Yesterday I drove from my home in Mass. to attend the Lamont-Edwards event held on the Yale campus in New Haven, CT. It was amazing. I was granted unprecedented access to both Edwards and Lamont. I taped the speech, the blogger meet and greet and I even did a few little man in the street type interviews.
About 250 showed up to see the remarks by Ned Lamont and John Edwards. They weren’t disappointed. If you couldn’t be there, I hope you’ll watch the vids and get a good sense of how things went yesterday. There were definitely some surprises.
And Elizabeth is fine, she’s also a huge Lamont fan.
Video: Lamont and Edwards in New Haven – Part 1
Diane Farrell, Democratic candidate for CT’s 4th Congressional District, introduced the pair.
Ned chose to start with these remarks:
First off we’ve got to get Diane Farrell, Chris Murphy and Joe Courtney to Congress. No more Republican rubber stamp Congress. We need people who are going to hold this President accountable. No more one party rule down there in DC. Checks and balances, that’s what it’s all about.
I’ve got to tell you that on Tuesday night it was a pretty good surprise. It was a call for change. People really want to fight for change and that’s what we voted for on Tuesday night.
One of the first calls that Joe Lieberman got was from Karl Rove. The first call, the first call, I got was from John Edwards.
Let me say something serious about John Edwards, he’s talking about a subject that not many people pay attention to in America right now and that’s the subject of poverty. I’ve been in this race now for seven or eight months and I’ve been going flat out around this state and I should have been talking more about because it’s a disgrace in this country and we’ve got to do better. John Edwards is someone who’s making that serious and making us pay attention and we know that our country is better than that.
How about a city like New Haven, how about most of the big cities here in Connecticut? You know these were some of the richest cities on the face of this earth going back a few generations. Now we have some of the poorest cities here. Look at what’s going on. A single mom with a kid has to work over 100 hours just to afford a two-bedroom apartment here in New Haven. That’s wrong, that’s wrong. Work has got to pay. That’s what we stand for as Democrats, work has got to pay.
This really surprised me. I was surprised that Lamont chose to speak first and I was surprised that he chose to talk about poverty.
Ned said this next:
I do some teaching in the public schools down in Bridgeport. And I care so much about these kids. These kids deserve a fighting chance at the starting line of life. And I look here in New Haven, I look at Bridgeport and I look at Hartford, about a third of these kids now are growing up in poverty. A third are growing up in poverty. We’re not going to allow that to happen in America, John Edwards is not going to allow that to happen in America and that’s why we’re in this race.
Ned talks a lot about his teaching in Bridgeport, but from my perspective he did more than tout his work as a “resume builder” on Thursday. He showed me up close and personally that his work with poor kids has affected him in a profound and deep way. Here in front of your very eyes you can see a man with the fight of his life on his hands. A man that has invested so much in this race and a man that chose to share the limelight with Edwards because no one does the issues of poverty and fairness like Edwards. I think that Lamont wanted to take this opportunity to shed some light on the issue, some much needed and conspicuously absent light. That’s huge. That’s totally unselfish, a rarity in politics, but that’s also where Ned Lamont was at on Thursday in New Haven. It was a demonstration of character on the part of a candidate, but more than that. He showed his character as a concerned citizen and a member of a community that is larger than his own self-interest. Isn’t that really the theme that runs through his campaign?
Ned continues to say that we need to make the commitment to each other in this country and that means investing in our kids, investing in our future and not spending 250 million dollars a day in Iraq. Ned says often, “we’re making bad choices in this country and that’s got to change.” Here’s a list of those choices and changes that Lamont chose to highlight in his remarks Thursday:
- A nine trillion dollar mortgage on the future, that’s irresponsible and it has to end.
- Universal Health Care, “as a small business guy I can tell you that we have a health care system in this country that is broken… We believe that health care is a basic right for each and every American and we’re going to make it happen.” Lamont also takes the opportunity to point out that the health care problems facing families also tend to hurt employers and the country’s competitiveness in general.
- Local investment must be a priority in the state of Connecticut: transportation; the port of New Haven; light rail.
- Affordable housing in the cities is essential to economic development, echoing the theme on poverty in his remarks above.
- Investment in education must also be a priority, “the school that I teach in has fabulous teachers and then security guards in the hallway. It tends to shut down at 2:30 and the kids go home to an empty house… We’ve got to give kids something to dream about, we’ve got to give them hope and opportunity. That starts in our schools and with our parents. That starts with the investments that we’ve got to make in our country again.”
- “My old friend Vice President Cheney spoke out again the other day. He said that Al Qaeda was emboldened by the voters of Connecticut when they voted on Tuesday. George Bush is weakening our country.” The abbreviated list: dependence on foreign oil; dependence on foreign capital; the quagmire in Iraq; homeland security. The president is letting us down and that’s why you need Democrats to stand up and say we can do better.
So why are we making such bad choices? Well may you ask.
The answer is: 63.
The question is: how many lobbyist in DC for every member of Congress?
… And then reason is money, boatloads of it, but you already know that much.
He starts to wrap up his remarks with this line, “Who’s going to be fighting for you everyday down there? Diane Farrell will be there, I’ll be there and John Edwards will be there.”
Dear Mr. Lamont, As the next Senator from the Nutmeg State, I suggest you check out some good jogging trails in DC that the Secret Service will like. I’m sure the next President could be persuaded to do his morning five with you any old day of the week after this event.
Ned wraps up with this line:
Last time around the party establishment said, ‘Ned, I’m not sure we want to rock the boat.’ I think on Tuesday night people said it’s high time we rocked the boat. That’s what we mean to do. Without further adieu, Senator John Edwards.
Edwards:
The bad news is the sun is going down, so I’m going to talk long. I’m very happy to be here and happy to be with all of you. Let me just first give you a report on Elizabeth. A lot of you know that she was diagnosed with breast cancer the day after the election, she’s doing great. And second, second and from her perspective equally important, she said when I got on the plane to come here this morning, ‘You tell those people in Connecticut that I’m for Ned Lamont.’
Before the primary went down, Mrs. Edwards was in Des Moines on July 27. She took a pot shot at Lieberman on that day, she told those in attendance, “Let me make this clear: we can not have this,” when she chose to criticize Lieberman for possibly running as an independent if he was rejected by the voters in CT.
I’m very proud to be here and I’m proud to be here for Ned. This campaign, including the primary election is about change. It’s what America is hungry for. America no longer wants the same old politics that they’ve now seen for decades. They’re looking for not politicians, but leaders. They’re looking for somebody that will tell them the truth about what’s happening in America today. And for somebody who has a different vision for where America needs to go.
The man who is telling the truth and the man who will provide that vision as the next Senator from Connecticut is Ned Lamont.
Video: Lamont and Edwards – Part 2
Edwards has chosen to take on the foreign policy issue in a big way recently. I’ve followed him closely ever since the redesign at OAC blog last spring. I do it on my own dime and at great expense as far as time. He’s always had a strong morality frame in his message and has been long talking about America’s “void in moral leadership” affecting us at home and abroad, but he’s starting to put it together in different way. For a more detailed analysis see my last vlogging diary here: Guerrilla Vlogging: Patriotism for something more than War
“I want to take just a minute and all of us together step back and think about what is happening in the world today, about what’s on our television screens every single day.”
- Hezbollah, Hamas, Israel, Gaza and Lebanon
- Ahmadinejad’s nuclear ambitions in Iran that would surely lead to a “Nuclear Middle East, the hottest most volatile region on the face of the planet.”
- Iraq, “a civil war as Ned said earlier”
- “I voted for this war and I was wrong,” it’s hard to admit because our troops did nothing but serve courageously, yet they die and suffer in this quagmire
- The basis for moral leadership is telling the truth, we are not being told any truth on Iraq
- We need a change in Iraq, we need to leave and the best way to leave Iraq is to actually start leaving. We need to take at least 40K troops out now
- Russia? A country that embraced democracy in the 90’s is now moving to an autocracy
All of these things are happening and what is America doing? We’re reacting. We just react. There’s no indication that we have any long term vision for the kind of world we want to live in. The kind of world that America should be leading in…
The one thing that is clear to me is that the world does not see you. They do not see the character of the American people. They have no idea that we understand in a way that George Bush does not, that while we are the pre-eminent power in the world we have two responsibilities, not one. First is to look after the interests of the United States of America. The second responsibility is to look after the interests of humanity.
Where is America? Where is America on the huge moral issues facing the world today beyond Iraq and the Middle East?
- Global poverty, “Poverty is mild in America compared the world… Half our planet lives on 2 dollars a day or less – 3 billion people.
- Darfur, “Tonight while we’re having this wonderful rally there is a genocide going on in Africa. In Sudan, in Darfur, women are being raped, hundreds of thousands have died at the hands of the Janjaweed militia. Families are being systematically driven from their homes. I thought my country said after Rwanda, never again. ‘Not on our watch.’ Do you remember? It’s happening right now, right in front of us.”
- AIDS, “tonight a child will be born in Africa, more than one, a whole new generation of children with AIDS because their mother can’t afford a four dollar dose of medicine. Four dollars.”
The world sees our power. They know we’re strong. They know we’re rich. Here’s what they want to know from us: Do we actually care? Do we actually embrace our responsibility to look after interests beyond our own? Do we embrace our responsibility to look after interests of humanity. I believe that you do. The problem is that our leadership does not and the world does not see it. We can change that…
I want all of you to think about what’s at stake here. I love the Democratic Party. God knows I love the Democratic Party, but I love my country more. There is so much at stake here [in all these elections] both for America and for the world. That’s what at stake here in these elections. That’s what we’re all out here fighting for.
Video: Lamont and Edwards – Part 3
And it’s not just what’s happening over there. We have to demonstrate that we will do what needs to be done right here. I grew up in the United States where we believed that we were the shining light, remember? Before Guantanamo, before Iraq before Abu Grhaib. We were the model for the rest of the world. By the way, we’re not the only ones who saw those images coming out of New Orleans. We’re not, the whole world saw them. And they’re watching to see if we will actually turn our backs on 37 million of our own people who wake up everyday worried about feeding and clothing their children. My view is this is the great moral issue within the US… Ned mentioned another, 46 – 47 million people who have no health care coverage. Why can’t my party, the Democratic party show some courage and leadership and say, “we will fight for universal health care for every single American?”
Video: Lamont and Edwards – Part 4
Edwards really gets on a roll in this clip. He’s worried that Exxon isn’t making enough money, sleepless nights have ensued. Well, Senator – rest easy. Those pukes are rolling in the dough. This clip also contains the few interviews that I was able to do after the event. Usually I get a canvass the crowd and ask for interviews while we’re all waiting. Yesterday, I didn’t get that chance. Yesterday I got to meet both of the candidates. Like I said, unprecedented access.
Video: Blogger meet and greet – Part 1
Watch a Presidential hopefully talk to a potted plant. I’m not kidding. And he did it knowing that the camera was on him. I got to hand it to Sue from my left nutmeg, that takes some guts. You’re my hero.
As usual Edwards comes out just fine in the tape. Paul Bass may have had the first report on the event up, but I’m the only one that got an interview with Lorenzo.
The OAC staff even arrange for the Senator to run across the street to the hospital to greet some workers on their butt break. We were waiting for Ned to show. They ran out and came back in before too long.
Oh yeah, Edwards states for the record Joe should drop out. No ifs ands or buts. He should listen to the voters and leave the race.
Video: Blogger meet and greet – Part 2
Ned says hi to kos and explains that groundhog day can occur in the middle of summer.
Lamont and Edwards take Q & A from a couple bloggers. The questions asked touch on stem cell research, Katrina and presidential futures.
Sorry I cut your second question Zen Blade, I had to get this clip under 10 minutes for YouTube. I’m not a premium member over there. Zen Blade asked about stem cell research and whether either of them had seen An Inconvenient Truth.
Lamont – yes. Edwards – no.
Video: Meet the bloggers Lorenzo and Snoop Dog; ctkeith; cgg and spazeboy. Don’w worry kids, the kiss float is in storage and will be rolled out for a big event in a couple weeks. Check the video, ctkeith is planning something special on September 5.
My thanks to Tessa of My Left Nutmeg and Mike Brown who told me all about their recent trip to New Orleans. And to Christine Stuart of newsjunkie.com, it was great to meet you after the show.
Thanks also to Aldon Hynes, the technical director for the Lamont campaign. He contacted me directly about the event through YouTube. I was sitting on the fence about going, thanks for giving me the nudge I needed to get a chance to tape my guy talking to a plotted plant named Lorenzo.
See you out there guys.
Links and stuff:
My Left Nutmeg
Connecticut Local Politics
Spazeboy
Ned Lamont website
Ned Lamont blog
Edwards website
OAC blog
Previous CJ diaries:
Guerrilla Vlogging: Patriotism for something more than War
Guerrilla Vlogging: WakeUp Wal-Mart assignment
Guerrilla Campaign, Iowa w/YouTube video
