We've seen what a disaster the past eight years have been for our country. We've seen how the denial of global warming and the reluctance to do anything about it has increased the intensity of hurricanes hitting our shores. We've seen how the denial and repudiation of science has reduced our chances of developing powerful new cures with the promise of stem cell research for conditions like Parkinson's disease and diabetes. We've seen how a denial of the needs of the middle class has resulted in a tax code that favors the corporate rich and that rewards wealth over work, and we've seen how that policy has increased the gap between rich and poor and raised the poverty level four years in a row under the Bush administration.
Perhaps most damaging of all, we've seen the result of having two oilmen in the White House setting the energy and foreign policy for our country — a policy set in secret which has resulted in the launching of a pre-emptive and unnecessary war that has drained our nation's Treasury, cost the lives of thousands of our brave men and women in uniform, and diverted our attention from pursuing and capturing the real terrorists who attacked our country and our citizens on September 11.
And now those same folks are asking you for another four years.
Four more years of the same neglect of the middle class that has squeezed millions of hard working families literally to the breaking point. Four more years of the same neglect in going after the real terrorists that has allowed al Qaeda to regroup under a leader that this president promised he would capture "dead or alive." Four more years of neglect in developing alternative fuels, which has only increased the global warming pollution that every climate expert worth his or her degree says is raising the intensity of storms like Katrina — storms like the ones we're seeing develop now in the Gulf coast, storms we pray don't do the same damage the last one did on George Bush's watch, when cronyism in the White House turned a natural disaster into an unnatural calamity. That's right, they're asking for four more years of all that.
You have to wonder: do they really think no one is paying attention here?
You know by now that a theme of our campaign is "Yes, we can." When you come right down to it, that really defines the difference between these two campaigns. At root, it's a fundamental difference between "Yes, we can," and "No, we can't." If that's too much for you to digest on this beautiful Friday afternoon, we could boil it down even further. The choice we're really seeing presented here is the basic difference between "Yes" and "No."
Now, what does it mean when we say that the fundamental difference between these two campaigns is the difference between yes and no? Isn't John McCain a pretty positive guy with great new ideas for our country? Well, if we think that, we might not really be paying too much attention. Isn't his pick of a running mate a progressive choice that reflects the values of independents, a choice that so many in our party who might have been Hillary Clinton supporters can relate to? If we think that, we might not really be paying attention. Aren't most people and experts happy with the direction the country has been going in for the past eight years under George Bush? I just KNOW you're paying more attention than that!
The truth is, John McCain is hoping you WON'T pay attention. He's hoping his flashy pick for VP and his flipping around on the issues is going to razzle dazzle and confuse you so much that you won't notice what he's really asking you to do. Because when it comes right down to it, what he's really hoping is that you won't notice he's not only saying a loud and resounding "NO!" to all your hopes and dreams, but that he's asking you to say "No" to them, too. That's right, he wants you to say "No" to changing the very things the voters in this country think have been going in the wrong direction over the past eight years of republican rule.
His "No" is pretty easy to spot by now, because they're the same old things the bush administration has been saying No to you over for the past eight years. He's asking you to say No to ending the war in Iraq and bringing our troops home safely. He's asking you to say No to aggressively developing alternative energy to break our dependence on foreign oil.
He's saying "no" to your needs as a hard working family who is getting squeezed by a tax code that doesn't work for the middle class, by higher and higher education and daily living costs, by a mortgage lending crisis brought about by the very same people John McCain has advising him on economic policy — folks like Phil Gramm and his 3AM stealth legislation that deregulated speculators and caused the values of millions of homes to start crashing.
I guess he hasn't noticed, but some of us are up at 3AM, and we ARE paying attention. Maybe he missed the message announcing our Vice Presidential selection — Joe Biden, a foreign policy expert with 30 years of experience in national security and foreign policy who sits along with me on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — who chairs that committee, in fact. It kind of looks that way. It kind of looks like they've forgotten who they're up against.
But some of us are on to what John McCain's up to. Some of us see how he's trying to turn the "Yes, we can" spirit of the American people and the desire and hunger for change they're feeling into a gigantic "No, we can't."
That's right: John McCain is asking you to say "No." He's asking you to say "No" to the health care so desperately needed and called for by millions of adults and children in this country who just can't afford to go to the doctor when they need to because their good paying job got outsourced out of their community by a corporation, one that George Bush rewarded with a tax cut for doing so. Corporations that John McCain wants to continue rewarding with tax cuts for shipping even more of our jobs overseas.
He's asking you to say "No" to ending an unnecessary war in a country that was no threat to us in the first place, and that is draining billions of dollars every month from our national Treasury — a war that John Mccain was wrong on, while I was right in having the judgment to oppose from the beginning.
He's asking you to say "No" to a $1,000 tax cut for you and your family, and for all middle class and working families in America. That's right: he actually wants you to say "No" to a $1,000 tax cut for your very own family, and for over a hundred million other families across this country who are working just as hard as yours is. How much attention do they NOT want you to be paying to get you say No to a $1,000 tax cut for you and your family?
As it turns out, he's also asking you to say "No" with his vice presidential pick — from the little we know about her a local woman from a remote and beautiful wilderness state — but also let's not forget, a person who does not want equal pay for the equal work that men and women do in this country, a person who wants to continue denying science and put creationism in our schools, a person who is on record as denying global warming and who time and again favors the interests of Big Oil over protecting our environment and developing the alternative energy that we so desperately need if we are going to break the shackles our dependence on foreign oil have us in the grip of.
Now does any of that sound familiar? It should. We've seen the disastrous results of Big Oil in the White House setting our energy policy for the past eight years. We've seen the results of tax cuts for the corporate wealthy that were supposed to create new jobs, when instead the country is now posting the highest unemployment rates in five years. And now they're asking for four more years of that. They're asking you to say "No" to changing it. That's right, McCain and his running mate want us to say "No" to all the changes our country so desperately says it needs.
They like to criticize our campaign for hope, but if you think about it, John McCain is actually the biggest hoper in this election. He's desperately hoping that you just won't notice how he and his running mate want to continue with four more years of George Bush policy. He's hoping that you will be razzle dazzled and just won't notice how the people he is already putting around him are continuations in so many ways of the radical right wing policies of Oil over alternatives, of superstition over science, and yes, even of war over peace and diplomacy. That's what we need to say No to: four more years of Bush policy taking our country backward. We've seen what a perilous course that has led us on.
But we can change the direction of this country. We can get ourselves back on track with decent and affordable health care and education for every American, with a tax code that gives relief to millions of working class Americans, with an alternative energy policy that creates jobs and new opportunities. We just have to do what John McCain doesn't want us to do: we just have to say "Yes" instead of saying no. We just have to remember what John McCain wants us to forget: that when it comes to bringing to this country the change it needs, then Yes, we can. Thank you, & etc.
