February 17, 2004
Dean On Stage
Dean's Wisconsin concession speech didn't have any stunning announcements but there were some interesting touches. He spoke in past tense a few times, for instance, thanking the unions: "They stuck with us through thick and thin."He said the goal of the campaign was to change this country, and said: "guess what, you have succeeded."
He offered general reassurance by saying to think about how far we have come.
He had one that I thought was a nicely genuine touch. He mentioned how many of the people there tonight were young. Paraphrased: "When you're young, you want change to happen fast. The truth is that change is tough, and there's an enormous pressure against change, from Washington, from the Democratic Party..."
He said that they have already written the platform of the Democratic Party for this election. He said that while change had happened, though, it was "a change of convenience, not a change of conviction", and that we needed to keep fighting for that change of conviction. He said that we finally do have a democratic party that found out if you stand up and say what you believe, that voters actually like it.
And then his thematic resting point was "we will not stop." "You have already started to change the party, and we will not stop." He left vague the concept of exactly what wasn't going to stop.
"We are not done yet together." I'm left wondering about the punchline.