All That We Let In

Well I don't know where it all begins
and I don't know where it's gonna end.
We're better off for all that we let in.
-Indigo Girls

Well, Howard Dean, the best President we've never had, decided today to stop actively campaigning for the White House. I'm sad, but strangely not despondent. He's woken something up in me and in lots of other Americans and it won't be put to sleep, won't tolerate politics as usual anymore. We're going to take the Democratic party back, from the ground up. Dean's plan is to convert DFA into a grassroots organization that supports other good candidates and I'll follow him, wherever he takes it. Even though he's no longer campaigning, he hasn't withdrawn from the race, remaining on the ballot in the rest of the primaries and caucuses, and hopefully collecting more delegates along the way. I certainly remain a proud and dedicated Dean delegate... our voices will be heard at the National Convention.

I did go to hear Terry McAuliffe speak last night and was just as disappointed in him as I thought I would be. He implored us to support the Dem party with passion... right before questions and comments were closed off. My comment, had I been allowed to make it, would have been, "We HAD passion, you cretin, and a candidate with REAL passion... you and the media portrayed it as unstable and unbalanced. My new passion is to see you out of a job, you uninspiring, insipid SOB."

From Dean's speech today in Burlington, here are the words of that craaaaazy, unelectable, dangerous loser. This is what we could have had, folks. Such is our loss.

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Change is hard work. Change does not happen simply because you go to a rally and simply because you make phone calls -- and I know how hard everybody here has worked. But change is a process that you can never give up on because change is the state of America and change is the state of humankind.

So we will continue to fight. This is the end of phase one of this fight, but the fight will go on, and we will be together in that fight. We will continue to bring our message of hope and change to the American people.

We will speak out. We will fight on. We will continue to stand up against the dangerous foreign policy which weakens our security, and stand up against this president who weakens our civil rights.

We will continue to stand up against special interest that prevent change. And we will stand for America's working families for jobs and health care, investment in our children, the chance of all Americans to pursue their dreams.

We will continue to stand up against the divisive policies of the far right. We will no longer be divided by race. We will no longer be divided by gender. We will no longer be divided by sexual orientation. We will no longer be divided by religion. We will no longer be divided by income. And we will no longer be divided by George W. Bush in the White House.

And now that the campaign is stopped, I'm going to say something that all of you have heard me say before.

But I want you to think about it now because now is the most important time that you have heard it. And this is the real message of this campaign and you'll hear it in a different way because I am no longer a candidate.

The biggest lie that people like me tell people like you at election time is that, If you vote for me, I'll solve your problems. The truth is the power 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 the Democratic Party and make us stand up for what's right again.

Allow us to fulfill the dream of Harry Truman in 1948 that he laid out where we would no longer be the last industrial country on the face of the Earth without health insurance. Allow us to stand up again for the rights to organize for ordinary men and women. Allow us to stand again for the principles of equal rights under the law for every single American.

You have the power to take our country back so that the flag of the United States of America no longer is the exclusive property of John Ashcroft and Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh and Jerry Falwell; that it belongs to all of us again.

And together we have the power to take back in the White House in 2004 and that is exactly what we're going to do. Thank you very much.