I was born in New York City. I can remember riding double-decker buses on top for a nickel, and when the Third Avenue subway through Yorkville was an elevated train.
I had my first real job in New York (Wall Street), I worked in my first political campaign in New York, Ed Koch's first (unsuccessful) run for Mayor. I went to Medical School in New York, I have been on the ballot in New York. I met my wife in New York.
I now live in Vermont, and I have been here for 31 years. Twelve of those years I served as Governor, but my more vehement political opponents always called me a New Yorker when they were particularly frustrated with some of my deeds.
When I was a medical student at Albert Einstein I worked in the public hospital system in the Bronx. Seeing a nine year old a with gun shot wounds in the Emergency Room sharpened my sense of social justice. Long lines of people waiting in the ER because they had no where else they could go for medical help formed my core belief that our healthcare system needs real reform, not a re-shuffling of the status quo for political reasons. Going on Ambulance calls in the South Bronx made me respect the efforts of the poor and of immigrants. We would weave in and out of the pillars supporting the El with sirens blaring and climb the dingy dangerous stairs of a tenement house to find families in distress in neat, well-kept (although frayed) apartments.
I learned the code of the streets, being stopped in bad neighborhoods by toughs demanding money, only to have one of them step from the shadows and defend me.
Tom Manton of Queens, who was the leader of the last political machine in America outside Chicago, showed me the secret to his success. He was inclusive of every new group of people who moved into his borough, the melting pot of melting pots in America. It wasn't enough to have (by invitation) African Americans, Hispanics, Jews, and Asian Americans. He had two or three kinds of everything: Orthodox, Hasidic and Reform Jews; Caribbeans, Brazilians and Americans; Dominican, Colombian and Puerto Ricans; Muslims, Catholics, Protestants and Buddhists; Korean, Indian and Chinese Americans. Everyone was heard, but in the end, they pulled together as one team. His example informed my belief that the Democratic Party had to end the hangover of interest group politics left over from the sixties and seventies, and that showing up everywhere and talking to people everywhere is a sign of respect.
Frank Sinatra had it right. It's a heck of a town.
Every time I've heard you speak or read your material I'm impressed with your point-of-view and your no-nonsense approach. The Dems need you now more than ever as we see a public health care option being discarded in favor of lobbyists, GOP no-sayers, and propaganda.
Please get out there and continue to push the Dem party to not buckle now at this critical juncture.
You did the right thing, Dr. Dean. ( You may have know my childhood buddy, Dr. Fred Fein while you were at Einstein.)
Please remind Pres. Obama not to back down on health care reform that makes it posssible for Bronx families to make it up the ladder the right(eous) path once again. Courage is the step that follows fear.
A few million peons cannot compete against corporate America.
It can't be done.
And most people are mostly satisfied with the way things are. This is not the 1930s. The vast majority have jobs, homes, food, automobiles and plenty of entertainment. A third party would absolutely flop.
Check out Arianna's column today about how the Democrats' promises for change have turned into a cruel hoax. America desperately needs a new, genuinely progressive political party. Would you consider leading it?
The NeoCon Republicans have lost it, gone off the deep end into oblivion. The pre-wingnut, fiscal conservative, socially responsible Repubs and moderate Dems have morphed into Corporate Flunkies. The only people in Congress that still reflect the American values of social and economic justice are the Progressives.
I would like to see Dr. Dean, Sen. Kucinich, Elizabeth Warren and Eliot Spitzer at the core of a new progressive party. Regardless of leadership, progressives need to be communicating with the people. Let the mainstream media write progressives off as some kind of fringe movement; they are obsolete or nearly so. We have the internet!