Howard Dean on values and reaching out

As Howie in Seattle has noted here, Howard Dean has admitted that he made a mistake when he said in an interview on CBN that the 2004 Democratic platform said that marriage is between a man and a woman. (Thanks to floridagal for providing a link to the video.) But, as Corinne commented at Kos, I'd like to see someone, anyone, travel as much as he does, give as many interviews and speeches as he does, and retain an extraordinary amount of information as he does and not screw up at some point. Enough.

Indeed. He misspoke. I shudder to think how many times I do that in a given day. And in this case, I can imagine that it *seemed* to Howard Dean that the Democrats wanted to be very clear about their non-support for same-sex marriage in the 2004 election, given this:

Dean recounts that one of the people Clinton called was a Dean supporter who described how the former president said that Dean "had forfeited his right to run for president." That was because, Dean writes, he had signed a law creating civil unions for gay and lesbian couples and Clinton believed Dean couldn't be elected as a result.

Also, as I noted in the comments of the previous thread, here in Ohio, I've seen the anti-gay crap *work*. Getting people riled up about the notion that "those Democrats don't share our values--they want to bring gay marriage to our state" is such a tried and true tactic, it was even used to get people to vote against ballot/election reform amendments.

Demetrius got robocalled before the election in which the Reform Ohio Now Amendments were on the ballot. He's gotten calls and mailings from the Republican party ever since he voted for McCain in the primary of 2000. He was encouraged by whoever to vote against the amendments because they are backed by those homo-loving abortionists. From out of state. Something like that. Not those exact words, but that's the effect they were going for. Booga-booga!

Here's an example of the kind of ad that was run against the *election reform* amendments that were put to a vote in November of 2005.


With all of this talk about Howard Dean doing something so nutty as reaching out to people who watch CBN, I was reminded of some of what he said when he spoke at an event in Columbus this past January....

"But what we really need you to do is reach out and talk to those who didn't vote with us the last time. People who disagree with us. Because the truth is, we have something in common with a lot of those folks. Evangelical Christians. People think they're all Republicans--it's not true. Because their values include making sure no child goes to bed hungry at night. A lot of Republicans are cutting school lunch programs. Their values include not leaving more debt to our children than we found ourselves. The Republicans are the largest borrow and spend thrift group I've ever seen. The largest deficit in the history of the country and going up. Evangelical Christians believe it is immoral to treat the earth that God gave us the way that this administration is. That's something that we have in common.

In fact, there's a lot that Americans have in common. You know what the greatest sin of George Bush and his administration is? It's not the Iraq war. And it's not even the enormous budget deficit which going to hurt us for years and years. It's the fact that he has chosen to deliberately divide America in order to win elections. To separate ourselves from each other. He's done more harm to this country, even than his lame-brained foreign policy, his incompetence in terms of the budget, by being willing to use divisive tactics to win elections. We can't do that any more, and when we get back in power we're not going to do that, because it's bad for America. (Applause.)

So I need you to reach out to people who you maybe don't know very well and who don't agree with you. Now, I'm not talking about the hard right, the intolerance of the hard right. But I am talking about a lot of the people who vote for them. Because, guess what? They're not that different from us. I'm going to tell you one quick story and then I want to get on to finish this up.

When Katrina hit, there were a lot of people at the DNC who had relatives and friends there and so forth. It was a very upsetting time as you can imagine. It was upsetting even for those who didn't know anybody there, to see how incompetent the federal government was in dealing with it. It was a really bad time at the Democratic National Committee. So we shut down our fundraising operations because we didn't think it was proper to raise money for politics while that kind of thing was going on. And we said to everybody, we will pay your salary for three weeks if you feel like you need to go down to the Gulf and help out.

So, a bunch of people did, including two young women who work in our finance department. And they went down there and they got teamed up with five ladies from the Southern Baptist Conference. Now, for those of you who know anything about the Southern Baptist, they're a somewhat conservative, to put it mildly, denomination, who often have preachers who preach that it's a sin to vote for Democrats. So, these two young ladies from the finance department sort of had a debate among themselves, "Should we tell them who we work for?" And they decided they would, in the interests of standing up for who they were. So they fessed up that they worked for the Democratic National Committee, and they sort of got this reaction, and thought that maybe they were thinking the word "Satan" when they heard that pronouncement. But everyone got along pretty well, and they were handing out food and water to people who really needed it. At the end of the time, one of the women said, "You know, we're all here together, and we're just trying to do things for our fellow people.

Now, I'll tell you why this is important. About a year from now, I can tell you that when these ladies from the Southern Baptist Convention go back to their home churches, some pastor in that church is going to stand up and say it's a sin to vote for a Democrat. And they're going to think back to the two young women who worked for the Democratic National Committee and say to themselves, "Now, wait a minute. I know two Democrats who work for the Democratic party. We were all in this together when we worked together." Personal experience trumps what the pastor tells you, and personal experience even trumps what your parents tell you.

That's why I want you to reach across the aisle and talk to people who didn't vote the way you did, but they are good, decent people who want to do the right thing for their country. Yeah, we won't agree on everything. But if they come to know you, they're going to listen to you more than they're going to listen to me, more than they're going to listen to Bill Clinton or John Kerry, or certainly George Bush. Because your point of view is going to be from somebody they've worked with, and they trust and they know that they have something in common with."

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