"Dean Calls out Right Wing's "racist hysteria" on Immigration"

odum's diary on Kos (from DemocracyFest):

Dean, of course, entered with rock star fanfare. After referring to the event as a "family reunion," Dean began his balancing act of playing his role as chief Democratic Party cheerleader, while acknowledging, and even validating, the concerns and frustrations of liberal Democrats who play the role of his constituency. He acknowledged openly that the Democratic victories of last year constituted "probational employment," and after praising Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid, commented that a "fair amount of you are disappointed about voting a couple weeks ago in Congress."

Dean's response was to validate, but to remind attendees that Harry Reid starts out every Iraq vote with only 49 votes, given Tim Johnson's temporary incapacity and Joe Lieberman's delusional intransigence. He also made a point of contrasting the debate rhetoric of the Republican Presidential candidates versus that of the Dems. He noted that the Republicans uniformly endorsed Bush's comparison of Iraq to the military commitment in Korea, calling it the "50 year plan for Iraq." He noted that every single Democratic candidate, in contrast, said we should get out as soon as possible, and that they would in fact bring out troops (to varying degrees and at various rates, obviously)

"If we want to get out of Iraq," Dean said, "we have to have a Democratic President."

Dean urged activists to fully engage this election cycle, again making the point that we should ask for everyone's vote (and that doing so was a sign of respect to the voter). He admonished activists when approaching voters to "ask everybody what they think before we tell them what we think." He spoke optimistically about the prospects of building bridges with the younger generation of evangelical Christians, proposing a forthright approach that states clearly to socially conservative Christians that, while we will not turn our backs on civil rights for gays and lesbians or a woman's right to choose, there is still much we can agree on, such as strategies for alleviating poverty and protecting the environment.

For those looking for some of Dean's famous (or infamous) take-no-prisoners rhetoric, they got a taste during his discussion of the filibustered immigration bill. While acknowleding the bills shortcomings, he placed it's failure squarely on the shoulders of the far right, stating "what we don't need is a lot of racist hysteria about immigration" ba on fears of immigrants because they "don't look like you" or that they may "change the character of your town."

Dean, in contrast, praised the majority of immigrants as hard workers, calling them "the best of the best" and asking "why wouldn't we want people like that in the United States of America?"

Tying the frustrations around immigration legislation and the Iraq vote together, he stated that it was time to "get rid of the stranglehold the rightwing has on the US Senate."

It was a very positive speech and Dean did what Dean does so well; lay out his own anger and frustration but channel it positively and optimistically into a rallying cry. Whatever you think of the man or his politics, you'd be fooling yourself to deny this oratorical talent he's honed on the national stage.

Dean closed by stating that he'd taken the DNC job "so we could fix the Democratic Party," again acknowledging both progress as well as the continuing challenges. Despite his position, he insisted with a smile that it's "not about whether Democrats win or Republicans win - it's just that it so happens that the Democrats are right, and the Republicans are wrong."

Heh.