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Remarks by Senator John Kerry at the Virginia Jefferson Jackson Dinner
February 07, 2004
Richmond, Virginia
As Prepared for Delivery
Virginia, as we stand here tonight, a great message is being sent from Michigan and Washington State, the same message we heard from Iowa to Missouri to Arizona and New Mexico, the same message I am carrying to Virginia and Tennessee:
George Bush’s days are numbered – and change is coming to America.
I want to thank all those who stood with us today. And I want to ask all of you to stand with us next Tuesday.
And once again, I want to express a special thanks to the veterans, the same band of brothers I depended on 30 years ago. We may be a little older, a little grayer, but we still know how to fight for our country – and we’re going to win.
You know, this week George Bush and the Republican smear machine have trotted out the same old tired lines of attack that they’ve used before to divide this nation and to evade the real issues before us. Well, I have news for George Bush, Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie and the rest of their gang: I have fought for my country my whole life. I’m not going to back down now. This is one Democrat who’s going to fight back – and I’ve only just begun to fight.
George Bush, who speaks of strength, has made America weaker – weaker economically, weaker in health care and education. And the truth is – George Bush has made us weaker militarily by overextending our forces, overstraining our reserves, and driving away our allies.
This Administration has run the most arrogant, reckless, inept and ideological foreign policy in our modern history.
So abroad and at home, all across the board, America faces a fundamental choice in this election:
Will we stand with the mainstream values that have defined our country – or will we continue on the extreme path of the Bush Administration – a path fundamentally at odds with our history and our hopes?
We as Democrats will not run from a debate about who represents mainstream America; we welcome it.
This Administration has followed the extreme course of massive tax cuts for those at the top and the highest budget deficits in history. We will fight for the mainstream American value of fairness – and we will repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealth so we can invest in health care and the education of our children. We will fight for the mainstream value of fiscal responsibility – and we will cut the budget deficit in half in four years.
The extreme policies of this Administration have cost America 3 million jobs in 3 years. How dare they even mention the economy when they have lost manufacturing jobs every single month they have been in office? We shouldn’t be opening job training centers in Baghdad while cutting job training and cutting unemployment benefits here at home. We will fight for the mainstream American value of opportunity not just for some, but for all. We will demand worker and environmental protections in every trade agreement. And we will scour the tax code and eliminated every loophole, every incentive, and every benefit that rewards any Benedict Arnold CEO or company for sending American jobs overseas.
And nowhere is this Administration more extreme than on health care – where they side with the HMOs and let insurance premiums go through the roof while 2.4 million people lose coverage in one year. And then instead of a prescription drug benefit for seniors under Medicare, they pass a sham bill that gives the prescription drug companies a $139 billion benefit and counting. We are fighting for the mainstream value of health care as a right and not a privilege – for the principle that seniors should not have to choose between food and medicine – and that your family’s health is just as important as any politician’s in Washington.
This extreme Administration appoints a far-right activist to implement the Violence Against Women Act whose organization says – and I quote: “The battered women’s movement has outlived its usefulness.” They appoint Charles Pickering to the Court of Appeals after he tried to reduce the sentence of a cross-burner. We are fighting for the mainstream American values of equal rights and civil rights – and an Attorney General of the United States whose name is not John Ashcroft.
This extreme Administration – even in these dangerous times – denies breathing equipment to firefighters and takes police off the beat even while murder and violent crime are going up. I am a former prosecutor – and in the Senate, I led the fight that put 100,000 new police on our streets. And in 2004, we will fight for the mainstream American value of safety and security across our nation and in our neighborhoods – because protecting our families is more important than another round of tax cuts for the privileged.
In the face of the Bush Administration’s failures, we know what kind of campaign the Bush attack machine will run. They did it to my friend John McCain in South Carolina in 2000. They did it to my friend Max Cleland in Georgia in 2002. Well, it’s not going to work in 2004 – for a very simple reason. They’re extreme. We’re mainstream – and we’re going to stand up and fight back.
Our opponents now say they want to campaign on national security. But this is the same Administration that slashes health care for veterans, attempts to cut combat pay for our troops in the field, makes injured soldiers pay for their own hospital meals, and forces our men and women in Iraq to buy their own body armor. We are fighting for the mainstream value of a stronger America – and for the ideal that the first duty of patriotism is to honor those who wear and have worn the uniform of the United States.
A few months ago, we all saw George Bush play dress up on an aircraft carrier. Well, I know something about aircraft carriers for real. And if George W. Bush wants to make national security the central issue in this campaign, I have three words for him I know he understands: Bring it on.
I ask all of you now to join in our journey. I believe that, with faith in our ideals and in each other, we can return America to the mainstream road of greatness and justice. And to all of you I say: Get ready – a new day is on the way.
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