring jobs back to our people.
You have the power to fulfill Harry Truman's dream and bring health insurance to every American.
You have the power to give us a foreign policy consistent with American values again.
You have the power to take back the Democratic Party.
You have the power to take our country back.
And we have the power to take the White House back in 2004.
June 23, 2003
Source: Howard Dean for America
December 9, 2003
Al Gore Endorses Dean for President
Former vice president praises grassroots campaign
NEW YORK--During a breakfast here today, former Vice President Al Gore endorsed Democratic presidential candidate former Governor Howard Dean, M.D., citing his vision for the country and the Democratic party, as well as his grassroots-based quest to take back the White House.
Speaking at the National Black Theater's Institute for Action Arts in Harlem this morning, Gore praised Governor Dean's grassroots-based campaign and the broad coalition that Dean is building to help Democrats retake the White House in 2004. Following is an edited transcript of Gore's remarks and Governor Dean's remarks:
"...Howard Dean really is the only candidate who has been able to inspire at the grassroots level all over this country the kind of passion and enthusiasm for democracy and change and transformation of America that we need in this country. We need to remake the Democratic Party; we need to remake America; we need to take it back on behalf of the people of this country. So I'm very proud and honored to endorse Howard Dean to be the next president of the United States of America," Gore began.
"Democracy is a team sport. And I want to do everything I can to convince the -- anybody that is interested in my judgment about who, among these candidates has the best chance to win and the best chance to lead our country in the right direction. I want to do everything I can to convince you to get behind Howard Dean and let's make this a successful campaign as a group. It is about all of us and all of us need to get behind the strongest candidate. Now I respect the prerogative of the voters and the caucuses and the primaries. I'm just one person, but I'm offering my judgment and I'm also going to say one other thing here," Gore continued.
"Years ago, former president Ronald Reagan said in the Republican Party that there ought to be an 11th commandment, speak no ill of another Republican. We're Democrats and we may not find that kind of commandment as accessible, but to the extent that we can recognize the stakes in America today, I would urge all of the other candidates and campaigns to keep their eyes on the prize. Here we are in Harlem. We need to keep our eyes on the prize. This nation cannot afford to have four more years of a Bush-Cheney administration. We can't afford to be divided among ourselves to the point that we lose sight of how important it is for America. What is going on in this Bush White House today is bad for our country. And it's slowly beginning to sink into more and more people out there. And we don't have the luxury of fighting among ourselves to the point where we seriously damage our ability to win on behalf of the American people this time around," Gore said.
"Now, one other thing, I've spent a long time thinking about national security and national defense. And I've heard a lot of folks who, in my opinion, made a judgment about the Iraq war that was just plain wrong, saying that Howard Dean's decision to oppose the Iraq war calls his judgment on foreign policy into question. Excuse me. He was the only major candidate who made the correct judgment about the Iraq war. And he had the insight and the courage to say and do the right thing. And that's important," Gore said.
"Because those judgments, that basic common sense is what you want in a president. Our country has been weakened in our ability to fight the war against terror because of the catastrophic mistake that the Bush administration made in taking us into war in Iraq. It was Osama bin Laden that attacked us, not Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein is a bad guy and he's better off not in power, we're all better off, but it was a mistake to get us into a quagmire over there, so don't tell me that because Howard Dean was the only major candidate who was right about that war, that that somehow calls his judgment into question on foreign policy, so whether it is inspiring enthusiasm at the grassroots and promising to remake the Democratic Party as a force for justice and progress and good in America, whether it is a domestic agenda that gets our nation back on track or whether it is protecting us against terrorists and strengthening our nation in the world, I have come to the conclusion that in a field of great candidates, one candidate clearly now stands out, and so I'm asking all of you to join in this grassroots movement to elect Howard Dean President of the United States," Gore said.
Governor Dean thanked Gore for his endorsement:
"Mr. Vice President, I want to thank you for your generous and thoughtful words.... I thank Al Gore for his extraordinary leadership in this party in the last couple of years. I told him, I say what I think, for better or worse, I told him the two best speeches in this campaign were given by somebody who is not running for president and that was his March and September speech about the war and about foreign policy.
"We have needed a strong, steady hand in this party, and I appreciate Al's willingness to stand up and be one. This campaign is not about Howard Dean going to the White House. This campaign is about us going to the White House, all of us, and I look forward to the day on January 20th, 2005, when we do what Andrew Jackson, another great Tennessean did, we will open the doors to the White House and let the American people back in," Governor Dean concluded.
Gore, a former U.S. senator from Tennessee and two-term vice president under President Clinton, was the Democratic nominee for president and won the popular vote in 2000.
Following this morning's breakfast, the two men will travel to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for a rally before Dean heads to Durham, New Hampshire, for tonight's candidates' debate.
Source: Howard Dean for America
February 18, 2004
Governor Dean's Remarks Today`
BURLINGTON--Governor Howard Dean, M.D. made the following remarks today:
My thanks to all of you who got this crowd together in about three hours notice. I appreciate that very much. And my thanks to an awful lot of people.
But my particular thanks to Vermont. I started this two years ago -- and I see Governor Kunin is here in the crowd, so I'm going to tell a story that she's going to appreciate in particular, but all of you will, because it's a local story.
The first thing I ever did is I went down to a chamber of commerce meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, I was invited down. So I went down with a few brochures in my back pocket. And I got down there and gave the speech, and then they asked questions, as they do at rotaries. It's a lot like going to a rotary or chamber here.
And the last question was somebody who got up and said this. They said, Well, Governor, you have a great business climate in Vermont. It's just terrific. And the one here in New Hampshire stinks. Can you send your people down here to tell us what to do? I thought you'd like that.
(LAUGHTER)
That's an inside joke for those of you who are from Vermont. We love to hear people talk about New Hampshire that way.
(LAUGHTER)
Well, actually, I did pretty well in New Hampshire.
We did have a -- have had a real record of achievement in this state: creating jobs, providing health insurance, investing in children, balancing budgets.
And I said when I left the governor's office that if the rest of this country were like Vermont this country would be much better off.
(APPLAUSE)
And what we set out to do was make the rest of the country more like Vermont. And so far we haven't succeeded, but we have a long way to go. What we did show is that by standing up and telling the truth and not worrying about polls and focus groups, you could actually get support in this country from voters.
(APPLAUSE)
We started the campaign office in Burlington. There are an awful lot of people -- and some of you should raise your hands -- who drove up here, unrequested, unknowing; showed up, no salary. Finally, we grew in to you and we were able to pay you a little something. But we really appreciate people from all over the country, particularly young people.
One quarter of all our people who gave us money were under 30 years old in this campaign. I have not seen that happen since I was under 30 years old, and that was a long time ago.
(APPLAUSE)
This has been a campaign that has been extraordinarily different. The new approach, planting seeds on the Internet, strengthening grassroots, face-to-face obtaining support from hundreds of thousands of small donors, all these steps can revitalize our democracy and return power to ordinary Americans.
All of us have done these things together. We have exposed the dangerous, radical nature of George W. Bush's agenda.
(APPLAUSE)
We have demonstrated to other Democrats that it is a far better strategy to stand up against the right wing agenda of George W. Bush than it is to cooperate with it.
(APPLAUSE)
We have led this party back to considering what its heart and soul is, although there is a lot of work left to do.
I am very proud of all of you and very grateful to all of you for your extraordinary hard work. To the staff who've worked exceptionally hard, very long hours -- worse than mine, sometimes...
(LAUGHTER)
... for all of you who traveled around the country, showed up at our office, worked around the clock, because they believed in what we were doing, thousands of Americans who have given generously of their time, in their states, because they believed in our cause.
I want to particularly thank all our congressional supporters, many of whom signed on with us when we were an asterisk in the polls, because they believed that it was the right thing to do for their country. There are people in Washington who are going to do the right thing in this party: stand up and be recognized and stand up for what's right with America, instead of being poll-driven. And believe me, we are going to support those people in September.
(APPLAUSE)
And in November. September, if they have a primary, and then in November. I want to thank the Service Employees International Union and the Painters. They stuck with me...
(APPLAUSE)
They stood with us when the others abandoned us and I am forever grateful to those people in the labor movement who stood up for what was right and not what was popular.
(APPLAUSE)
DEAN: I want to thank all the state and local officials who stood with us, many of them, like Governor Kunin and others, who went to other states for us to represent us all over America.
I want to thank the Dean's List. These are the big donors. We didn't have a lot of big donors, but the ones that we had signed on with us when we were nowhere. We were an asterisk in the polls. They did not do what the establishment of the Democratic Party did. They followed their hearts and stood up for what was right, and they changed this party, too.
(APPLAUSE)
I want to thank the 300,000 small donors that decided that they wanted their country back. And we are now in the process of taking our country back thanks to you.
(APPLAUSE)
I want to thank all the people in every state who heard our message and supported us. And I, of course, finally and most importantly want to thank my wonderful wife, who finally, after 12 years, made her political debut in Wisconsin, Iowa, New Hampshire.
(APPLAUSE)
I also...
AUDIENCE: Judy! Judy! Judy!
DEAN: I also want to thank Judy for at least promoting the debate that's needed to happen in this country for a long time about whether a woman needs to gaze adoringly at her husband or follow her own career.
(APPLAUSE)
Now I lost my place.
(LAUGHTER)
DEAN: I am no longer actively pursuing the presidency. We will, however, continue to build a new organization, using our enormous grassroots network, to continue the effort to transform the Democratic Party and to change our country. And I...
(APPLAUSE)
And speaking to all of you and all of the hundreds of thousands of people around America who are going to get this word, either by the establishment media...
(LAUGHTER)
... or the Internet, I have some things that I specifically want to ask of our supporters.
First, keep active in the primary. Sending delegates to the convention only continues to energize our party. Fight on in the caucuses. We are on the ballots. Use your network to send progressive delegates to the convention in Boston. We are not going away. We are staying together, unified -- all of us.
(APPLAUSE)
Secondly, Dean for America will be converted into a new grassroots organization. We need everybody to stay involved. We are -- as we always have -- going to look at what you had to say about which directions we ought to be going in, and what we ought to continue to do together. We are determined to keep this entire organization as vibrant as it has been through this campaign. There are a lot of ways to make change. We are leaving one track, but we are going on another track that will take back America for ordinary people again.
(APPLAUSE)
Third, there have been a lot of people who have decided to run for office locally as a result of this campaign.
We want to encourage you out there in the grassroots effort, run for office, support candidates like you who run for office, and we will use this enormous organization to support you as you run so we will change the face of democracy so that it represents ordinary Americans once again; government that will not be bought and sold.
(APPLAUSE)
Let me be clear, I will not run as an independent or third party candidate and I urge my supporters not to be tempted to support any effort by another candidate.
The bottom line is that we must beat George W. Bush in November whatever it takes.
(APPLAUSE)
I will support the nominee of our party. I will do everything I can to beat George W. Bush. I urge you to do the same. But we will not be above in this organization of letting our nominee know that we expect them to adhere to the standards that this organization has set for decency, honesty, integrity and standing up for ordinary American working people.
(APPLAUSE)
AUDIENCE: Take back Congress!
(APPLAUSE)
DEAN: Well, we're going to take back Congress, but we're going to take the White House, too.
AUDIENCE: We still believe, Howard!
DEAN: Believe in yourself and we're all together, we can believe in ourselves. Let me just say something to the younger folks here -- those of us who do not have my hair color -- one of the advantages of age -- and they're less than I thought there were when I was 25...
(LAUGHTER)
... is that you get to see things come around a second or third time. And one of the things that I realized a long time ago is that change is very difficult. There is enormous institutional resistance to change in this country. We have seen that in this campaign as we literally terrified people sitting in their salons in Georgetown that they might have to look for work someplace else if we ever won.
(APPLAUSE)
It is natural for people to resist, but it is also inevitable that we will win.
(APPLAUSE)
DEAN: Change is difficult. You cannot expect people with great privileges taken at the expense of ordinary working people to surrender them lightly. But the history of humanity is that determined people will overcome obstacles. And we will overcome the problems that this country is facing as a result of George W. Bush and as a result of a Washington establishment that has forgotten who sent them there.
(APPLAUSE)
Some of you have been on the road with me or have seen the speeches have heard this before, but it's true. We have been here before in this country. When William McKinley was president, enormous trusts were put together which made it impossible for ordinary Americans to start their own business, make any money without enormous pressure from those trusts, which destroyed their business.
Teddy Roosevelt came along, busted up the trusts and made it possible to earn a living for ordinary Americans and small businesses again.
Under Harding and Coolidge and Hoover, Calvin Coolidge said, The business of America is business, but forgot that human beings are not meant to be cogs in an enormous government corporate machine; that we are spiritual people who need connections and have to have community again.
Franklin Roosevelt came along and took America back for ordinary working people again.
(APPLAUSE)
My favorite, however, is this one. In 1824, John Quincy Adams, the son of a one-term president, John Adams...
(LAUGHTER)
... beat Andrew Jackson of Tennessee in an election where Andrew Jackson received more votes.
It was decided in Congress by one vote, electing John Quincy Adams as president.
In 1828, four years later, John Quincy Adams became the one-term son of a one-term president.
(APPLAUSE)
Change is hard work. Change does not happen simply because you go to a rally and simply because you make phone calls -- and I know how hard everybody here has worked. But change is a process that you can never give up on because change is the state of America and change is the state of humankind.
So we will continue to fight. This is the end of phase one of this fight, but the fight will go on, and we will be together in that fight.
We will continue to bring our message of hope and change to the American people.
We will speak out. We will fight on. We will continue to stand up against the dangerous foreign policy which weakens our security, and stand up against this president who weakens our civil rights.
We will continue to stand up against special interest that prevent change. And we will stand for America's working families for jobs and health care, investment in our children, the chance of all Americans to pursue their dreams.
We will continue to stand up against the divisive policies of the far right. We will no longer be divided by race. We will no longer be divided by gender. We will no longer be divided by sexual orientation.
We will no longer be divided by religion. We will no longer be divided by income. And we will no longer be divided by George W. Bush in the White House.
(APPLAUSE)
And now that the campaign is stopped, I'm going to say something that all of you have heard me say before.
But I want you to think about it now because now is the most important time that you have heard it. And this is the real message of this campaign and you'll hear it in a different way because I am no longer a candidate.
The biggest lie that people like me tell people like you at election time is that, If you vote for me, I'll solve your problems. The truth is the power is in your hands, not mine.
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 us stand up for what's right again.
Allow us to fulfill the dream of Harry Truman in 1948 that he laid out where we would no longer be the last industrial country on the face of the Earth without health insurance. Allow us to stand up again for the rights to organize for ordinary men and women. Allow us to stand again for the principles of equal rights under the law for every single American.
You have the power to take our country back so that the flag of the United States of America no longer is the exclusive property of John Ashcroft and Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh and Jerry Falwell; that it belongs to all of us again.
(APPLAUSE)
And together we have the power to take back in the White House in 2004 and that is exactly what we're going to do. Thank you very much.
Source: Howard Dean for America
February 18, 2004
A Beginning not an End
Today my candidacy may come to an end—but our campaign for change is not over.
I want to thank each and every person who has supported this campaign. Over the last year, you have reached out to neighbors, friends, family and colleagues—building one American at a time the greatest grassroots campaign presidential politics has ever seen. I will never forget the work and the heart that you put into our campaign.
In the coming weeks, we will be launching a new initiative to continue the campaign you helped begin. Please continue to come to www.deanforamerica.com for updates and news as our new initiative develops. There is much work still to be done, and today is not an end—it is just the beginning.
This Party and this country needs change, and you have already begun that process. I want you to think about how far we have come. The truth is: change is tough. There is enormous institutional pressure in our country against change. There is enormous institutional pressure in Washington against change, in the Democratic Party against change. Yet, you have already started to change the Party and together we have transformed this race. Along the way, we’ve engaged hundreds of thousands of new Americans in the political process, as witnessed by this year’s record participation in the primaries and caucuses.
The fight that we began can and must continue. Although my candidacy for president may end today, the most important goal remains defeating George W. Bush in November, and I hope that you will join me in doing everything we can to support the Democrats this fall. From the earliest days of our campaign, I have said that the power to change Washington rests not in my hands, but in yours. Always remember, you have the power to take our country back.
Gov. Howard Dean M.D.
Source: Howard Dean for America