AL FROM: (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you very much, Bruce, and thanks to Mark for that poll, which I think really demonstrates a lot of what we've been talking about and the importance of what we've been talking about the last two days. Has this been a great National Conversation -- or what? (Applause.)
Now how far we've come -- as Doug Duncan said -- at that first National Conversation seven years ago, we had about 40 people in a room in the Watergate. Of course, if you wait long enough today, we'll probably get back down to 40, but it is terrific to see people from 43 states. We had more states represented in this National Conversation than we did people in the first one, and it's really terrific.
Every year, when we come to this National Conversation, I always get encouraged and energized. What you've seen over the last couple of days is this New Democrat movement is really alive and well, and the people who were here at this National Conversation are the future of the Democratic Party. I'm particularly proud of all the elected officials who were here, who are governing with New Democrat principles in their own jurisdictions. And I'm especially proud of these seven governors. I just thought they were spectacular. (Applause.)
My buddy, Bill Richardson, who was a member of the House when we started the DLC, was right there at the first press conference when we announced it. For those of you who were in Indianapolis, you'll never forget, I suppose, that Janet Napolitano and Kathleen Sebelius were up among four women who were running for governor, and it's terrific now to see two of them -- Janet and Kathleen -- come back as governors of their state. Jimmy McGreevey, who started the DLC chapter in New Jersey; Mark Warner was the first chair of the DLC's New Economy Task Force; and Jennifer Granholm and Ed Rendell ran as New Democrats in states that have been electing Republicans because they have lost their receptivity to the old Democratic Party -- in Michigan and in this state of Pennsylvania.
They put this New Democrat formula to the ultimate test. They took it into Democratic primaries against strong candidates and good and decent people, and they won with that New Democrat formula. And then they were able to take it into the general election and do something that people in their states had not been able to do for two or three terms, and that's win the governorship. So it is terrific to see these New Democrat leaders.
This New Democrat movement has had a short but remarkable history. Think about how far we've come. As you saw in the video we started in 1985 when we lost 49 states in the presidential election. But we started with a very simple belief, and that was we thought if we honored the time-honored traditions of the Democratic Party, those values that made all of us Democrats, but offered new ideas and new approaches for furthering them, the American people would once again trust us with national leadership. So we did and so they did, and the nation and our party are much better off for it.
In the 1990s, under Bill Clinton, we had the most remarkable record. Again, on the video, we saw what that record was, but it's a record that George Bush would die for. Who could imagine that a New Democrat president of the 1990s would create 23 million new jobs, raise employment to record heights and unemployment to three-decade lows, keep inflation under control, get incomes going up after a three-decade slide, reduce poverty. You talk about a liberal agenda -- we reduced poverty at a faster rate than in all but one decade in American history -- that's over 200 years. We moved more than 8 million people from welfare to work, we reduced crime in this country for eight straight years, and we did it by making the federal government the smallest since the Kennedy administration.
But today the New Democrat values of opportunity, responsibility and community, and the progress we saw in the 1990s are in peril -- from a Bush administration that would undermine our values and reverse that progress, and from some in our own party who would take us back to the pre-Clinton days, who refuse to learn the lessons of President Clinton's success. We can't let that happen and we won't do that.
The DLC has saved the Democratic Party once, and we're bound and determined to do it again. We can't afford to do anything less because the stakes are so high.
When I think of all the things we wrote in this Blueprint and this just incredible critique that Bruce Reed and Ed Kilgore wrote of the Bush presidency, the one thing that stands out to me is how George Bush is pursuing policies that would undermine the fundamental promise of America. For the last three quarters of a century, from the beginning of the New Deal on, policies largely set by Democrats have been consistently devoted to growing the middle class, to making us a party -- a country of upward mobility, and they've succeeded. We now have the first mass middle class country in the world, and we have had policies that have consistently been aimed at expanding that. But what does George Bush do? He comes in, and he undermines the ethic that grew that middle class -- the ethic of hard work. If George Bush had his way, the only people who would be taxed in America are the people who go to work every day and play by the rules, and that is wrong. (Applause.)
We just can't let President Bush honor the idol of Karl Rove, William McKinley. You know, Karl always talks about the kind of president he'd like Bush to be is like William McKinley. Well, remember what McKinley's administration was like. It was the era of the robber barons. It was the gilded age, the era of when we protected privilege in America. Well, Democrats built a middle class, and we're bound and determined to keep building that middle class, and it's because the Bush administration would undermine just the core values that allowed us to do that that I think it is more important than ever that we show this man early retirement in 2004. (Applause.)
Now, Mark Penn showed us that we have the opportunity to do that because George Bush is vulnerable -- his numbers are high, but let me just tell you, his daddy fell 41 points in a year, and George Bush is capable of that -- (scattered applause) and President Bush's numbers are not as high as his father's were at this time in his cycle.
But I'm not even suggesting that President Bush will go down 41 points. The fact is, as Mark Penn's poll showed, people think the country is sliding in the wrong direction, the economy is going in the wrong direction. His re-elect numbers show real vulnerability. But we won't win the presidency just by showing up. We won't win the presidency if we just stand aside and say okay to the forces in our party, the forces that have driven the perceptions that are coming back of us being weak on national security and beholden to the interest groups, and for big government; if we say okay, it's your party again. If we do that, we will not win the presidency, even though we could beat George Bush, and that is really, to me, the key message of these two days. We need a political strategy that not only wins the Democratic base -- and we want to win that base -- but expands it because, as Mark showed, with a 32-percent party, you can march every one of us 32 percent to the polls and you still get beat better than 2-to-1.
You've got to win those swing voters who make the difference, and the way we do that is with the kind of message that's in that New Democrats' Declaration that Bruce just talked about. It's a message that allowed Bill Clinton to be the most popular president with the base of our party. I've never gone into a core Democratic community and have them say, "Oh, that dirty Bill Clinton, he was moving the party to center. He didn't do us any good." He's the most beloved president we've had since Franklin Roosevelt among Democratic base voters. But he was able to appeal to the base with these New Democrat principles in a way that also said to those office park dads and the soccer moms who have now become security moms, you're part of our party, too, and we'd like to have your vote, too.
The key point I want to end on is there are a lot of people, including I'm sure a lot of people who have been here in the last two days, who have a visceral dislike -- some would call it a hatred -- for George Bush, and they're very mad at him. I happen to think George Bush is a pretty nice guy, but I want to replace him. But the fact is we can't just vent our anger, if we want to win because we need to win 25 percent of people who like George Bush if we're going to send him into early retirement. So we need both Democratic activists and swing voters to win.
This is a challenge to all of our candidates, but it's also part of your responsibility to make our candidates understand this because presidents are elected in America where you govern and not in the interest-group-infested corridors of Washington. As stewards of our party's future, we cannot allow our party to be hijacked by those who are so blinded by their hatred of George Bush that they cannot see the path to a Democratic victory.
There's been some talk in the corridors about why we're having this fight in the Democratic Party right now. Well, I'll tell you why we're having this fight in the Democratic Party right now; it's because we need to have it, because the nominating process is the time when you have fights in a political party because the stakes are so high.
What's at stake is what kind of party we're going to be, the definition of our party. And as that Blueprint says "Bring Him On," and as the theme of this National Conversation says this is "a party worth fighting for." We want to be the party of Andrew Jackson and equal opportunity for all; and Franklin Roosevelt and his bold, persistent experimentation; and Harry Truman and his tough-minded internationalism; and John Kennedy and his call for public service; and Lyndon Johnson and his cry out for social justice; and Bill Clinton and his insistence that opportunity and responsibility go together. That's the kind of party we want to be, and that's the kind of party we have to be coming out of this nominating process because that's the kind of party that's going to beat George Bush.
I worry about not having this fight. I don't worry about having it. You know why I worry about not having it? Because if we don't have a battle over the definition of our party this year, if we try to say these real differences in our party should just be shoved aside or swept under the rug, those differences will come out next year, not at the convention, but on general election day.
I'm a lot older than most people in this room, and I was in Miami in 1972 when we were up all night and in the middle of the morning, about four o'clock in the morning, the hall erupted as George McGovern accepted the nomination for president of the United States. But George McGovern lost to the most hated man in our party, Richard Nixon, and he lost 49 states.
I was in the hall, the Moscone Center, and some of you probably were, too, that night in 1984 when Walter Mondale promised to raise our taxes, and the hall erupted. All the activists thought it was the greatest thing in the world. But we lost 49 states, and that's why we're here today to save our party -- because it's too important. It's just too important. (applause)
Twelve years ago, when our party was in a state not unlike it is today, a young governor from Arkansas -- I must say with people outside the hall not exactly expressing support -- told the DLC conference in Cleveland, we're here not just to save the Democratic Party; we're here to save the United States of America. And Bill Clinton went on and did that.
And I say to you today we're here not just to save the Democratic Party; we're here to save the United States of America. So when you leave Philadelphia, go back home, deliver this New Democrat message you've heard here every day. Put the ideas you've heard into action, as those governors who were on this stage have done. Make the New Democratic approach the face of the Democratic Party in your jurisdictions, and we'll be a much stronger party next year.
And most important, remind our candidates that the prize next year is the presidency and not just the nomination, and that they have an awesome responsibility to carry forward the grand traditions of this party -- the traditions that have run from Roosevelt through Truman, and Kennedy, and Johnson, and Clinton. And I hope two years from now we have the opportunity to add another Democratic name to that list.
You can help make that happen. The future of our party, and more importantly, the future of our country, is at stake.
Thank you very much, and go home and carry the New Democrat message across this country.
(Applause.)
(End of remarks.)
