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February 09, 2007

Cuomo circa 1984

icon_flag.jpgCould be today...

Stumbling around the internets at lunchtime today I came across then NY Governor Mario Cuomo's address to the 1984 Democratic National Convention. Reading it today, more than two decades later, brings tears to my eyes as hearing it did back in 1984.

We're always talking about what it means to be a Democrat - here ya go:

We believe -- We believe as Democrats, that a society as blessed as ours, the most affluent democracy in the world's history, one that can spend trillions on instruments of destruction, ought to be able to help the middle class in its struggle, ought to be able to find work for all who can do it, room at the table, shelter for the homeless, care for the elderly and infirm, and hope for the destitute. And we proclaim as loudly as we can the utter insanity of nuclear proliferation and the need for a nuclear freeze, if only to affirm the simple truth that peace is better than war because life is better than death.

Yeah, what he said. More "money quotes" below the fold.

We believe in a single -- We believe in a single fundamental idea that describes better than most textbooks and any speech that I could write what a proper government should be: the idea of family, mutuality, the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all, feeling one another's pain, sharing one another's blessings -- reasonably, honestly, fairly, without respect to race, or sex, or geography, or political affiliation.
We believe we must be the family of America, recognizing that at the heart of the matter we are bound one to another, that the problems of a retired school teacher in Duluth are our problems; that the future of the child -- that the future of the child in Buffalo is our future; that the struggle of a disabled man in Boston to survive and live decently is our struggle; that the hunger of a woman in Little Rock is our hunger; that the failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might, to avoid pain, is our failure.

Posted by Catherine at February 9, 2007 12:50 PM

Comments

I never did understand why he didn't run. He would have mopped the floor with Papa Bush.

Posted by: MelGX [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 9, 2007 01:11 PM

It is one of the great political mysteries of the late 20th century. Although Hamlet On The Hudson is a helluva moniker.

Posted by: griftdrift [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 9, 2007 01:17 PM

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