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Dean: 'We are going to win the nomination'

Howard Dean speaks to his supporters after learning the results of the New Hampshire primary.
Howard Dean speaks to his supporters after learning the results of the New Hampshire primary.

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(CNN) -- Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean finished second Tuesday in the New Hampshire primary.

Here is a transcript of Dean's speech to his supporters after the polls closed:

DEAN: Thank you, thank you.

We really are going to win this nomination, aren't we?

You are amazing. You are amazing.

First, let me just say a couple of things. You are unbelievable, and I really appreciate it. I want to -- first, let me thank the people of the state of New Hampshire.

You took us into your homes and your living rooms, the meet-ups, the Merrimack Restaurant.

I really appreciate all that you've done.

The people of New Hampshire have allowed our campaign to regain its momentum. And I am very grateful.

And the people of New Hampshire have allowed all of you to hope, again, that we're going to have a real change in America.

For those of you who believe that America needs real change and someone in the White House who has really delivered change, we are all together in this. Stand with us to the very end, which is January 20th, 2005.

For those of you who think that America needs a president who is willing to stand up for what's right, not just what's popular, we are all together again, stand together, all of us.

To those of you who believe the best way to beat George Bush, in fact the only way to beat George Bush is to stand up to him all the time, not just when it's convenient, not just some of the time.

Tonight, the people of New Hampshire have asked for change, a real change. We can change America and we will.

We can have jobs again in America. And we will.

We can join every other industrialized nation on the face of the Earth and have health insurance for all Americans. And we will.

We can invest in families with small children and have those kids grow up to go to college instead of prison. And we will.

We can demand for our young people a better future, a solution to global warming, getting us off foreign oil by investing in renewable energy. And we will.

We can regain the moral leadership that this country has held from the end of World War I until the time of the Iraq invasion by having a foreign policy based on cooperation, not confrontation. And we will.

We can return our school systems to the control of local school boards, fully fund special education and get rid of the federal mandates of No Child Left Behind. And we will.

We can get rid of the president's pharmaceutical bill and, instead, have a pharmaceutical bill that's helped seniors instead of insurance companies and drug companies. And we will.

We can give the 50 percent of Americans who've quit voting in this country, because we don't give them a reason to vote, a reason to vote again. And we will.

We can take back America and stand up for working families and middle-class families again, and take our government back for the people who built it instead of corporations and special interests. And we will.

And this time, we can really have a president who really is a uniter, not a divider. And we will.

A lot of you have heard me say this. I'm going to say this to America: The biggest loss that we suffered under George Bush is not the 2.9 million jobs that have disappeared since he's been president.

And it's not the loss of our moral leadership in the world, where a majority of people in most countries don't respect us anymore.

Howard Dean acknowledges supporters at his primary night celebration in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Howard Dean acknowledges supporters at his primary night celebration in Manchester, New Hampshire.

The biggest loss that we suffered in this country since George Bush has been president is our loss of our sense of community, the sense that we're all in it together.

When I was 21 years old, it was the end of the Civil Rights movement, and America had suffered greatly. Martin Luther King had been killed. Bobby Kennedy was dead. A lot of other Americans, maybe not so famous, including four little girls in a Birmingham church, died, so that every single American would have equal rights under the law.

But it was also a time of great hope. Medicare passed so that seniors would never again have to fear being bankrupted because they became ill. Head Start passed, the first investment in children under the age of 5. The Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the first African-American justice to the United States Supreme Court -- we felt like we were all in this together, that if one person was left behind, then America wasn't as strong as it should be or as good as it could be.

We were all in it together.

You know, the president ran as a uniter, not a divider. And there wasn't any evidence for that any more than there was for those weapons of mass destruction or all those bombs.

The president used the word "quota" five or six times on the evening news, talking about the University of Michigan affirmative action program. Not only did the most conservative Supreme Court since the Dred Scott decision disagree with him on that one, but the word "quota," every politician and every pollster in America knows, is a race-coded word, deliberately designed to appeal to people's fears that they may lose their job or their place in the university to a member of a community of color.

In other words, the president played the race card, and that alone entitles him to a one-way bus ticket back to Crawford, Texas.

I am tired of being divided in this country. I am tired of being divided by race. I am tired of being divided by gender, when the president thinks he knows better than an American woman what kind of reproductive health care that she ought to have.

I'm tired of being divided by income. I'm tired of being divided by sexual orientation. I'm tired of being divided by religion.

When we say we want our country back, what we mean is that we want the country that all of us were promised when we were 21 years old, the country where we were all in this together, where we could believe, where we could hope again that America would be a better place as we grew older.

We want the country back that John F. Kennedy talked about when he talked about passing the torch to the new generation and leaving a country to the new generation better off than the country when we found it. ...

Let me close by saying something that -- let me close by saying just a couple more things. The first is this, the other day I was in Manchester giving a speech to a group of volunteers who had worked very hard and a whole lot of people who had -- paid staff as well -- who had really worked hard for this. And we did what we needed to do tonight. And I want to thank them for what they have done.

And I also want to just tell one quick story. As I was speaking a guy yelled out, "We believe in you, Howard." And I said, "Far be it from me to rebuke any exuberant supporter." It's not me that you have to believe in; it's you.

And that is really how this campaign works. ...

But let me finish the way I always do, because it's always true.

And we are going to win the nomination. We are going to win the nomination.

And the reason we're going to win the nomination is because of you. Because soon or later, all Americans are going to learn what you've already learned; that the biggest lie told by people like me to people like you at election time is that, "If you vote for me, I'm going to solve all your problems."

The truth is, the power to change this country is in your hands, not mine.

Abraham Lincoln said, "A government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from this Earth."

You have the power to take back the Democratic Party and make it stand up for what Harry Truman asked for in the 1948 Democratic Party platform, health insurance for all Americans; to make us proud to be Democrats so never again will we apologize for environmental protection.

Never again will we apologize for standing up for the rights of working men and women to organize.

Never again will we be afraid of a president with a 70 percent popularity rating who sends us to war without telling us the truth.

Never again will we be afraid to stand up for our children and ask that this president not give us pretty names like No Child Left Behind, but give us the money, our taxpayers' money, back into our own communities to stand up for families of working people.

You have the power to take back our country, so that the flag of the United States of America never again is the sole property of John Ashcroft and Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh and Jerry Falwell, that the flag of the United States of America belongs to all of us again, every single American.

And most of all, to you and every other American who's been abandoned by this administration, struggling hard to pay for college, keep food on the table, working extra jobs now that don't pay any more overtime -- thanks to what this president has done -- that every single American, not just you, but all of you have the power to take back the White House in 2004.

And that is exactly what we're going to do.

Thank you very much. Thank you for all of your help.


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