Just got back from the Kerry rally - Democratic Underground

karynnj

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Sat Sep-10-05 05:52 PM
Original message

Just got back from the Kerry rally

Edited on Sat Sep-10-05 06:20 PM by karynnj

It was incredible - the event was planned last Monday and was publicized mostly by emails to Kerry's list, robot(?) phone calls that Kerry recorded, and the Daily Record article yesterday - which the coordinator was actually surprised by - there were OVER 500 people there. This is HUGE for Morris County. There should be some local coverage because at least 2 reporters (from small weeklies) were there along with a WNYC (PBS) reporter. I think the Daily Record was there too - but was not sure. (The crowd was entirely there because of Kerry - everyone else was a county level Democrat - in a Republican county!)

It was outside a restaurant in an area where they usually have outside dining. Kerry was about an hour late and he was cheered when he arrived. After about 15 minutes of short speeches by a few local Democrats, Kerry was introduced.

He endorsed Jon Corzine, mentioning that it was Corzine who after some of the corporate scandals wrote most of the legislation that became the Sarbanes/ Oxley bill that brought accountibility to corporations. He said something about holding the government accountable was part of citizenship.

He talked about how he wanted everyone to work as hard as they did last year for him to support Corzine and the local Democrats. He especially mentioned not wanting to lose the young people who worked so hard last year. He talked about how close it was and mentioned that since the election, especially recently, some Republicans have told him they realize they made a mistake in voting against him.

One interesting comment was that we would likely hear awful things (about Corzine) as the campaign goes on because that is the way they play the game. He then said that it was our job to learn the facts and talk to friends and neighbors to refute the likely lies.

He used the example of the environmental movement in the 70s as an example of when people demanded change and held the worst congressmen accountable. He also talked about having a campaign event with Landrieu last year that supported spending $14 billion to make N.O. environmentally sound and he criticized the response to the hurricane mentioning that Bush went to CA for a fund raiser. He criticized giving the contract to Halliburton and mentioned the need to rebuild the economy. (He mentioned small businesses.)

He mentioned having been in Iraq, finding there are still only about 1,500 fully trained Iraqis and that they are still up-armoring humvees. All of this was tied to the need for accountability.

He also talked again about reading the New Testament to see if he had missed anything - but found there was nothing about taking money from the poor to give to the rich, not giving kids health insurance etc.

He made a few jokes:
- He talked of finding a dusty lamp in Iowa. Thinking he had 3 wishes, he wished for a Patriots victory, a Red Sox victory, and then he asked that he be elected President of the United States. The genie then told him that due to the Bush economy they had downsized the number of wishes to two.

- He also talked about how Labor Day which we recently celebrated was a day that honored workers and gave them a day where they didn't have to do anything - like the Bush administration did every day.

- When he talked of not knowing what Brown would do back in the White House - some one said "He can take care of the horses". Kerry responded very quickly that there were some part of horses there. (Is that the aloof, elitist MA Jr Senator?) He also made fun of Bush keeping Brown, but removing him from his role in the Gulf, by saying that he thought he was now in charge of the next cyclone or tropical storm.

Later when he was getting into the minivan taking them to the next stop, he shook hands with a few people who ran over. Several people called out they loved him, the not very aloof Senator immediately responded that he loved them too. I don't know about his other 4 stops, put he seemed relaxed but very focused on energizing the Democrats and he tied Forrester, Corzine's opponent, to the failed policies of the Bush administration. In his interactions with people afterwords, he listened to what they asked and answered or reacted in a very kind way.

I have some digital pictures that are jpegs on my computer but have no idea how to post them. Is there a trick? Eric and I were in the second row - because we got there an hour early. When Kerry was through he signed things for people as his aide politely told people the Senator was late. I was too stupid to bring Going Up River, any of the 3 books or the small Kerry for President cardboard sign I have - Eric held out the Corzine sign we were given and Kerry signed it for us! Now if Corzine wouldn't have misspelled his first name as JON, a bit of cropping could be done.

Well, that's all we can remember - my husband helped on remembering details. He seemed very much at ease with the crowd. Even joking with the Yankee fans who wanted him to take back his second wish (even before the end of the joke), by saying "too late - already happened" with a smile.