A college student's thoughtful views on the candidacy of Howard Dean

Buck Turgidson

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Sat Oct-11-03 07:31 PM
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A college student's thoughtful views on the candidacy of Howard Dean

My daughter is a student at Claremont McKenna College near LA. She just returned from a big Dean rally at the Democrat debates in Phoenix. Debate Rally with Pictures Thats her in the bottom picture, front row, far right with white shirt, blond hair and a yellow sign. Anyway, she was so pumped that she sent the pictures to her grandparents in California. Checkout Grandma's question in italics, the rest is my daughter's response.

>Thanks for the photos. I have just one question for you- and your
>friends. Just WHAT do you find about Howard Dean to support him?
>
>Despite your Dad's comments, we are very pleased with the
>election here. (voted for Schwarzen-groper!)
>
>Love- Grandma

My friends and I support Dean for a lot of reasons. The first, and most important, we know that as our nation's commander-in-chief, he will not send our friends, brothers, and sisters to fight in a foreign war based on untrue premises made up to justify an invasion that serves the interests of our president and his friends, not to mention embarrassing the United States to no end and adding authority to the imperialism and racism of the american foreign policy.

But its more than that. We believe that gays and lesbians should have the right to affirm their love for each other through marriage, protection of adoption rights, and recognition of legal partnerships, and Howard Dean is the only candidate, democrat or republican, supporting that.

We believe that our president should not determine a woman's right to choose, and he supports us in that. We believe that Bush's tax cuts benefit only the upper class, and his economic policies only hurt us not only by taking away our post-graduation employment but forcing our schools to increase their tuitions by ridiculous amounts. We know that Howard Dean recognizes that, and also that every time Bush runs up another bill towards his insanely unbalanced budget, that we are the ones who will have to deal with that debt in the future.

Finally, we know (because he has proven to do it in the past) that Howard Dean will assist us and other young people in getting badly needed health care, possibly working his way towards universal health care, something that Bush has proven is necessary not just for the lower class but for students and the middle class, because families (like mine!!) currently can't afford to pay the premiums that insurance companies charge. We know he will reject Bush's 100% proclamations of environmentally-friendly legislation, and that the falsely named "Clear Skies Act" and "Healthy Forest Initiative" will be blown out of the water. We know Howard Dean would never vote to drill in our nation's most protected natural environments, especially the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We know that Howard Dean will side with us when it comes down to it, not with the CEO's and insurance companies and oil companies and multinationals. And we know that he appreciates everything we do, which he proved this Thursday in Phoenix.

I don't understand how you could support a man with a proven record to abuse drugs, sexually harass women, and without political experience, let alone the erosion of democracy created by the recall. We are not pleased by the results of the election, and in fact will do everything we can to reverse this election in 2004.

*sniff* I'm so proud!