Saturday, February 3, 2007

DNC Winter Meetings: Candidate Speech Summaries

This past weekend the Democratic National Committee held it's winter meetings. Each of the major candidates gave a speech. Wesley Clark also spoke (how much longer can he afford to stay undeclared?). Each link below is to Hotline who did a fun summary of each speech with categories such as standing ovation, suck-ups to Howard Dean, and cliches.

Chris Dodd
Barack Obama
Wesley Clark
John Edwards
Hillary Clinton
Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, and Tom Vilsack

Sounds to me like Bill Richardson came out ahead by playing to the crowd. Richardson does have a lion's share of great experience. If he can start to convince folks from the DNC to back him, it could make things interesting. Remember that each DNC member gets a vote to cast at the convention which makes them important allies. It was at this very winter meeting four years ago that Howard Dean made a big splash by beginning his speech by saying:

What I want to know is why in the world the Democratic party leadership is supporting the president's unilateral attack on Iraq.


What I want to know is why are Democratic party leaders supporting tax cuts. The question is not how big the tax cut should be, the question should be can we afford a tax cut at all with the largest deficit in the history of this country.


What I want to know is why we're fighting in Congress about the Patient's Bill of Rights when the Democratic party ought to be standing up for health care for every single American man, woman, and child in this country.


What I want to know is why our folks are voting for the president's No Child Left Behind bill that leaves every child behind, every teacher behind, every school board behind, and every property tax payer behind.


I'm Howard Dean and I'm here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic party.


Sigh. I am still waiting for a "Howard Dean" type moment from the current candidates. I really question if there is that much fire in any of these candidates, but only time will tell.

Oh yeah...Al Gore's former campaign manager strongly hints that Gore may just be biding his time before entering the Presidential race.

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