SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: You know I know a thing or two about governors from small states who think they have what it takes to be the president of the United States.  They start with no money, nobody knows thier names and the polls don't give them percentage points, they get asterisks.  Well Howard Dean began this year in that situation.  What he did have was passion, commitment and the willingness to take up semi-permanent residence in the Hawkeye State.

I first encountered Gov. Dean in the early 1993 as an ally in our quest for a fair and equitable health care system.  As a physician-politician he understands both the patient's need and the general public's need.  And in the last months I've watched as he's pounded the pavement across this state and country.  He's tirelessly taken his campaign to every diner, every forum, every living room on the campaign trail; tonight he joins us here.  Ladies and gentlemen, Howard Dean.

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GOV. DEAN: Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you very much.  Thank you.  Thank you.   Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you very much.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  This is probably coming out of my time allotment.  All right already.  Thank you.  Let me, let me say thank you to all of you that are here.

I remember a year ago the J-J Dinner.  Boy, Gordon Fisher, you and your staff sure have changed J-J since the last time I was here.  I remember a year ago we really were an asterisk at the polls.  We had three employees and about $100,000 in the bank.  And thanks to you and people like you all over this country, we raise $15 million in the last quarter.  That's a lot of money, but the most important thing is not that we raised all that money--because George Bush has got three times as much as we do--the most important thing is the way we raised it.

Two hundred thousand, two hundred thousand people giving an average of $77 apiece.  And as you know, as you know one quarter of all the people who gave money to our campaign were under 30 years old.  And what you're going to see, what you're going to see in the Iowa caucuses on January 19th is an army of young people coming to vote for the first time in the caucuses and they're going to stay with this party generation after generation after generation.

What--I'm so proud of you for taking your country back.  And the way we're going to beat George Bush is to go and get two million people to give us a hundred dollars apiece.  That's how we're going to match George Bush.  And I'll tell you what I'll bet you there are two million people in this country who would gladly giver $100 for the privilege of buying a one-way bus ticket from the White House back to Crawford, Texas.

We, we need change in this country.  This is not just about electing a new president; this is about changing America.  This is about fighting back and standing up for what we believe in.

We lost an Iowan in Iraq yesterday with the Blackhawk helicopter crash.  We've lost over 500 young people, 400 young people, and we're there not only because of George W. Bush, we're there because we didn't fight hard enough to keep us out.

We've got, we've got George Bush and Tom DeLay trying to tell us how to run our school systems--No Child Left Behind.  That's not only George W. Bush, that's because we didn't fight hard enough to stop them.

We want, want jobs in this country again, but we're not going to get jobs by giving tax breaks to large corporations who move their headquarters to Bermuda and their jobs to China.  We're going to have jobs by helping small businesses of America because small businesses create 70 percent of the new jobs in this country and they keep their jobs right here in their communities.

And instead of giving 3 trillion worth of tax cuts to Ken Lay and the boys, $600 billion of interest costs and $2.4 trillion tax cuts to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, instead of doing that, we're going to invest in jobs, in roads and bridges and schools and renewable energy and mass transit and broadband telecommunications for every part of America including rural and urban America.  We need jobs in this country again.

We need new leadership in this country again.  We need to beat George Bush.  Now we're going to have a spirited primary.  We're going to have a lot of differences of opinion, but the truth is that any of us, any of us running for president would be a better president than George W. Bush.

When I--this election, this election is not only about changing presidents, it's not only about the three million jobs this president has lost, and it's not even about the loss of face that we've suffered because of going into Iraq.  This electionn is about what kind of a country we are.

When I was 21 years old, it was towards the end of the civil rights movement.  And America had paid a terrible price.  Martin Luther King had been killed.  Bobby Kennedy was dead.  Scores of other people who fought for equal righst, including four little girls in a Birmingham church lost their lives because of the fight to have equal rights under the law for every single American.

But it was also a time of great hope.  Medicare had passed.  Head Start passed.  The Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act.  The first African-American justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.  We felt like we were all in it together.  That if one of us was left behind the country wasn't as strong or as good as it could be or as it should be.  We were all in it together.  It wasn't enough for me as a citizen of Vermont or you as a citizen of Iowa to want good schools in Vermont or in Iowa, but you had a responsibility as an American citizen, I did too, to have good schools in Vermont and good schools in Iowa and good schools in Alabama and in Mississippi and Brownsville, Texas and Oklahoma and California too.  That was all of our responsibility as Americans.  We were all in it together.

That's what I mean we say we want our country back.  We want the country that we were promised when I was 21 years old, the country for all of us.  You know the president used the word quota five or six times during the evening news when he was talking about the University of Michigan affirmative action program.  Not only did the most conservative Supreme Court since the Dred Scott decision disagree with him, but the word quota is a race coded word which is deliberately designed to appeal to people's fears they're going to lose their job or their position in the university to a member of a community of color.  In other words the president played the race card and that alone entitles him to that one way buss ticket back to Crawford, Texas.

I am tired of being divided by race in this country.  I'm tired of being divided by gender when the president of the United States thinks he knows better than American women what kind of reproductive health care she ought to have.  I'm tired of being, I'm tired of being divided by sexual orientation when the president says what a fine judge Antonin Scalia would make or what a wonderful, inclusive Senator Rick Santorum is.

I want a president that's going to appeal to the very best in us and stop appealing to the very worst in us.

We want our country back, Mr. President.  The country for the 99 percent of us who didn't get that big tax cut.  Who got $304 while our property taxes and our tuitions wen up year after year after year.  There was no middle class tax cut, Mr. President.  We want to be able to send our kids to college again.  We want our jobs back again.  We want to globalize rules for cooperation; how about globalizing human rights and labor rights and environmental rights, Mr. President?  We want our country back, Mr. President.  The country for all Americans, Mr. President.

I tell you how we're going to beat George Bush.  We're going to give the 50 percent of Americans who've give up on voting a reason to vote again and let them be able to tell the difference between the Democratic and the Republican party.  And when three or four million new people to the polls that didn't vote in the last election or they voted for the third part.  We're going to have more votes not just for the presidency, we're gong to have more votes so that Iowa will have another Democratic congressman besides Leonard Boswell.  We're going to have more votes to Tom Harkin can have a junior Senator who's a Democrat.  We're going to have more votes for the Iowa House of Representatives.  We're going to have more votes for the Iowa State Senate.  We're going to elect Democrats all over America with $200 million raised from two million people $100 at a time, Mr. President, and you're going back to Crawford, Texas.

And this time Mr. President we're going to have more votes than you are and Mr. President this time the person with the most votes is going to the White House.

This election, this election is not about electing Howard Dean president of the United States.  This election is about electing us president of the United States.  We are all in this together and let me tell you what this election is about.

The biggest lie that's told by people like me to people like you at election time is if you vote for me, I'll solve all you problems.  The truth is the power to change this country 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 this party and make us stand for something again.  You have the power to take back this country so the flag of the United States of America does not belong to John Ashcroft and Rush Limbaugh and Jerry Falwell any more.  It belongs to every single one of us and together we have the powere to take back the White House in 2004.  And that is exactly what we're going to do.  Thank you very much.  Because you have the power.  You have the power.  You have the power.  You have the power.  You have the power.  You have the power.  You have the power.  You have the power.  You have the power.  You have the power.  You have the power.  You have the power.  You have the power.  You have the power.  Thank you very much.

[Music].

Copyright © 2003  Eric M. Appleman/Democracy in Action.