"Seattle Report"

"Barbara*in*Seattle" wrote this long post on Hannah's Blog about Dean's recent visit to Seattle. Here's her introduction, to give you the feel of the piece: "After the two official DNC events in the morning, Howard went directly to another meeting of a group I belong to called Washington Women for Choice. This is where I can go into some detail. However, remember that I just had a teeny little recorder and this was the first time I used it and I couldn't make out what was being said some of the time. I tried to mention it when this happened. And, remember, when we speak, we are not always grammatically correct. I didn't correct Howard's grammar, I just tried to get down what he said. Plus, I felt the need to throw in a comment or two here and there. I think it's obvious where." Here's a quote by Dean from the post: "So, there's a huge amount of work to be done. I feel like I'm an ambassador to, uh I don't know what country, uh Yugoslavia before it blew up. But I'm also optimistic. I'm really optimistic. I don't know how long it's going to take us to turn this around, but remember, it took them 30 years to build this machine and they started after the Goldwater debacle. We?re starting at 48%. So, I do think it's possible to do this. It just means we all have to work hard and we all have to examine our own pre-conceptions on how we relate to others as we go forth and try to give this message of, basically, what I consider to be social and economic justice. That's really the core value of the Democratic Party. It's social and economic justice. The good news is that there is no reason that we shouldn't touch these folks that voted with Bush, we've just got to push the buttons in a different way. We can't do it with our minds, we've got to do it with our hearts. Because these people don't vote with their minds most of the time, they make an internal - - It doesn?t mean they're dumb, they're NOT, They're less well educated, but they certainly not dumb. They make an internal calculation based on an enormous amount of feedback, and they vote from here (points to his heart). Mostly not from here (points to his head). We vote from here (points to his head). The data on my campaign was so fascinating, most of the people - 72% of the people who supported me, vote from here (points to head) - they vote on issues. But most Americans vote from here (points to heart) and we have to learn and we know what their issues are. We know what their worries are and their concerns. We just do a lousy job of touching them because we try to appeal to them from here (touches his head). This doesn't work."