[Program Note: While I am away this week attending Netroots Nation, I thought a blast from the past would be entertaining for my readers. In 2007, also while away on vacation, I conducted a journalistic experiment. I contacted the campaigns of all eight Democratic candidates for president and asked them for permission to reprint a transcript of the speech of their choice from their candidate. All responded, although Dennis Kucinich's campaign was unable to provide me with a transcript because he always spoke without notes (I ran one of his white papers instead).

The introduction to this series explained everything, and it is still kind of interesting to read for the inside-baseball points that it made. I should mention that as internet bandwidth improved by leaps and bounds, such an experiment was never necessary again, because by the next contested Democratic nomination, the campaign websites had not only transcripts but videos of each candidates' speeches, for everyone to see.

Anyway, this week I am reprinting five of these speeches, one each day, for your amusement. I begin with the two candidates who are also running again this year, Joe Biden and Mike Gravel. Then I'll move on to the two who lasted until the bitter end, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, as well as the candidate that I personally supported in the race, John Edwards.

What's interesting about reading these speeches again is how times have changed (all Democrats were running against George W. Bush's record, at the time) as well as how things have remained the same (the same themes used today pop up in more than one speech). So sit back and enjoy this nostalgic trip into presidential politics from 12 years ago. I may also be able to post live columns throughout the week, but make no promises on that score (time is a serious constraint during these conferences).

Originally published November 23, 2007

Mike Gravel

Stepping Back From Imperialism:
Redirecting American Foreign Policy

St. Anselm College, Manchester, New Hampshire
11/1/06

The United States is the largest economic unit in the world. Responsible stewardship of our economy requires that we maintain our superpower status, not only in terms of military capability, but in equally important areas such as the strength and solvency of our economy, the educational and physical health of our population, and a firm commitment to our moral principles and spiritual values. Strength in all these areas is vital to maintain our superpower status.

Unfortunately, we fail in most areas, even though our political leadership consistently -- particularly presidential candidates -- boasts of America's exceptionalism by repeatedly declaring that we are the greatest nation on earth. "We're No. 1," they say. Such extreme boastfulness from an individual would seem aberrant; the same psychological judgment applies to nations. Aberrant behavior in an individual or in an organized group of individuals clouds their perception of reality.

No. 1? Hardly! In most important categories, the United States is not even in the top 10 anymore. Not even close. Data from 2004 shows that:

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[Program Note: While I am away this week attending Netroots Nation, I thought a blast from the past would be entertaining for my readers. In 2007, also while away on vacation, I conducted a journalistic experiment. I contacted the campaigns of all eight Democratic candidates for president and asked them for permission to reprint a transcript of the speech of their choice from their candidate. All responded, although Dennis Kucinich's campaign was unable to provide me with a transcript because he always spoke without notes (I ran one of his white papers instead).

The introduction to this series explained everything, and it is still kind of interesting to read for the inside-baseball points that it made. I should mention that as internet bandwidth improved by leaps and bounds, such an experiment was never necessary again, because by the next contested Democratic nomination, the campaign websites had not only transcripts but videos of each candidates' speeches, for everyone to see.

Anyway, this week I am reprinting five of these speeches, one each day, for your amusement. I begin with the two candidates who are also running again this year, Joe Biden and Mike Gravel. Then I'll move on to the two who lasted until the bitter end, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, as well as the candidate that I personally supported in the race, John Edwards.

What's interesting about reading these speeches again is how times have changed (all Democrats were running against George W. Bush's record, at the time) as well as how things have remained the same (the same themes used today pop up in more than one speech). So sit back and enjoy this nostalgic trip into presidential politics from 12 years ago. I may also be able to post live columns throughout the week, but make no promises on that score (time is a serious constraint during these conferences).

Originally published November 15, 2007

Joe Biden

National Security and Civil Rights

Drake University School of Law, Des Moines, Iowa
4/3/07

Since before our founding, the United States has been set apart by its uncompromising commitment to the rule of law and individual rights and civil liberties.

The values embodied in our constitutional government have been the pole star by which the world has set its moral compass.

They have given us the moral authority to lead our allies, and to defeat fascism and communism.

In the aftermath of September 11, as the world mourned with us, we had an opportunity to lead again.

The world looked to us to form a new coalition to face the threat of international terrorism and defend the very values the terrorists had attacked.

Regrettably, the Bush Administration saw it differently.

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After all the hype, things weren't nearly as bad as they could have been in Washington D.C. for the nation's birthday. Donald Trump gave a speech in front of some stationary tanks, but he (mostly) rigorously kept to the script which had been written for him to parrot. Perhaps someone had explained that if he went off script and turned the event into a campaign rally, then his campaign would have had to foot the bill. The size of that bill is still a secret, although the National Park Service admitted it had used over $2 million for it that should have gone to regular park maintenance.

It also, quite literally, rained all over Trump's big day. No better metaphor could have existed, really. Trump tried to hijack an event which has always been strictly nonpartisan and universally welcomed in D.C. (where every other day is absolutely consumed with partisan fighting), but in the end D.C.'s Fourth of July will survive even Trump. After all, the event is bigger than he could ever hope to be. It will go down in history, in fact, as a textbook example of why America should never again elect a man-baby to the Oval Office. Speaking of babies, the Trump Baby Blimp made an appearance, and veterans handed out T-shirts with the logo of the U.S.S. John McCain, just to get under Trump's thin skin. So a fun time was had by all, in the end.

Trump did provide one bit of amusement for his detractors, when (according to him) the TelePrompTer went out (or was possibly obscured by rain) so he just went ahead and said the following:

In June of 1775, the Continental Congress created a unified army out of the revolutionary forces encamped around Boston and New York and named after the great George Washington, commander-in-chief. The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter of Valley Forge, found glory across the waters of the Delaware and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown. Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do. And at Fort McHendry, under "the rockets red glare," it had nothing but victory. And when dawn came, their star-spangled banner waved defiant.

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[Originally published July 4, 2007]

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

-- Preamble to the Declaration of Independence

That line will be widely quoted across this land today, in parks and bandstands, on radio and in newsprint, from California to the New York islands, in countless big-city parades and from a myriad of small-town gazebos.

The more serious-minded of these proclaimers will go on to read the entire text of the Declaration which began the idea of the United States of America. It's an interesting text to read, and if you haven't read it since Junior High, I certainly encourage you to do so. There are obvious parallels in the deprivations of King George III which may sound uncomfortably apt today, for various reasons.

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For King Canute, it was the relentless tides that proved greater than royal decree. For Donald Trump, there are many examples of how reality has simply not matched up to his grandiose promises to personally make everything better for his base. The financial devastation hitting farmers is the most obvious, but there's a new contender for "biggest broken promise to people who overwhelmingly voted for Trump," and that is the people employed by the coal industry.

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Program Note:

For roughly the next two weeks, columns here at ChrisWeigant.com are going to become rather sporadic. The reason for this interruption in service is that it is Netroots Nation time, once again. This year we'll be in Philadelphia, and hopefully we'll see a whole bunch of the presidential contenders address the convention. So it should be a good one.

But what this also means is that I cannot commit to posting new columns for the entirety of next week. I may get inspired, but the real stumbling block is finding the time to write and edit, so if the past is any prologue, the whole week may go by without any new columns at all. Just to warn everyone in advance. I will try to get some column repeats ready to go before I leave, so at least there will be something to check out here while I'm gone, but I can't even 100 percent promise that, at this point.

What I am going to mightily try to do is to get together a Friday Talking Points for the end of this week. To do this, though, I'm running an old column today and will also be running a repeat on Independence Day as well. Tomorrow, I will likely comment on Trump hijacking the best Washington D.C. celebration day of the year, because it is so odious for him to do so.

In any case, my apologies for the interruption in service over the next two weeks. New columns will likely resume either Monday the 15th of July, or by Tuesday for certain. Thanks to everyone for their patience during my annual pilgrimage to the gathering of the lefty tribes.

Please enjoy the following column, which was written in 2012, long before the term "fake news" began to be bandied about. I mention this only because if I wrote the article today, I would surely be tempted to use this term several times while drafting it.

Originally published July 2, 2012

Happy Second of July, everyone! Happy Independence Day!

Now, you may be thinking: "Has Chris gone bonkers? Why is he jumping the gun, two days early?" The answers to these important queries are: No, Chris has not gone any more bonkers than usual; and, in fact, the rest of you are celebrating a fictitious event on a fictitious anniversary date. So there.

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The poll numbers are starting to trickle in, and what is becoming apparent is that women won both nights of last week's first round of 2020 Democratic presidential debates. The first night belonged to Elizabeth Warren (which was exactly as expected), and Kamala Harris won the second night (which came as much more of a surprise). In the first presidential debates in history with multiple women onstage, these two ladies outperformed the gentlemen, hands down. It wasn't even close.

That is good news for the two candidates, but it is also good news for the overall state of American politics and good news for the Democratic Party. Women -- both suburban women and women of color -- provided the decisive edge in the 2018 midterm victory, meaning currently they are the most important demographic in the Democratic coalition. Having two women emerge victorious from the first debates means those voters are being represented quite well, which bodes well for the 2020 general election and beyond.

Snap polls taken right after the debates showed that Harris and Warren were both surging in the electability and favorability categories, much more so than anyone else sharing the stage with them. Two other major polls just out show that Joe Biden is losing ground while Kamala Harris is gaining a lot of ground, probably at his expense. The results were more mixed for the other two candidates polling in the double digits, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. But what has become clear that for roughly the next month (until the next debates happen, that is), this group of four can now all be considered the frontrunners.

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Last night was the second of two nights of the first 2020 Democratic presidential debates, which showcased another ten candidates on stage sparring with each other. And it certainly lived up to its "adult table" billing, since Thursday night was a lot more high-energy than the previous night. There were fireworks, there was shouting, and there were a few punches landed. In other words, a good time was had by all (all the pundits watching, that is).

I'd like to make a few general observations before getting into each candidates' performance. What struck me most was the volume of the second debate night. Bernie Sanders, of course, shouted out a lot of his answers. He always does, so this was no surprise. What was surprising was that almost every other candidate matched Bernie's decibel count at some point or another, even the mildest of them. Obviously, they were all told to "show passion" on the stage, and most of them managed to do so without appearing too contrived. Not only were a lot of the candidates' answers loud, they all also talked as fast as they could to get as much as possible into their 60-second answers. This was also much more noticeable than the quieter pace of the previous night.

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Along with millions of other Americans, I watched the first round of the first Democratic 2020 presidential debates last night. Although there were a few standout moments, the general impression I was left with was that any one of the people on that stage would do a much better job leading the country than the current occupant of the Oval Office. Of course, I could probably say the same thing about any random 10 people stopped on the street -- or even Michael Moore's ficus plant candidate -- so that's not really saying a whole lot. But it was indeed, as one late-night host pointed out later in the evening, sincerely refreshing to hear adults discuss the issues of the day in complete sentences, full paragraphs, and intelligent language without once resorting to playground bullying or other nasty taunts. In other words, it felt like a return to normalcy just to see them all up there.

NBC, perhaps eager to balance the crowd behind the podiums (podia?), had two tag-teams of moderators, three for the first hour and two for the second. This was rather disjointed, but other than microphone problems during the handover, it worked well enough. They tried a few things out (asking candidates to raise their hands if they agreed with a few issues), and generally asked intelligent questions.

Where the moderators fell down on the job was in reining unruly candidates in. Bill De Blasio was the most notable offender in this regard, jumping in on any old question he felt like answering. During the first hour, he was not constrained by the moderators in the slightest, as they just let him get away with stealing the spotlight. Other candidates eventually picked up on this laxity and began inserting themselves into random questions on their own. Now, this might not have mattered with a smaller debate field, but with ten people on the stage, it was essentially robbing some of the candidates of their allotted time. I haven't seen a breakdown of who got the most time, but I'd be willing to bet that De Blasio got more than his fair share. Rachel Maddow and Chuck Todd were better at shutting this sort of line-jumping down, but they still allowed more of it than I would have liked.

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Illinois just became the eleventh state in the country to legalize recreational marijuana for its citizens. When added to Washington D.C., this means that 23.5 percent of the country's jurisdictions have now fully legalized marijuana. The tide has obviously now turned on what used to be an unthinkable political concept.

Illinois is notable because they passed this new law through their legislature, rather than via a ballot initiative. This means that politicians are getting more comfortable with the concept, and they no longer have to live in fear of being punished at the ballot box for not being tough enough on crime. This more than anything else fueled the War On Weed through its darkest decades (the 1980s and 1990s). Republicans successfully painted Democrats as being weak on law-and-order issues, and Democrats reacted by trying to appear the toughest drug warriors around. You can argue that the culmination of this downward spiral was the 1994 crime bill -- the same one that Joe Biden is going to have to try to defend later tonight -- but we're going to leave debate analysis until tomorrow for now.

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