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I Think Democracy Fails Under A Variety Of Conditions And One Of The Conditions Occurs When People Don't Have The Ability To Get The Kind Of Information They Need To Make Up Their Mind. Ideologically, I Don't Care Much For Fox News. But The Truth Is That, As Long As There Are Countervailing Points Of View Available On The Spectrum, It Doesn't Matter.

-Howard Dean

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I Think Democracy Fails

Howard Dean

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I Think Democracy Fails Under A Variety Of Conditions And One Of The Conditions Occurs When People Don't Have The Ability To Get The Kind Of Information They Need To Make Up Their Mind. Ideologically, I Don't Care Much For Fox News. But The Truth Is That, As Long As There Are Countervailing Points Of View Available On The Spectrum, It Doesn't Matter.

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Look, I'm Not A Perfect Person. I Have My Warts. I Sometimes Say Things That Get Me In Trouble. I Wear Suits That Are Cheap. But I Say What I Think And I Believe What I Say, And I'm Willing To Say Things That Are Not Popular But Ordinary People Know Are Right.

You Think People Can Work All Day And Then Pick Up Their Kids At Child Care Or Wherever, And Get Home, And Then Still Manage To Sandwich In An Eight-hour Vote? Well, Republicans, I Guess, Can Do That, Because A Lot Of Them Have Never Made An Honest Living In Their Lives.

America Is A Conservative Country With A Small "c" - They Want Change, But They Don't Want Too Much Change Too Fast.

I Still Want To Be The Candidate For Guys With Confederate Flags In Their Pickup Trucks.

We're Going To Use Terri Schiavo Later On. This Is Going To Be An Issue In 2006 And It's Going To Be An Issue In 2008, Because We're Going To Have An Ad With A Picture Of Tom Delay Saying, "do You Want This Guy To Decide Whether You Die Or Not, Or Is That Going To Be Up To Your Loved Ones?

We Have To Say What We Believe... Whether It's Popular Or Not.

Is This So-called [republican Party] Hate Wing That Is So Angry At All The Things That Have - All The Changes That Have Happened In America, This Is What They Respond To.and I Think It`s Dangerous For The Country, I Also Think It`s Going To Be Incredibly Unsuccessful In The General Election.

You Have The Power To Take Our Country Back.

As Commander In Chief Of The United States Military, I Will Never Send Our Sons And Daughters And Our Brothers And Sisters To Die In A Foreign Land Without Telling The Truth About Why They're Going There.

Tom Delay Ought To Go Back To Houston Where He Can Serve His Jail Sentence.

Every Day It Becomes Clearer That This Was The Wrong War At The Wrong Time.

When You - When You - And This Is Still Going On Today - Are Making Your Money By Pushing Paper Around, When You Should Be Making Your Money By Investing Venture Capital In Various Job-creating Things, That Makes It Much Harder To Recover.

Creating Things

I Believe That The Flag Of The Confederate States Of America Is A Painful Symbol And Reminder Of Racial Injustice And Slavery Which Abraham Lincoln Denounced From Here Over 150 Years Ago.

I Wish That There Was A Unified Democratic Position On The War In Iraq. I Was That There Was A Unified American Position And Everybody Agreed With Me That We Ought To Be Out Of There Yesterday. But They Don't, And That's The Fact. I Mean, He's Stating A Fact About What's Going On.

The Path To A Better Future Goes Directly Through Our Public Schools. I Have Nothing Against Private Schools, Parochial Schools And Home Schooling, And I Think That Parents With The Means And Inclination Should Choose Whatever They Believe Is Best For Their Children. But Those Choices Cannot Compete, And Cannot Come At The Expense Of What Has Been -- And What Must Always Be -- The Great Equalizer In Our Society, A Free And Equal Public Education.

I Talked For A Long Time About That, What I Call The Hate Wing Of The Republican Party.and Often Been Criticized For Saying It. But There Is Such A Thing, And It Started In 1968 With The Southern Strategy Developed By Richard Nixon To Bring Southern Racists Out Of The Democratic Party And Into The Republican Party, Which They Succeeded In Doing.

The Way To Balance The Budget Is For Congress To Cut Social Security, Move The Retirement Age To 70, Cut Defense, Medicare And Veterans Pensions, While The States Cut Almost Everything Else. It Would Be Tough But We Could Do It.

I Don't Mind Being Called A Liberal. I Just Don't Really Think It's True.

This Country Was The Moral Leader Of The World Until George Bush Became President.

No Doctor Is Going To Do An Abortion On A Live Fetus. That Doesn't Happen. Doctors Don't Do That. If They Do, They'll Get Their License Pulled, As Well They Should.

We've Gotten Rid Of (saddam Hussein), And I Suppose That's A Good Thing.

The Republicans Are All About Suppressing Votes.

Donald Trump Has Used Lawsuits As A Weapon Throughout His Entire Business Career, And Whether They`re Frivolous Or Not Has Nothing To Do With Any Of It. What He Knows Is If He Can Sue Somebody For $10 Million, That Somebody, Especially If It`s A Consultant Is Not Likely To Have The Money To Defend It. So, Then It Goes Away As Long As He Signs A Non-disclosure Act Agreement And So On And So Forth.

I Have Never Favored A Social Security Retirement Age Of 70 Nor Do I Favor One Of 68.

We Know That No One Person Can Succeed Unless Everybody Else Succeeds.

We've Not Had One Republican President In 34 Years Balance The Budget. You Can't Trust Right-wing Republicans With Your Money. You Ought To Hire Somebody Who Has Balanced A Budget. I'm Much More Conservative With Money Than George Bush Is.

So What We - All We Really Want, I Think, From The So-called Democratic Wing Of The Democratic Party Is Really To Stand Up For What We Believe In.

The Real Truth Is, There's No Such Thing As A Red State Or A Blue State, They're All Purple. Some Are More Purple Than Others And Our Job Is To Get Them All Deep Purple And Then Blue. And We Can Do That.

I Actually Spoke In An African-american Church Yesterday.

African American

I'm Not Attacking Liberals With A Broad Brush.

I Don't Hate Republicans As Individuals. But I Hate What The Republicans Are Doing To This Country. I Really Do.

The Fact That The President Was Willing To Reveal Classified Information For Political Gain And Put The Interests Of His Political Party Ahead Of America's Security Shows That He Can No Longer Be Trusted To Keep America Safe.

The Issue Is Not Abortion. The Issue Is Whether Women Can Make Up Their Own Mind Instead Of Some Right-wing Pastor, Some Right-wing Politician Telling Them What To Do.

Most Christmas Carols Have No Obvious Religious Content, Or At Least That's Noticeable To Most People. I Mean, It Is Almost By Definition, A Cultural Phenomenon, All These Songs, Even Though They Point To This Very Religious Holiday. They're Not Religious Songs In Effect Anymore.

If You're Really Worried About The Effect Of "silent Night" On The Kids, You Need A Hobby Or Something, And I'm Glad You're Pointing That Out.

I Don't Care What You Label Me As Long As You Call Me President.

The Status Quo Helps Liberals. We're Going To Change The Country.

What I Want To Do More Than Anything As President Of The United States Is To Restore The Honor And Dignity And Respect That This Country Is Owed Around The World.

The Iraqi Prime Minister Is An Anti-semite. We Don't Need To Spend $200 And $300 And $500 Billion Dollars Bringing Democracy To Iraq To Turn It Over To People Who Believe That Israel Doesn't Have A Right To Defend Itself And Who Refuse To Condemn Hezbollah.

I Think We Had Quite Enough Capitalism In The Last Eight Years; I Think We Need Some Regulation Now.

The Capture Of Saddam Has Not Made America Safer.

I Will Use Whatever Position I Have In Order To Root Out Hypocrisy. Democrats Have Strong Moral Values. Frankly, My Moral Values Are Offended By Some Of The Things I Hear On Programs Like "rush Limbaugh," And We Don't Have To Put Up With That.

I'm Tired Of The Ayatollahs Of The Right Wing. We're Fighting For Freedom In Iraq. We're Going To Fight For Freedom In America.

I Think Most People... Would Be Glad To Pay The Same Taxes They Paid When Bill Clinton Was President, If Only They Could Have The Same Economy They Had When Bill Clinton Was President.

I'm Not Against The Hanukkah Songs. I Like Hanukkah Songs. I Grew Up With Hanukkah Songs. I'm Not Opposed To Hanukkah Or The Songs That Accompany It, At All.

My Energy Level Is Very High ... How Ambitious It All Is Depends On Lots Of Different Things. But Pretty High Energy Level. I Take On A Lot Of Projects At The Same Time.

As Governor, I Came To Believe That The Death Penalty Would Be A Just Punishment For Certain, Especially Heinous Crimes, Such As The Murder Of A Child Or The Murder Of A Police Officer. The Events Of September 11 Convinced Me That Terrorists Also Deserve The Ultimate Punishment.

I'm A Committed Christian. I Worship In My Own Way. That's My Business. That's Not The Business Of The Pharisees Who Are Going To Preach To Me About What I Do And Then Do Something Else.

Mind Your Own Business

Real Democrats Don't Make Promises They Can't Keep.

Stop Scapegoating Immigrants[stop Using] Outrageous Phrases Like 'illegal Aliens.'

It Is True That There`s An Economic Argument And An Economic Feeling That Something Different Needs To Happen And Politicians Talking Out Of Both Sides Of Their Mouth And All That Kind Of Stuff.

And People In America Are Very Practical People Across The Political Spectrum. Very Conservative Women Want Their Kids, Their Daughters Taking Birth Control.

I've Waffled Before. I'll Waffle Again.

I Learned That The American People Are Pretty Great People. And They Are Just Poorly Served By Their Leadership, And Washington's Very Much Out Of Touch With The Struggles Of Ordinary Americans. My Hope Is That We'll Have A Democratic Administration, And Then We'll Hold Their Feet To The Fire So They Start Performing For People Who Put Them There.

The French Will Always Do Exactly The Opposite On What The United States Wants Regardless Of What Happens, So We're Never Going To Have A Consistent Policy.

The Fact Is That We Wouldn't Be In Iraq If It Weren't For Democrats Like Senator Kerry.

Barry Goldwater Once Said, "i'd Rather Be Right Than President." I Can't Tell You How Much I Disagree With That Barry Goldwater.

I May Be Controversial, But My Allegiance Is To People Outside The Beltway.

Every Single American Has A Voice And ... It Ought To Be Heard In The Halls Of Power Every Day.

You Can't Make Howard Dean A Straw Man. He Is What He Appears To Be. And That's The Beauty Of Howard Dean.

You Know, To Listen To Senator Lieberman, Senator Kerry, Representative Gephardt, I'm Anti-israel, I'm Anti-trade, I'm Anti-medicare And I'm Anti-social Security. I Wonder How I Ended Up In The Democratic Party. I'm Not A New Entrant To The Democratic Party. I've Been Here A Long Time.

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.

There's No Question That Saddam Hussein Is A Threat To The United States And To Our Allies. If Saddam Persists In Thumbing His Nose At The Inspectors, Then We're Clearly Going To Have To Do Something About It.

How Much Courage Does It Take For Dean To Throw Red Meat To The Party Faithful?

Touch-screen Voting Machines Absolutely Cannot Be Relied Upon. Our Recommendation Was Optiscan Ballots - Where You Actually Have Custody Of The Actual Ballots After The Ballots Have Been Passed Through The Computer. That's The Most Reliable System To Use. And People Should Not Use The Electronic Voting Machines. Even Electronic Voting Machines With Paper Trails Can Be Manipulated.

We Owe Something To The Government To Grow Up In This Great Country. I'm Tired Of Hearing People In The Private Sector Talk Like They Don't Owe The Government Anything. We Do. This Is A Great Country Because We All Pay Into It. It's About Time We All Pay Into It. ... If We Paid The Same Amount Of Taxes We Paid When Bill Clinton Was President, I Would Be A Happy Guy, And The Budget Would Be Closer To Balanced. You Cannot Give Away Money, Whether You Give It To Rich Or Poor People. That's What George Bush Did -- Excuse Me, Trillions Of Dollars. You Can't Do That.

This Is A Struggle Between Good And Evil And We're The Good?

I've Always Been Endorsed By The National Rifle Association.

I Supported The War In Afghanistan Because 3000 Of Our People Were Murdered And I Thought We Had A Right To Defend The People Of The United States.

People Have Said I'm The Candidate Of Anger. Well, We Have A Right To Be Angry. We Lost 3 Million Jobs. We Lost Our Place As The Moral Leader Of The World.

I Think In General The Ends Do Not Justify The Means.

If Money Is A Form Of Speech, As The Supreme Court Has Regrettably Found, Rich Donors Will Always Be The Loudest Speakers.

The Idea That The United States Is Going To Win The War In Iraq Is Just Plain Wrong.

George Bush Calls His Biggest Fundraisers Rangers And Pioneers. But Today, We Stand Together, And We Call Ourselves, Simply, Americans.

I've Resisted Pronouncing A Sentence Before Guilt Is Found. I Will Have This Old-fashioned Notion That Even With People Like Osama, Who Is Very Likely To Be Found Guilty, We Should Do Our Best Not To, In Positions Of Executive Power, Not To Prejudge Jury Trials.

Executive Power

At Every Turn When There Has Been An Imbalance Of Power, The Truth Questioned, Or Our Beliefs And Values Distorted, The Change Required To Restore Our Nation Has Always Come From The Bottom Up From Our People.

Beliefs And Values

Dealing With Race Is About Educating White Folks.

What I Usually Do Is Tell Funny Stories From The Road, Many Of Which Are, Of Course, Unprintable. But I Don't Actually Have A Joke. I Don't Tell Jokes Much. I Tell Little Stories.

The State Of The Union May Look Rosy From The White House Balcony Or The Suites Of George Bush's Wealthiest Donors. But Hardworking Americans Will See Through This President's Efforts To Wrap His Radical Agenda With A Compassionate Ribbon.

The War In Iraq Was Unwinnable.

Someone Earlier Made A Remark About Losing 500 Soldiers And 2,200 Wounded In Iraq. Those Soldiers Were Sent There By The Vote Of Sen. Lieberman, Sen. Edwards And Sen. Kerry. I Think That Is A Serious Matter.

We Are The Great Grassroots Campaign Of The Modern Era, Built From Mousepads, Shoe Leather And Hope.

The President And His Right-wing Supreme Court Think It Is 'okay' To Have The Government Take Your House If They Feel Like Putting A Hotel Where Your House Is.

This Guy Is Totally Unorthodox. Maybe He`s Flipping Coins Or Playing Three-card Monty To See Who He Wants To Pick. Donald Trump Is So Unorthodox That I Think It`s Almost Impossible To Have Any Reasonable Prediction About Who He`s Going To Pick For The Vice-president.

America's Greatness Rests On Far More Than The Power Of Our Arms. Our Greatness Is Also Measured By Our Goodness, It's In The Capacity Of Our Minds, Of Our Hearts, And It's In The Strength Of Our Democracy.

John Ashcroft Is Not A Patriot, John Ashcroft Is A Descendant Of Joseph Mccarthy.

Joseph Mccarthy

That's One Of The Things About The Tea Party People. They Think Corporations Have Too Much Influence In American Life And They Do.

The Pitfall Of What's Happening In The Media Is If You're Under Thirty, You Get Your News From The Internet And The Daily Show, And There's Not Much Discrimination Between What They Find On The Front Page Of The New York Times And What They Find On The Internet. That's Not A Bad Thing, In The Sense That People Don't Get Spoon - Fed Anymore.

From A Religious Point Of View, If God Had Thought Homosexuality Is A Sin, He Would Not Have Created Gay People.

What I Want To Know Is Why In The World The Democratic Party Leadership Is Supporting The President's Unilateral Attack On Iraq?

Hypocrisy Is A Value That I Think Has Been Embraced By The Republican Party. We Get Lectured By People All Day Long About Moral Values By People Who Have Their Own Moral Shortcomings.

We Won When We Toppled Saddam. That Was The Only Clear Goal Of This War, To Topple The Iraqi Government. It Took About 10 Minutes.

I Think With A Lifetime Appointment To The Supreme Court, You Can't Play, You Know, Hide The Salami, Or Whatever It's Called.

They Believe The Less Votes The Better. Republicans Like To Suppress Votes Because They Believe They Do Better In Small Turnouts. Characteristically, Democrats Would Rather Lose An Election With A Huge Turnout Than Win One With A Small Turnout Because We Think That The Values Of Democracy Have To Be Placed Above The Interests Of The Party. The Reason That Republicans Are Such Failures At Governing Is Because They Place The Interests Of Their Party Ahead Of The Interests Of The Country.

Early Withdrawal From Iraq Would Result In Unarguably, Defeat And Humiliation For The United States. There's No Question. We Would Be Defeated By Definition. We Would Be Humiliated In That Defeat.

Luckily, I'm A Governor - So I Get To Tell You What I've Already Done Not Just What I'm Going To Do.

I'm Just Deeply Disappointed That Once Again We May Have To Settle For The Lesser Of Two Evils.

Second Of All, I Don't Think Wall Street Is Doing What It's Supposed To Be Doing, Even After The Shameful Performance Of The Last Two Years. They're Are Not Allocating Capital.

I'm Interested In Getting John Kerry Elected President. And Then I'm Interested In Doing Whatever I Can To See That Democrats Retain Democratic Values. And The Thing I'm Most Interested In Is Health Insurance For Everybody. We're The Only Country In The Industrialized World That Doesn't Have That, And We Need That.

There Are No Ideas In The Republican Party Right Now In The Congress. They're The Party Of No. They Desperately Need Some Intellectual Leadership. And Whatever You Think Of Newt Gingrich, He Can Supply Intellectual Leadership. So I Hope He Does Run.

I Was Hoping To Get A Reception Like This, I'd Just Hoped That It Would Be On Thursday Night Instead Of Tuesday Night.

What John Mccain Didn`t Realize Was That Sarah Palin Was His Demographic. He Thought He Was Appealing To Younger Women, And In Fact, Sarah Palin Appealed To People Who Were Like Mccain, Old White Guys, Who Thought She Was Sexy To Skin A Moose. That Was A Miscalculation, It Didn`t Work. They Didn`t Do The Vetting, They Didn`t Do The Polling.

There Is A Party Of Fiscal Responsibility... Economic Responsibility... Social Responsibility... Civic Responsibility... Personal Responsibility... And Moral Responsibility. That Party Is The Democratic Party.

I Think Democracy Fails Under A Variety Of Conditions And One Of The Conditions Occurs When People Don't Have The Ability To Get The Kind Of Information They Need To Make Up Their Mind. Ideologically, I Don't Care Much For Fox News. But The Truth Is That, As Long As There Are Countervailing Points Of View Available On The Spectrum, It Doesn't Matter.

I Hate The Republicans And Everything They Stand For...

Prison Is An Important Part Of Life. We Can't Have Violent People Running Around In The Streets. (3 Out Of 4 Federal Prisoners Are Serving Time For Non-violent Crimes.) Most Competent And Qualified Kindergarden Teachers Can Tell You Who The 5 Kids Are In His Or Her Class Likely To Wind Up In Prison 15 - 20 Years From Now.

The Truth Is The President Of The United States Used The Same Device That Slobodan Milosevic Used In Serbia. When You Appeal To Homophobia, When You Appeal To Sexism, When You Appeal To Racism, That Is Extraordinarily Damaging To The Country.

My View Is Fox News Is A Propaganda Outlet For The Republican Party And I Don't Comment On Fox News.

The Corporatization Of The Press Really Has Hurt The Press.

I Think The Recovery Hasn't Been Stronger Because The Hole That Was Dug For President Obama By The Bush Administration Was Far Worse Than Anybody Could Imagine, First Of All.

There's Been More Than One Time When I've Said Something, And Sort Of The Middle Of What I've Said Is Not Said But Thought, And Therefore Assumed To Be Understood, Which Is A Ridiculous Assumption On My Part, But Sometimes Gets Me In Trouble.

I Have A Great Sense Of Humor, But It Has An Ironic Twist To It.

We Will Ultimately Be Judged By How We React In Times Of Trouble And How We Care For The Least Among Us.

Times Of Trouble

Not Only Are We Going To New Hampshire ... We're Going To South Carolina And Oklahoma And Arizona And North Dakota And New Mexico, And We're Going To California And Texas And New York! And We're Going To South Dakota And Oregon And Washington And Michigan. And Then We're Going To Washington, D.c. To Take Back The White House, Yeeeeeaaaaaargh!

There Are Definitely Some People Who Cheat, But How Come We're Only Focusing On People Who Are On Welfare Who Cheat, And Not The Bank Presidents Who Cheat?

Tom Delay Himself Has Never Been The Issue. Delay Is A Symptom Of A Larger Disease?a Sick Republican Culture Of Corruption That Touches Everyone Who Took His Dirty Money, Voted For His Corrupt Leadership, Or Sat Silently While Their Party Has Sold Our Government To The Highest Bidder.

My View Of Christianity Is That The Hallmark Of Being A Christian Is To Reach Out To People Who Have Been Left Behind. So I Think There Was A Religious Aspect To My Decision To Support Civil Unions.

I Think The Media Is Very Much Like The Inside-the-beltway Crowd. They're Not Average Americans Themselves. They're Under A Lot Of Pressure From Editors And Publishers.

The Democratic Party, All The Candidates From Washington, They All Know Each Other, They All Move In The Same Circles, And What I'm Doing Is Breaking Into The Country Club.

I Like John Kerry. I Think He's Intellectually Curious And Very Thoughtful. I Think He's Deeply Committed On Issues Like The Environment. I Think He's An Internationalist, Which I Am.

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