Posted on 07/28/2004 8:18:31 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
BOSTON - John Edwards (news - web sites) praised John Kerry (news - web sites) Wednesday night as a man tested by war for national command and promised cheering Democratic National Convention delegates that their ticket will "build one America" no longer divided by income or race.
Republicans are "doing all they can to take this campaign for the highest office in the land down the lowest possible road," Kerry's running mate told a nationwide prime-time television audience.
The vice presidential candidate urged the country to reject that approach and "embrace the politics of hope, the politics of what's possible because this is America, where everything is possible."
Edwards' appearance on the podium prompted the most boisterous demonstration of the convention to date. Thousands of cheering delegates held aloft identical red signs bearing his name, passed out by the boxload just before he stepped to the podium.
He evoked the themes of his campaign against Kerry in last winter's primaries to argue the case for their new political partnership.
"The truth is, we still live in two different Americas," said Edwards, the son of a Carolina mill worker and the first in his family to attend college.
Edwards' turn at the podium came a few hours after Kerry campaigned his way to the convention city and into the eager embrace of his Vietnam War crewmates. A dozen fellow veterans greeted him, including Jim Rassmann, a retired Special Forces soldier whose life Kerry saved from a muddy river in the Mekong Delta while under enemy fire.
"We're going to write the next great chapter of history in this country together," Kerry vowed at a welcome-home rally in the city that has nourished his political career for a quarter century.
In keeping with the overwhelming security arrangements for the first national political convention since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Kerry's ferry was escorted by Coast Guard vessels armed with machine guns as it made the brief trip across the open harbor.
Like dozens of other speakers at the convention, Edwards' script stressed the overriding national security theme at the convention. He recalled Kerry's service in Vietnam a generation ago, saying he ordered his swiftboat turned around despite enemy fire and plucked a fellow American from the river to safety.
"Decisive. Strong. Is that not what we need in a commander in chief?" he asked rhetorically.
But Edwards' speech also marked something of a pivot to other issues that have received scant attention during three nights of convention oratory.
In one of the few references of the convention to Kerry's economic program, Edwards said it relies on tax hikes on Americans in top 2 percent of income and offers the hope of benefits to millions.
"We can build an America where we no longer have two health care systems," he said. "... We can build one public school system that works for all our children. ... We can create good paying jobs in America again," he added, by stopping the tax breaks that give companies an incentive to send jobs overseas.
Recalling a childhood in the segregated South, Edwards said he and Kerry want "our children and our grandchildren to be the first generations to grow up in an America that's no longer divided by race."
In a slap at the Bush administration, he said Kerry will "build and lead strong alliances and safeguard and secure weapons of mass destruction ... We will always use our military might to keep the American people safe."
"And we will have one clear unmistakable message for al-Qaida and the rest of these terrorists. You can run. You cannot hide. And we will destroy you."
Elizabeth Edwards introduced her husband to the delegates. "The most optimistic man I know," she called him. The couple's three children, including Emma Claire, 6, and Jack, 4, joined them on stage after the speech, adding an image of youth and energy to the Democratic campaign.
The convention program called for the delegates to formally bestow their presidential nomination on Kerry in the midnight hour, after his running mate's prime-time oratory.
"He understands the urgent need to bring this country together toward a common purpose, a united America," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (news, bio, voting record) of California, who placed Kerry's name in nomination.
Kerry's speech Thursday marks the finale of a unified party convention but also the kickoff of a bruising, closely contested fall campaign to wrest the White House from President Bush (news - web sites).
By orders of the Kerry command, this was a Democratic convention unlike any other in memory. While one convention speaker after another extolled the candidate's war record, they skipped lightly over controversial issues that Democrats traditionally support — abortion rights, gun control, gay rights and affirmative action among them.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (news - web sites) of Ohio, a liberal lawmaker who challenged for the nomination, was something of an exception. "We are the party of workers' rights, civil rights and women's rights. ... When we show up holding the banner of social and economic justice, we win," he said.
Opinion polls show the country divided over the war in Iraq (news - web sites), with Bush favored over Kerry when it comes to waging war on terrorism. Most polls show a close race for the White House, with Kerry either tied or slightly ahead.
A convention-week lull in the television ad wars was nearing an end. Officials said the Democratic National Committee (news - web sites) was launching a fresh round of ads in more than a dozen battleground states beginning this weekend. The cost will reach $6 million in the first week alone, they added.
Bush has spent the week at his ranch in Texas, and spokesman Trent Duffy said the president devoted part of the day to taping television commercials for the fall campaign.
The White House abruptly switched its tune on the Democratic convention, with Duffy saying Bush has been "monitoring closely" and has "watched some of it from time to time" on television. An aide had said earlier in the week that Bush didn't watch on Monday and had no plans to do so on Tuesday.
GOP surrogates, who had set up a political war room a few blocks from the delegates met, spent the week lobbing rhetorical salvos at what they called the Democrats' "extreme makeover" convention.
"There has been a total avoidance of discussion of the voting record of John Kerry, but that's not surprising," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss (news, bio, voting record), R-Ga.
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On the Net:
http://www.johnkerry.com
http://www.georgewbush.com
John Edwards prepares to embrace his morbidly obese wife...
Summing it up: One size fits all. Soak the rich. Big government for all.
What a B.S. artist... Last week, they called us the "new brownshirts".
In this election, they will speak endlessly of risk. We will speak of progress. They will make accusations. We will make proposals. They will feed fear. We will appeal to hope. They will offer more lectures, and legalisms, and carefully worded denials. We offer another way, a better way, and a stiff dose of truth.
Dick Cheney 2000
"And we will have one clear unmistakable message for al-Qaida and the rest of these terrorists. You can run. You cannot hide. And we will destroy you."
Duh, hello, where have we heard that before?
Bring in the clowns.
"Duh, hello, where have we heard that before?"
Most people won't remember, they'll think it him.
Somehow, wben such a theme is preceded by the Fraudulent Liar-in-Chief Sharpton, big chief of the party's captive black plantation, I doubt the sincerity of the rhetorical massage. I found this impression not strengthened by the fact that his one America theme at the end consisted of taking phrases that the President has used repeatedly, albeit with less rhetorical flourish and eye-brimming references to the buttoning on of uniforms. If you can't come up with ideas, steal them.
Just so you know, I'm ashamed the wanna-be Vice President of the United States is from North Carolina.
These buffoons won't be elected dog-catcher.
Don't worry!
Bush wins by a landslide.
From your keyboard to God's monitor. ;^)
Yes. Knowing the DemoncRATs, they will unite us at gunpoint.
Just think.
A shotgun wedding.
How fitting.
We don't force them to join us.
In fact, we don't care what they do, as long as they leave us alone.
But in their pie-eyed vision of lockstep collectivism, they will force us to live they way they want us to live. Like good, tame little toadies who send their children to the Communist Indoctrination Daycamps euphemistically called "Public Schools", and they will be sure that we can't have any of those nasty gunz, you know, the ones with the big bullets and the black hardware.
Edwards is right.
There are two Americas.
The one envisioned by its founders, where Liberty implies responsibility, where rights are ENDOWED by a CREATOR, not granted by Government, where the Individual is sovereign to the State.
And the one that looks more like Maoist China.
Does that mean Edwards or Kerry is giving away his millions?
Didn't think so.
Ready to build ONE AMERICA?????
After all the obnoxious bullying diversity they pushed down our throats and shoved in our faces for all these years?????
BS!!!
They'll say whatever they have to say to get elected, then they'll do whatever they want to do.
....for everyone but these rich POS, it will be a socialist paradise.
That's wonderful. Which one America are these punks ready to build. The America behind security gates where they live-or the America locked outside those gates where real Americans live?
Wonder what size necks pretty boy's shirts are? From the looks of that pencil neck, I'd say about nine and a half. Those soft, little girl hands of his, despite what he says, could not possibly have ever experienced a second of hard work.
That baby face with that stupid fixed grin, that face......gotta go puke.....
Thank heaven for Ralph Reed on with Wolf Blitzed........he told the truth about these two fakirs.
And the media not informing the public about the truth that President Bush is the FIRST president to fund a finite amount of embryonic stem cell research. President Clinton didn't fund one red cent.
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