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MESSAGE
FROM THE CHAIR:
I saw a great bumper sticker recently. It read, “Where is this county going? And why are we in this handbasket?” Well, when Democrats prevail in November, we’re going to know where this country is going, and it won’t be somewhere to which handbaskets are the customary mode of transportation. I have a picture I want you to visualize this morning: as a career diplomat and great Democrat recently reminded me, at 12:00 noon on Tuesday, January 20, 2009, in every American embassy and every American consulate and every American government building in the entire world, the picture of George W. Bush comes down off the wall, and the picture of President Hillary Clinton or President Barak Obama goes up! What a powerful image of what this county is all about – and of what is so great about America. Don’t forget that picture, for it is what this election is all about. We are on the doorsteps of history in this country and in this county. We are about to elect either the first African American or the first women ever to lead the most powerful and most just nation on the face of the earth. We can and will win this in November, but only if we avoid letting the intensity and passion of our commitment to our favorite Democratic candidate blind us to the overriding importance of the being sure that no Republican Administration is in place in Washington or Austin or Harris County to continue the devastation of the last 8 – or in Harris County’s case, 14 – years of Republican rule. You are passionate and devoted and loyal to your respective candidates for president, and that’s good. But at the end of the day, this has to be about winning in November. As I look out over this crowd this morning, I can’t help but think of Ann Richards, and how proud she would have been to see Democrats so involved in the work of picking the first African American or the first woman ever to be president of the United States of America. And I am reminded of what she told us in that great speech at the Democratic convention in 1988 – that what this election is all about is the American dream, that it’s about “those who are satisfied with what they have, and those who know we can do better, about those who want to keep the American dream for the few, and those who know it must be nurtured and passed along.” For the past 14 years in Harris County, and especially the last 2, while this county saw government for the people turn into government for the special interests and for people who use taxpayers’ money for their political and private purposes and then lie about it, and who would deny equal justice to members of our community who don’t look like them or talk like them, and who believe the civil courthouse is really just there to protect insurance companies and big corporations and not the rest of us, and for more than 7 years now, while the most wrong-headed war in the history of this nation was waged and people died, and children and families couldn’t get access to health care, and the economy was ravaged, and so was the environment, for those long years, as a recent e-mail observed, Texans and Democrats in Harris County, Texas, held our breath – and began slowly to turn blue! We can have government that cares, government that works, government
we can be proud of – for a change. And that, my friends, is what
this election is about. I implore you, in your passion and your devotion
to your particular candidate, do not lose sight of the reality that we
have an historic opportunity in this place, at this hour, in this county
to begin the work of returning Harris County, and this state and this
nation to the lofty heights we know it can achieve
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(The
following are the comments delivered by Harris County Democratic Party
chair Gerry Birnberg at senatorial district conventions throughout Harris
County on March 29)
