I am not a Deaniac. I only knew who Howard Dean was peripherally until the 'Dean Scream'. Suddenly, the media thrust Gov. Dean and his presidential campaign into a most unflattering spotlight.
I now knew who Gov. Dean was although I wouldn't actually hear the 'Dean Scream' for many more months since I tend to avoid the TV. By the time the presidential primary passed through Utah, it was clear that Senator John Kerry, not Gov. Dean, would be the Democratic Presidential nominee. This past Saturday I heard Gov. Dean, the newly elected DNC Chair, speak for the first time at Westminster College in Salt Lake City.
I arrived nearly two hours early, since seating was available on a first come first serve basis, but even then a line had already begun to form. My friend and I settled in for a wait, since they weren't to begin seating until fifteen minutes before Gov. Dean's scheduled time to speak. Not surprisingly, politics dominated the line conversation and time passed by quickly. At 11:45 they opened the doors and we began filing in. Our seats were pretty much in the middle of the auditorium and based on my notes, here is what Gov. Dean had to say.
First, Gov. Dean mentioned that over seven hundred people had shown up to hear him speak (new numbers say over 500 but afterward I heard the count was near 1000) and two overflow rooms had been set up. Gov. Dean said he doesn't expect Utah to swing the next presidential election but he said it would come down to the "Rocky Mountain Swing". He predicts that the Rocky Mountain States will win the Democrats the White House in 2008. To make this vision a reality he brought up the new organizational aspects of the DNC. That we need to have a presence in all 50 states and to do this each state will have 3 or 4 people on the DNC payroll for this purpose.
He pointed out that this new organization of the DNC is not solely directed toward the presidency, governorship, or congresses. Rather, in states similar to Utah we need to elect more people like Peter Corroon (Democratic SLCounty Mayor). We need to elect Democrats to the school board, to our county councils, to our low level local offices to begin to effect change in this state. Gov. Dean used an analogy to emphasize the importance of achieving democratic gains at the local level. Soon after winning the governorship in Vermont, he traveled to Mississippi to speak. He mentioned that while there he learned that the only obstacle preventing Governor Haley Barbour from cutting off health care to seniors and young children in that state were the (Democratic) members of the legislature.
Gov. Dean said that we, as Democrats, have a moral obligation in this. We have a moral obligation to take care of our young and our old citizens. We have a moral obligation to leave our children with less debt than we began with. As governor of Vermont he inherited the largest deficit in the history of that state from the previous Republican governor and proceeded to balance the budget. We have a moral obligation to let people know; you cannot trust Republicans with taxpayers' money. "I will not be lectured about morality from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, or Karl Rove," he said. The Republicans say they want smaller government and then they pass the NCLB act, which takes schools out of the states hands and entrusts them to the federal government. Republicans say that Democrats are pro-abortion. We are not pro-abortion. Unlike Republicans, who believe that Delay makes that decision for women, we believe that women have the right to make their own decisions about their reproductive healthcare.
First, we are Americans (and some other group second) and we will not let Republicans divide us. When he was speaking during his presidential campaign, Gov. Dean mentioned meeting an eighty year old man. He was a veteran; he'd been at the siege on Normandy. He came up to Gov. Dean and thanked him for the civil union bill that had been passed in Vermont. Gov. Dean said he'd mentioned this gentleman's son or grandson but the man set him straight (so to speak). Gov. Dean said with some humor that, like most straight men, it never occurred to him that an 80 year old man would be gay. Here was a man who had served his country and put his life on the line and he deserved the same rights that all Americans are entitled to.
This brought him to his next point. Gov. Dean said we were told that Bush won because of values voters. He didn't. Bush won on fear. Bush (and the Republican party) taps into the fears of the American people and that's how they win. In 2000, he mentioned 'quotas' a code word used to instill the fear that minorities would 'steal' your job. In 2004 he forced the wedge issues of gay marriage and abortion. The most riled Gov. Dean seemed to me was when he mentioned the 11 states that had ballots on gay marriage. He said that 49 states already had laws on the books that marriage was between a man and a woman and those ballot measures never should have been allowed.
Gov. Dean asked us, "What will they use in 2006?" Illegal immigration. It's already begun. Schwarzeneggar has said he will invite the minutemen to California, to patrol the borders there. Illegal immigration will be presented as the threat to the American people. Gov. Dean points out that after Vincente Fox was elected, Bush went to Mexico to speak with him. He said it was a great opportunity, the first in nearly seventy years for improving our relations with Mexico. The reason that Mexicans attempt to cross the border is not because they don't like their country, it's because they don't have a job there. They need work. Gov. Dean pointed out that working to make Mexico a stronger economy benefits America because then we have less illegal immigrants. Then Mexico abstained from taking a position on Iraq and G. Bush snubbed President Fox for over a year. He wouldn't speak to him. We can't have this petulance in our government. His (Bush's) actions hurt Mexico and hurt America. Gov. Dean pointed out that Democrats talk from here (gesturing to his head) but we need to learn to talk from here (where he placed his hand over his heart). We need to talk about our issues, our beliefs. We need an honest and clean government. We need election machines that allow for a hand recount. We need real campaign finance reform. We need real individual civil liberties. We need health care.
Gov. Dean said that universal healthcare is a business proposition. He used GM's recent announcement that they were opening new plants in Windsor (Canada) just across the U.S. border rather than in Michigan because even though the taxes were higher in Canada, in the end it was cheaper for GM to move there because Canada's health care system saved them money. Speaking on social security, we need to know that I'm paying into the system to help take care of you, and that you will be helping to take care of your children. There needs to be some idea that we are responsible for each other, otherwise this country won't work.
We need to organize, we need to raise money, we need to knock on doors and talk with people who disagree with us. Gov. Dean ended with a story. He had attended a fundraiser when he was running for president. The woman sponsoring this event had former and present politicians and ambassadors there. Her thirty year old daughter, an evangelical Christian and teacher from Texas, was also there. At one point, Gov. Dean said, they'd begun talking about the separation of church and state and how important this was to our government. He said that she interrupted and said: "Gov. Dean I do not agree with you. Our country was founded on Christian ideals and those Christian ideals should be reflected in our government." Well, he said, you could've heard a pin drop and after an awkward silence everyone kind of directed conversation away from that topic. At the end of the evening when everyone was leaving he was saying goodbye to this woman's daughter and asked her, how she could support him for president. They obviously had very different ideas about government. She said for two reasons. First she had a child with polycystic kidney disease and not only could she not get health coverage for her sick child but because of her child's illness, all of her children would be ineligible for health care. And second that if something happens to her family, her community, or her country he wouldn't be responding out of politics but from his convictions. And that's how we will take back our country. We will begin by standing up for what we believe in. We will no longer let Republicans tell Americans what we (Democrats) believe in. We will do it ourselves.
Applause was interspersed throughout Gov. Dean's speech and afterward there was a small group of college Republicans there to protest H. Dean. They held signs saying, "Howard Dean's values are not America's values!" Some attendees were already getting into heated arguments with them. Interestingly, a woman I attended with (an amazing woman who has run for office locally as well as for positions in the local party) approached them with me.
"So tell me," she asked, "what are Howard Dean's values?" They didn't seem to understand the question so she rephrased it. "You say that Howard Dean's values are not America's values; what are his values?"
A protestor handed us a half sheet of paper with quotes on it. My friend didn't even look at it and tucked it away. She asked her the same question again. The first comment out of the young women's mouth was gay marriage. My friend asked if they'd heard Howard speak which obviously they hadn't. Gov. Dean had made a point of saying during his speech that if you were unwilling to offer marriage, you must offer equality under the law to gay and lesbian couples. (I don't agree with Gov. Dean on this point; I think it must be marriage or the government should exit from the marriage business entirely-there is no separate but equal). The protestor responded that marriage is between a man and a woman. Not being the type to keep my mouth shut, I jumped in and said, "So, you're against equality?" She argued that that wasn't true. I explained to her that the government conferred legal benefits upon married couples, benefits that everyone should have a right to under the law. This segued into abortion, another hot button issue.
Looking back, I can see that I was becoming strident. Lucky for me, my friend was still there. She interrupted and calmly told a story. Her story. She ran for a local legislature seat. Throughout her campaign she knocked on doors and talked with people. Gay marriage and abortion didn't often come up; instead their number one issue was the quality of education for their children. Their second issue was health insurance. She pointed out that the current education system is unfair to minorities and low-income families. That the children of first year teachers in Utah are eligible for the school lunch program because they are paid so little. That in many schools here the student teacher ratio was sometimes 30, or 40 or even 50 children to one teacher. That's not fair, she said. The young man there interrupted us and said that's not true. Where he went to school it was 15 kids to a teacher. My friend asked him, "Where did you go to school?" After his answer, she smiled and explained that if he would look outside of that school (she rattled of school names and stats which I don't recall) he would see a different picture. The young woman jumped to his defense. She'd attended high school in Brooklyn, an inner city school and her classrooms were never that full. My friend pointed out that New York might commit more money to education. What was their tax contribution per student? The protestor didn't know. In Utah, the tax contribution per student is the lowest in the nation.
My friend then launched into the flat tax. Who would be hurt by the flat tax? I would she said, pointing to herself. You would, but the person making over 100,000 a year. He would pay less. And that's not fair. At this point, two other young Republicans had joined in and a different young woman actually stepped in and agreed with her. She said that her family doesn't make much money. That her father was a high school teacher and what we really needed was a progressive tax code. My friends' eyes lit up and she briefly made eye contact with the two protestors she'd been speaking to this entire time. "So," she said, "your father is a teacher. Tell me how much of his own money does he use to buy supplies for his classes?" The young girl didn't just roll her eyes; she rolled her entire head and said, "Tons! I can't believe how much he spends on it." My friend turned back to the others and said, "That's not fair." At this point, we had to leave and she told them so but before we left she held up the piece of paper that the girl had first handed to us with quotes of Gov. Dean's.
"This," she said, "this doesn't encourage dialogue. This is a series of quotes, most likely taken out of context. What we just had," she said, gesturing between us, "that's dialogue. That's where we can listen to each other's point of view and take a step back and say, huh, you know what, you're right. I was wrong and you're right. What you're doing with this isn't benefiting yourselves or us. It's great that you're involved but we need to encourage less argument and more dialogue. That's what this should be about."
We stepped away at that point and I realized, to my shame, I had done exactly what Gov. Dean had said we would not let them do. I had allowed them to divide us. Gay marriage and abortion are divisive, 'hot button' issues. I recall at one point gesturing to the first young woman, as I said, "You don't even know my name! And you're going to tell me that I can't make my own health care decisions. You don't know me, or what my health situation is!" These issues are divisive because they eliminate reasoning and instead, encourage a visceral reaction.
I honestly believe that the three protestors we spoke with learned something that day. I like to say that because when we ended the mostly silent young man asked my friend if she was currently running for office (she's not). However, I learned something as well. I look back and can easily see that I'm the one who jumped in with a very divisive statement (So, you're against equality?) No matter how I intended that statement to come out, it's an inflammatory, blanket statement. One that is certainly not conducive to dialogue but instead caused each of us to 'dig in our heels' on our position. After listening to Gov. Dean's speech and speaking with those protestors, and listening to my friend, I learned that saying we will not let them divide us is much easier said than done.