We Democrats in Delaware County had a right to express ourselves on who should lead this party nationally - we earned it on Nov. 2. 94,000 Democrats from Delco voted that day -- 80% of our registration. This county went 57 /1/2 % Democratic. And, not only for Kerry-Edwards - we carried the three statewide officers Eisenhower, Wagner and Casey. And though we lost for US Senator we came closest of all the counties that Joe Hoeffel lost. Everyone knows about the record percentage and the 100,000 Delco votes that Paul Scoles received for Congress with a 90day campaign. And the 46% that Josh Richard got against a quarter century incumbent. By every measurement and every formula we had a tremendous landslide victory here in Delaware county -- the result of a strong and truly effective campaign and strategy. We increased our party vote by 30,000 - 15,000 were newly registered Democrats an unprecedented 75% of those voted and 15,000 were Democrats we targeted who hadn’t voted in five years - and 50% of those voted. . And 50,000+ Republicans joined us in voting for the Democratic ticket as they did in 2002 and 2000. That’s right 50,000 Delco Republicans voted for Gore, Rendell and Kerry - they’re no more Republicans than you and I. It is clear and certain that today in the year 2005 The Democratic Party represents the thinking of a majority of the voters of Delaware County. In the coming years we will win victory after victory until Democracy has opened the doors of the courthouse in Media. As FDR said in his last undelivered speech "The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today". The Republicans know we are the majority party -they intend to use their money and our own doubts and weaknesses to stay in power as long as they can. We are not going to let that happen. We are going to act and think like a majority party. No more paper candidates - we are going to run only those who are serious about winning and serving - the 162,000 voters who supported us last year deserve no less. And we are going to offer the voters candidates who are can articulate our party’s message and inspire their confidence.

The Republicans and the pseudo-journalist political commentators on cable have been preaching since November 2nd that Democrats don’t stand for anything and that Democrats are out of touch with average Americans. We Democrats know what we stand for. And now we have a national chairman in Howard Dean who represents the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party and he knows what we stand for. We stand for absolute adherence to the Bill of Rights - free speech, freedom of association, the right to privacy that gives us the right to choose a lifestyle and women the right to reproductive freedom , and the freedom of religious thought as we have since the days of Thomas Jefferson. We Democrats stand against plutocracy, powerful money interests, greedy insurance companies as we have since the days when Andrew Jackson broke the Bank of the United States. We stand for honesty and integrity in government and keeping goernment out of people’s personal lives as we have since the Presidencies of Grover Cleveland. We Democrats stand for waorld where all people can enjoy democracy and freedom and live in peace with a collctive association of nations that settle disputes without war as we have since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We Democrats stand with our great leader Franklin Delano Roosevelt who sixty years ago proclaimed a second Bill of Rights - the right of every American to a good education; the right of every American to a useful job earning enougth to provide food, clothing and recreation; living wage; the right of every family to a decent home; the right of every American to medical care. We Democrats still stand with Harry Truman in insisting on the right of every American to have health insurance. We Democrats stand for equal rights for all Americans as we have since John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson.

There is one issue that overshadows all others - the last hurrah of the ultra conservatives - their dream for seventy years - to cripple if not outright abolsih Social Security. They cry crisis and bankruptcy and claim it’s all so complex that Democrats are making it too simple when we say it’s not broken so don’t break it. It’s like the old movie "It’s a Wonderful Life" You know Jimmy Stewart and Clarence the Angel . Well there’s a scene in the movie where there’s a run on the Savings and Loan during the depression and everyone wants to withdraw their money. George Bailey has to explain to people why the money isn’t there. "Joe your money is in the building of Lou’s house. Ed your money is helping Mr. Martini open his store and Bill your money was a loan to help Ernie get a new cab" You see everybody puts in and when you need it takes out". Well social secutity was sort of designed that way. The money people under 65 put in was going to help those over 65 pay their bills and let them enjoy a decent retirement. Now George Bush is like old Mr. Potter sitting at his desk at the Bank trying to find ways to get his hands into the pockets of everyone else and get their money into stocks and bonds.

Well we Democrats have to decide that there might be something more important than winning elections. It’s keeping the covenant made to the American people by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Congress of 1935 that that generation, and its children, and grandchildren and great grandchildren as far as the generations run would never again be crushed by the vagaries of our ecomonic system; and that all Americans would have "a right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment". If there was ever a litmus test in the Democratic Party it should be this matter of Social Security. And we must stand up to George Bush and his radical conservative ideologues and his Murdoch-owned Fox Media s and proclaim "thou Shalt Not Break the Social Security Covenant - Not Now- Not Ever." Bush says the system is running out of money. Well raise the minimum wage and bring back the Clinton-Gore prosperity and their will not be a Social Security crisis in 2042. We shall not Privatize nor shall we Euthanize the greatest social program enacted in the history of the United States. On this question just as on the great moral battle 1965 Like a Tree Standing in the Water - We Shall Not be Moved.

And while George Bush and his neoconservative radical right wing literal interpreters of the scriptures wear their religion on their sleeve and preach the gospel according to Tom DeLay we Democrats will do what we‘ve always done -- we will implement the great precepts of the social gospel movement of the Progressive Era - to feed the hungry; to clothe the naked ; to shelter the homeless and to heal the sick and comfort the weary.

We Democrats support and are proud of the great social gains made in the second half of the twentieth century by women, African-Americans, Latinos, gays and lesbians, the disabled, working men and women. We know where we stand because we Democrats are the party of the common man, the forgotten man, the woman who works for lower wages than the man who does the same job, the union member threatended with retrenchemnts in his hard won gains; the Wal-mart worker who barely makes ends meet, the young man or woman who struggles to pay for college because their parents are being squeezed by this rich get richer economy. The rich, the powerful, the greedy don’t need a second political party they have the Republicans. We are the People’s Party- the only one they’ve got and we will prevail. Whether it’s this year or a decade from now we will prevail here in Delaware County and bring the light of Democracy into all the corners of the courthouse in Media . Whether we regain the White House in 2008 or 2012 we will prevail. We will prevail because in the long history of our nation the people have always ultimately prevailed. We shall overcome because in the long history of our nation the people have always overcome the obstacles that the few and the powerful have used to hold them down.

We Democrats shall prevail because WE ARE THE PEOPLE.