[Photo by TIFFANY YOON]
SCREAM, BABY, SCREAM: Dr. Howard Dean, DNC Chairman, Temple, 12:34 pm
BY TIFFANY YOON LIVING ARTS EDITOR Howard Dean came to Temple University earlier today to support Barack Obama and stress the importance of registering to vote. October 6th is the last day to register to vote in Pennsylvania, that leaves just 14 days to get on the rolls. As eager students and faculty waited for the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and one time contender for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, The Who’s “Baba O’Riley blasted out of the public address system — “the exodus is here/the happy ones are near/let’s get together/before we get much older.” Dean emphasized the importance of this presidential election, and called it “a generational election”, making reference to the 1960 election between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. He urged everyone to get involved: “You get a D for just voting, you need to do much more than that. We [his generation] got lazy, and the country is in the state it is in now because of it.” He ended with this warning: “This is your time, don’t blow it.” Everyone in the room laughed, nervously.
PREVIOUSLY: Dean has something none of the other candidates can claim: People don’t just vote for him — they believe in him. They get on buses and drive a thousand miles to knock on doors in the snow. And they do it with a smile. Which is something even a king’s ransom worth of TV ads can’t buy and the dirtiest Republican tricks can’t change. Laurel Eckhouse says as much as we file out into the frigid Iowa night. “This is bad for the Democratic Party. This could have been a chance for unity,” she says. “Dean bypassed the party gatekeepers, built his own movement and came up with his own paradigm–and it’s brilliant. And that scares the shit out of them. His issues should be the heart and soul of the Democratic Party: government of the people, by the people and for the people. Instead we get government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations. No matter what, if he doesn’t win the nomination, in four or eight years, people are going to look back and say Howard Dean was ahead of his time.” MORE
MSNBC: “This morning, Senator McCain gave a speech in which his big solution to this world wide economic crisis was to blame me for it,” Obama said to boos from the crowd of about 8,000 people at a South Florida rally. “This is the guy who spent nearly three decades in Washington and after spending the entire campaign saying I haven’t been in Washington long enough he apparently now is willing to assign me the responsibility for all of Washington’s failures. I think it’s pretty clear that Sen. McCain is a little panicked right now,” he added. “At this point he seems to be willing to say anything or do anything or change any position or violate any principle to try and win this election.” MORE
THE WHO: A Quick One