It’s nearing 6:00 PM in Indianapolis, have you cast YOUR vote?
Sunday night I attended the very important Jefferson Jackson Day Dinner at the Indiana Convention Center. When you walked in you saw a small crowd of people getting name tags and then heading up the escalators to get checked by lax, but still there, security and then heading down the hall to greet their colleagues and friends. We arrived at about 4:00 and there was still a small crowd but by 5:00 the crowds had started to grow. There was a big enough crowd to see the Hoosiers for Obama marching down the street and stopping outside the convention center. At about 7:00 the doors opened for the dinner and we were all greeted with a huge room with a full length American Flag, by full I mean it was way larger than what you imagined on a flag pole, and two TV screens for the people way in the left and right corners of the room. Sponsors such as the Metal Workers, and UAW were scrolling on the screens as people sat down at their tables which had a nice salad on it. We were seated at table #146, which was paid for by the Obama campaign (30 tables were purchased) and was right in the middle of the podium.
Guests that were in attendance were Andre Carson, Woody Myers David Orentlicher (all three of whom are running for Congress on the Democratic side of course) Sean Astin, Rob Reiner, Ex-Governor and a person friend of mine Joe Kernan, Melina Kennedy who ran and lost prosecutor and lost to Carl Brizzi and is now an attorney, Jill Long Thompson and her foe Jim Shellinger, both running for Governor against Mitch Daniels, Howard Dean who is Chairman of the Democratic Committee, Joe Andrew the former Democratic Committee Chair with the Bill Clinton campaign, Baron Hill (9th district House of Representative), Former First Lady of the Governor Judy O’bannon, Cordelia Lewis, Mark Crounce, and Senator Evan Bayh. Now all these people made the night a very special night but the top two were presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. This was the most sought after event of the year.
The night started off with Cordial Lewis introducing Wayne County Sheriff Roy Dominguez who introduced Jill Long Thompson who talked about her middle class childhood on the farm and a feminist respect that politics has gained, not only due to Hillary but over time. After she got off stage her opponent Jim Shellinger’s wife Laura stepped up and talked about how great her husband is, why you should vote for him and he then got on stage, the first thing he said was he was sorry that the governor election overshadowed the ongoing presidential campaigns of Barack and Hillary. It was a very Pro-Indiana speech and Anti- Mitch Daniels, both of whom are strongly against Mitch and his selling the state out of the country. Shellinger wants to reinstate collective non- bargain which just means unions again. Then Dan Parker came on to introduce Father Glenn O’connor for the invocation and dinner was started.
After dinner Dan Parker once again took the podium to give the Hoosier Democratic Award to Mary Titsworth for pro-bono work with the party, and after the award Senator Evan Bayh was introduced. Bayh gave a very Pro-voter in general vote, he said even if he was good friends and endorsing Hillary that doesn’t mean he didn’t like Barack or anyone who voted for him.
“The consequences of this race go far beyond the candidates.
Our nominees will lift up American families, that’s what our party is about.
States are too great for anyone of us to not give our all.”
Hillary Clinton was introduced by Bayh, and when she came on it was to many people off their chairs and applause. She came on at 8:41 PM and it didn’t seem like that long of a speech, but it was heart felt and very into the voters and wanting Bush out of the white house so the Democrats could finally take over office again. Many have made the point of Indiana not being this important since the 1968 Robert F. Kennedy campaigns, and she made the same point.
So with the 500 around the corner, I will ask you America…are you ready to start your engines?
She had light humor and a very soft voice, wanting people to bend over in their chairs to hear how important America needed to be changed and how she could change it. And also getting raging applause for her bashing Bush tactics.
If you listen close enough you can almost hear the sound of the moving van taking Bush back to Texas.
We don’t ask for special privilieges as Democrats, we ask that it isn’t against us.
At this point in time a Hillary supporter came and sat down at the Barack table, probably not knowing this was a table paid for by the Obama’s, but he had a pamphlet that caught my eye, as he sat there and made a CD for Hillary. It said “S-Day, May 6.” I took it as success day. Very catchy,.
I believe if everyone is secured the cost for everything will go down.
Needless to say when she said this quote, it kind of caught me off guard because it was unbacked and it came out of nowhere. The people at my table at this point were talking about how Hillary was a liar and needed to stop feeding the American people little fairy tales. Hillary ended on a very optimistic note about taking things for granted and her closing statement was this:
This next generation will grow up taking advantage that a woman and an African American can be President of the United States.”
Howard Dean then came on and talked about how you need to knock on doors, the same ones, at least 3 times before the elections, how this little amount will mean a load to the Democratic candidates. “In the long run this is not about Hillary or Barack this is about our country.” He endorsed the site democrats.org and told people to go out and get involved and surprisingly took a few wise cracks at Governor Mitch Daniels selling out the Indiana toll roads, and how we need the money at home.
At around 9:47 closing up the night, when dessert was finished and everyone was on the end of their seats for Obama, Lee Hamilton took the stage and introduced Barack. The hall was deafening with applause, it took him three or four times saying thank you to quiet the crowd and he got twice as many standing ovations as Hillary did. Lee Hamilton said quote “He’s the candidate whose life story is uniquely and distinctively American.” Lee Hamilton if you don’t know was the Vice Chairman for the 9/11 Commission and serves on the President’s Homeland Security Advisory Counsel.
Obama talked about how our politics have gotten smaller but the problems are continuinly getting larger. How we needed, and were ready to turn the page and write a new chapter in American History. If you’ve seen Barack speak before, he repeated a few lines but he never ceased to amaze the people at that dinner. He spoke of the old American ways of life, how jobs were easy to come by and people were willing to work their fingers to the bone just to pay for their family, and how dreams were still around.
The jobs they got didn’t just give them a paycheck but a sense of dignity.
How many decades have we talked and talked and talked of these problems and Washington does nothing?
Obama spoke of shell games with gas prices, politicians losing their sense of self and morals and principals. Only taking on political titles to have the power and forgetting the bills and taxes they had signed against and now were for (Shooting this one at McCain) He ended reminding us that Washington needs to change for the whole United States of America to change, and he fed us his ever so popular line “Politics didn’t lead me to the working people, working people lead me to politics.
