Damn right and the Democrats are going to stay in the minority for a long time.
Dick Gephardt: Son of a milk truck driver
Posted on 01/15/2004 12:20:47 PM PST by FourPeas
Dick Gephardt knows what's on the menu for union folks: bread and butter issues such as jobs and the economy.
And with a jobs market that remains iffy even as the stock market soars, the Missouri congressman appeared on Wednesday to embrace a strategy of stoking economic anxieties at a rally that the Teamsters Local 406 staged for him at its Eastern Avenue hall in Grand Rapids.
"Everything is going in all the wrong directions under this president," said Gephardt, the former U.S. House minority leader who has served in Congress since 1976. "We handed him the best economy in 50 years. Remember it? It was the platform on which you created 22 million new jobs in seven years. Remember?
"And here comes 'W' (President Bush)," he continued. "In less than three years, he's turned everything on its head, because he has only one idea in his head and that one thing -- if he does have an idea -- is tax cuts for the wealthy."
Flanked by two American flags, with T-shirts and signs reading "Laborers for Gephardt" stapled to the walls, Gephardt gave a few upper cuts with the microphone while embarking on a hoarse-voiced attack on the Bush administration.
Gephardt is locked in what is turning out to be a three-way battle for Iowa, with ex-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean leading in a newly-released Rueters/MSNBC/Zogby poll with 24 percent, trailed by Gephardt and U.S. Sen. John Kerry, who each had the support of 21 percent of Iowa voters.
His speech was a 26-minute homage to working families and labor unions, a group he hopes will carry him to victory in Iowa on Monday and sustain him through Michigan's Feb. 7 caucuses.
Gephardt won Iowa in the 1988 presidential primary, but did not have the financing to go further. This time, his aides said, he's laying the groundwork in states like Michigan to make sure he can take his battle to states more friendly to his pro-labor message.
He is the only one of the nine Democratic presidential candidates to appear in the Grand Rapids area, after having been on TV with statewide ads for the past three weeks.
Gephardt's anti-NAFTA and anti-World Trade Organization stances are well known in labor halls, but he reminded them of his 25-year fight against "the race to the bottom," in which a "few corporations go to other countries and get a profit from the cheapest labor in the world."
Gephardt's biggest applause line came when he promised to renegotiate the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), WTO and China trade agreements.
"I'll say, 'yes, you can have access to our consumers, but we want something in return,'" he said. "We want you to get your labor, your wage and environmental standards up in your own country and if you don't, you can't bring your products to the U.S."
George Hendricks, 71, a retired postal worker from Grand Rapids, said Gephardt is what the country needs.
"We gotta get the government back to the people -- we've lost control," Hendricks said. "The man in the White House doesn't understand the principle of a day's pay for a day's work. Gephardt does."
Snowy weather forced Gephardt to skip a scheduled town hall meeting near Flint on Wednesday, after his plane was unable to land at the airport. Still, his absence didn't curb his supporters' enthusiasm.
About 220 supporters awaited Gephardt at Iron Workers Local 25 in Burton, a Flint suburb, despite snow-covered roads and blowing snow that sometimes cut visibility to zero.
Iron worker Jaime Johnson, 45, of Birch Run, said his usual $70,000 annual income has dropped by nearly $20,000 a year since Bush became president, and said jobs are sometimes hard to find.
Blocking imports is always good. You can do it through tariffs and raise money to pay down the deficit at the same time! I know two people who could write up legislation to make this happen. Mr. Smoot and Mr. Hawley would be happy to assist.
"The man in the White House doesn't understand the principle of a day's pay for a day's work. Gephardt does."
Riiiiiiiiiight. Gephardt understands the principal of a day of my work paying for a day of some welfare mother's sloth... that's how it should read!
Quote: "My dad was a milk truck driver, a proud member of the Teamsters. He always told me his union's bargaining power made it possible for him to put food on our table" (presidential candidacy announcement, Feb. 19, 2003).
Charge: According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "Gephardt's account misses what other family members recall as a central part of [his father's] personality: that he hated driving that truck, deeply resented the series of bad breaks that put him there and objected vociferously to Roosevelt-style government programs. 'My dad was in the Teamsters at Pevely [a dairy company], but that's because he had to be' to get the job, says Gephardt's brother, Don. 'I don't recall him talking much about the union, about how great it was. He prided himself on being a Republican. He hated (Harry) Truman. … He had the feeling that you had to make it on your own, that any kind of welfare program would just raise his taxes." Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune adds that Dick Gephardt "didn't mention that his father also sold life insurance and real estate, which somehow don't convey the same sense of grinding deprivation."
Context: The Post-Dispatch added, "And yet at the same time, Don Gephardt recalls, 'my dad felt that he was a victim of the system. He felt he didn't get his due.' " As to his father's career in real estate, the article mentioned that according to Dick Gephardt, "his father didn't do that much better financially in real estate than at Pevely."
Defense: In May 2003, the Washington Post reported that when asked about the discrepancy between the brothers' accounts, "A spokeswoman for the candidate said [Dick] Gephardt stands by his version, saying he was not commenting on his father's opinion of his job or union, but on the benefits it provided him. 'Don sees it as one thing, and Dick sees it as another,' said spokeswoman Kim Molstre." However, at a forum hosted by organized labor two weeks after the Post article appeared, Gephardt said of his father's opinion of the union, "Every day that we were with him, he told us that because he was in a labor union, we had food on the table, and we had a roof over our head."
Damn right and the Democrats are going to stay in the minority for a long time.
He could beat Bush on trade/jobs issues (Kerry could do it on the military record). So Dean is the key hope.
Yes, but we're doing them a favor, right?
You might be right - still I think that Dean is safer bet for Bush remaining in the office.
There are two strong cards in Bush hand - Democratic establishment supporting Dean and Nader taking votes away (as he did it to Gore in 2000).
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