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that Kerry won the poll of the Iowa hospitality as the one they thought cared most about them. (This is cited all the time - do we have a link?) This is a more meaningful measure of genuinely treating people as respected individuals.
GV, in Boston we saw an example of Kerry acknowledging people - while we were waiting for the live bloggers, we heard a group of 4 or 5 Etheopean immigrants who live in MA, as they described themselves when asking one of the Kerry staffers if they could have a minute with Senator Kerry. The staffer told them that Kerry was still speaking to people inside but he would come out that door and they could speak to him.
When Kerry came out they did speak to him for several minutes. I couldn't hear them or Kerry, but Kerry's demeanor was extremely respectful and he clearly heard them out - and they seemed happy with his attention. On any social scale, these people who likely are not even citizens are as close to the bottom as you can get.
In Morristown, I witnessed two acts that showed that Kerry actully practices what EE is speaking of - on a deep sincere level - not a superficial friendliness. In Morristown, all the local Democrats - spoke first. This one guy rudely interrupted several people telling them to cut it short. (I guess he wanted to hear Kerry) Afterwards, he pushed through the crowd to where people were speaking to Kerry. He then shouted out that he had been to Cape Cod, said to Kerry that he was "the man from Nantucket ... - in other words, this guy had a major deficit in social skills. Kerry responded by speaking more quietly to him than he had spoken to others and asked him how he liked Cape Cod and what he had done there. The man responded in a normal voice that he had gone there to work on a house for Habitats for Humanity - one of 40 some he had worked on. Kerry then praised him for doing so and thanked him for helping MA. I seriously doubt many politicians would have taken the time with this guy. The other was that Kerry spent about 5 minutes speaking to a woman in an ambulance who had fainted while waiting for the event to happen.
Treating people without power well is something I think is better done than spoken about. The danger to the Edwards is that the more they push the "we're just normal people like you", the more they expose themselves when there ARE contradictions. The fact is that as soon as they left law school, they had far more income and far more prospects than the average couple. (In his 30s and 40s, he was already a millionaire. The Edwards have then been in the elite for at least 20 years and, even if they still eat at Wendy's, they do it by choice.)
I prefer the way Gephardt would speak of education allowing him opportunities that his dad, a milkman didn't have. I also heard Lautenberg this fall speak to a couple whose granparents lived in Patterson in the same area as Lautenberg grew up in. Lautenberg's dad worked in a silk factory and he told his son he had to work hard at school to avoid working there. He showed his son how dirty the air was there - his dad and many peers died very young from exposure to unhealthy air quality. In both there cases, they acknowledge that they are priviledged - but that they have connections to people who weren't.
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