Reply #57: Bullcrap - Dean got a standing O from a diverse audience [View All]

[mandyky]

at the DNC winter meeting of 2003, it was only after Edwards and Sharpton piled on along with the clueless MSM that Dean's Confederate flag comments were blown way out of context.

Dean never embraced the CF, his point was to engage white Southerners and turn them into Democratic voters, by showing them they needed better schools and healthcare too.

<snip>

Let me tell you something else I'm going to do. One of the things that I thought was terrific about Bill Clinton was that when he became president in 1992, he said that his Cabinet would look like the rest of America. And he did it. And he did it.

I want all of our institutions of higher learning, our law schools, our medical schools, our best universities to look like the rest of America. And I thought...

I thought that one of the most despicable moments of this president's administration was three weeks ago, when on national prime-time television, he used the word ``quota'' seven times. The University of Michigan does not now have quotas. It has never had quotas. Quotas is a race-loaded word, designed to appeal to people's fears of losing their jobs.

I intend to talk about race during this election in the South because the Republicans have been talking about it since 1968 in order to divide us. And I'm going to bring us together. Because you know what? You know what? White folks in the South who drive pickup trucks with Confederate flag decals in the back ought to be voting with us and not them, because their kids don't have health insurance either and their kids need better schools too.

I'm not done yet. Yeah! Most of you know that six months before my last re-election, I signed a bill into law that made Vermont the first state in America that guaranteed equal rights to every person under the law...


... every person under the law.


That bill was called the Civil Unions bill, and it said marriage is between a man and woman, but same-sex couples are entitled to exactly the same legal rights as I have, hospital visitation, insurance, inheritance rights. All Americans--all Americans...



... all Americans are equal under the law in our state.

This bill was at about 40 percent in the polls when I signed it, 60 percent against six months before the election. And I never got a chance to ask myself whether it was a good idea to sign this bill or not. Because I knew that if I were willing to sell out the rights of a whole group of people because it was politically inconvenient for some future office I might run for, then I had wasted my time in public service.

</snip>

He tied all his views on civil rights together. And the audience cheered him wildly, a very racially diverse audience I might add.