DNC:
Biden, Clark, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, Gravel, Kucinich, Obama,
Richardson, Vilsack---Howard Dean and Harry Reid. Take your pick (videos).
SF Chronicle: Presidential hopefuls court the party faithful---Four years ago, Howard Dean burst onto the national stage with a fiery speech at the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting that captured his party's anger toward President Bush and the brewing war in Iraq.
On Friday, the party's major presidential candidates sought to recapture the magic before the same gathering, each striving to strike the chord that will galvanize Democrats and win back the White House in 2008.
The first back-to-back-to-back cattle show of the campaign was hardly remarkable for its diversity of ideas; each of the candidates vowed to end the war in Iraq and push for universal health care. What was striking were the discordant notes the candidates hit trying to impress the faithful of their credentials in the most wide-open presidential election in half a century.
New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton strutted her battle-hardened campaign experience and devotion to the middle class. Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina used soaring oratory to decry the plight of the working poor while making repeated overtures to organized labor. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama asked Americans to overcome their cynicism and rise above the smallness of contemporary politics.
After three hours and six speeches, it was clear that Democrats were optimistic about their chances in the coming election.
"About a year ago, President Bush's approval rating stood at 40 percent, his party was in revolt, and the vice president had just shot somebody,'' remarked Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, another presidential hopeful. "President Bush now refers to those days as 'the good old days.' ''
It also was apparent that Democrats are nowhere near a consensus on the tone of their message or on who should carry that message.
"I think it's anybody's game,'' said California Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres, in a statement about which candidate has the edge in California's primary that could just as easily have been about the nomination at large.
The crowd in the cavernous ballroom in the basement of the Washington Hilton Hotel treated Clinton, Edwards and Obama as rock stars, with a handful of hecklers trying to shout over Clinton as she talked about Iraq. Dodd, retired Gen. Wesley Clark and Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio were given polite applause. Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, former Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa and former Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska are scheduled to address the convention this morning.
The anti-Bush, anti-war sentiments that Dean voiced in 2003 are now standard elements of each candidate's speech, though several candidates asserted that it would take much more to win the White House.
In contrast to the 2004 election, when candidates such as Edwards and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts danced around their votes to authorize the use of force in Iraq, and others such as Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut praised Bush's policy, none of the 10 Democratic candidates who have signaled their interest in the presidency voice any ambivalence about criticizing the war, though differences remain about how to bring it to an end.
Of the six candidates who spoke Friday, all but Clinton and Clark expressed disappointment at the pace of Congress, which is set to begin debate Monday on a nonbinding resolution opposing Bush's plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq.
Clinton was met with a few shouts of "Bring them home now!'' when she acknowledged in her remarks that "there are many who wish we could do more.''
She defended the Senate approach by noting how difficult it is in the body Democrats control by just one vote to get 60 votes to end a filibuster and pass anything.
"Let me say that if we can get a large bipartisan vote to disapprove this president's plan for escalation, that will be the first time that we will have said 'No!' to President Bush and begun to reverse his policies,'' she said.
Clinton then offered something more emphatic, which drew the partisan crowd to its feet: "If we in Congress don't end this war before January 2009, as president, I will.''
The former first lady presented herself as a veteran of combative politics, telling the crowd: "You and I know there is another kind of experience that we're going to need in 2008. I know a thing or two about winning campaigns.''
Obama could not have been more different, offering words that seemed intended more for an apolitical audience than a roomful of party insiders.
Obama implored the crowd to rise above "a cynicism that asks us to believe that our opponents are never just wrong, that they're bad; that our motives in politics can never be pure, that they're only driven by power or greed; that the challenges that we face today aren't just daunting, but they're impossible.''
Such thinking "has caused our politics to become small and timid, calculating and cautious,'' he said. "We don't want another election in which voters are simply holding their noses and feeling like they are choosing the lesser of two evils.''
The first-term senator confronted the criticism of those who say he has been short on substance and details.
"They say, 'Well, we want specifics, we want details, we want white papers, we want plans,' '' Obama said. "We've had a lot of plans, Democrats. What we've had is a shortage of hope.''
Edwards evoked Martin Luther King Jr.'s warning that to remain silent in the face of injustice is a betrayal of one's self.
"It is a betrayal -- a betrayal -- for us to not speak out against the escalation of this war in Iraq,'' said Edwards, the party's vice presidential nominee in 2004.
The former senator, who has expressed regrets about his vote in 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq, said "we cannot be satisfied passing nonbinding resolutions. The American people are speaking out -- we can do no less.''
Kucinich was the only candidate who called for cutting off the Pentagon's budget as a way to force an end to the war.
"If we give the president the money to continue the war, the Democratic Party will have bought the war,'' Kucinich said.
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