Dean in the debate today

I didn’t get to hear the debate today, and I can’t seem to find it online. But I did hear just a few of the closing arguments as I drove to the grocery store. Once again I was dumfounded to discover myself moved by Dean. I was not surprised by Lieberman’s or Kerry’s statement (like most such politicians, they tried to point out why they were the best candidate), but Dean took a whole different tack. Here’s his closing statement (which I grabbed from his blog):

“The front-runner in this campaign is George W. Bush, and all the powerful people who’ve given him millions of dollars and benefited from his policies. The underdog is the American people. The biggest lie that people like me tell people like you at election time is ‘if you vote for me I’m going to fix all your problems.’

The truth is the power to change this country is in your hands, not in mine. You have the power to take back the democratic party, give us new leadership so we can beat these republicans again. You have the power to take back our country so that the flag of the United States is no longer the sole property of John Ashcroft and Rush Limbaugh and Jerry Falwell, it belongs to every single one of us again. And together we have the power to take the White House back in 2004.”

The power is in our hands. We do still live in a democracy, even if it doesn’t often look or feel like one. I hope you’ll take some time to think about that today, and then act upon it.