Friday, July 25, 2008

Hillary protesters greet Dean in Charlotte

Around two dozen Hillary Clinton supporters, some carrying signs saying "Dump Dean," attempted to shout down Democratic national chairman Howard Dean during an appearance in Charlotte today.

The protesters, who described themselves as members of a group called "Charlotte Front and Center," shouted and waved signs as Dean spoke to about 150 people at a voter registration rally on West Boulevard.

The demonstrators said they were protesting what they said was a decision not to put Clinton's name in nomination at next month's Democratic convention.

Dean was briefly drowned out by shouts such as "I own my vote."

"I'm gonna let these folks shout a little bit because I can't hear you folks," Dean said, pausing his speech for a short time.

"There will be a roll call vote at the convention if Hillary Clinton wants one," he went on. "We all respect each other and we certainly respect Sen. Clinton. This is a unified party. It is not easy to be on the losing side and I know ... because four years ago, I was on the losing side."

The shouts continued intermittently. When Dean mentioned what he called "the biggest job for President Obama," protesters shouted "He's not president!"

Dean went on to urge the larger crowd of Democrats to help register what he said is an estimated 1 million unregistered North Carolinians.

Speaking to reporters later on his bus, he dismissed the protesters.

"I'm not sure all of them are Clinton supporters," he said. "I think some of them are having fun at the Democrats' expense. I think shouting through somebody's speech is low-class."

(The photo is from the group's Web site.)

52 comments:

Anonymous said...

Doesn't sound to unified Howwierd -HC

Anonymous said...

Acting like spoiled rude children reflects poorly on Hillary.

And our soldiers continue to die as our economy limps along under the burden of a 12 billion dollar a month war.

Some priorities.

Anonymous said...

Republicans for Hillary? The R's were salivating at the prospect of Clinton being the nominee, and many were aggressively and actively supporting her. They're not just acting like rude children, they're simply pandering to people like HC above.

Anonymous said...

Seriously. Hillary people need to stop dreaming and get behind Obama -- or else they can kiss the election goodbye to McCain.

Anonymous said...

These Hillary supporters need an overdue reality check or face living with McCain after November. Everyone else within the Democratic party has already moved on to support Obama in the general election.

Anonymous said...

So, let me get this right. Howard "ARRGGGGGGHHHHHHH" Dean is saying that folks from Charlotte are "low class"(July 25, 2008 - Howard "ARRGGGGGGHHHHHHH" Dean"). Well, Carolinians probably are not of the same class as as those southern haters in Chicago and New England who insists that southerners can vote for Democrats but can't really have a voice or a representative as head of the "progressive" party. And all because they just can't let go of that bit of unpleasantness seven generations ago, back in 1860's.

Anonymous said...

So, let me get this right. Howard "ARRGGGGGGHHHHHHH" Dean is saying that it not ok to shout a dissenting view during someone's speech, but as we know I guess it is perfectly alright to shout stupidly during your own.

Seriously, Hillary Clinton's name should be put into nomination since it is the superdelegates who will decide who the nominee really is. I think the superdelegates need to put on record as to who they supported so the voters back home can remember come November.

Anonymous said...

Shouting through someone's speech **is** low class. These sore losers need to get over themselves.

Anonymous said...

They're not sore losers, they're Republicans.

And they're very amusing.

Anonymous said...

To blpadge2 - been there, done that. I used to be a daily commenter and poster on Daily Kos daily as "NCCarboys". Trashed those who supported Bush on a daily basis, and with great vigor. Have voted for Democrats since 1992. Thought I'd never leave the Democrats, but I will for this election. I just can't trust people who have violated my civil rights by silencing my freedom of speech, as the Obama supporters (read blacks and far left liberals) did on a so called public forum. There's nothing progressive about being ultra liberal. You guys are no better than the GOP neecons. Matter of fact you're worse, The Republicans would always argue with me, but never - not once- did they not let me speak. So now, thanks to those like you, I am a Republican.

Don't flatter yourself with that pious "better American than thou" attitude.

Anonymous said...

After all she has said about her support of Obama I am sure they make Hillary proud. I am headed out to Denver for the convention and I am sure there will be some of these nut cases out there.

Anonymous said...

I was there and saw the crazy folks...I was actually thinking of thanking them...they support Hillary, and Hillary supports Barack, therefore they support Barack.

They were very rude though and made her look bad...she would be embarrassed if she saw what was going on.

PS...I won't be eating at Dish ever again.

Anonymous said...

Only about 70 people for Obama were present. The Hillary supporters were not as rude as you are lead to believe.
There are lots ethical people who will not support the corrupt Chicago politician who sells out his constituents to his rich friends.

Anonymous said...

These folks are not nut cases. They don't lock step down the party line. All of this partisan political thinking has put this country into non productive grid lock. Stop acting like being "on the team" is the place to be when doing the right thing for the people is the real place to be.

Anonymous said...

Howard Dean was angry and scared. He must be thinking that he's goofed by thinking that everyone would fall in line and drink the Kool Aide.

Anonymous said...

These Hillary supporters are just plain nuts. They only thing they're doing is hurting Hillary's reputation (what's left of it).

They're a pretty sad bunch.

Anonymous said...

To the Hillary supporter who is voting for McCain: Let me get this straight -- some people who are not connected to Barack Obama (except by their affiliation as supporters of him) "locked" you out of a message board or something, and you're pissed off enough about this to vote Republican in November??? That's straight wack. You need a head check.

Anonymous said...

Howard Dean is low, low class

Anonymous said...

Rude Hillary Clinton supporters?!? Really? And Obama supporters are such masters of etiquette. They have such good manners...

tlatexaspuma said...

Anonymous said...
Shouting through someone's speech **is** low class. These sore losers need to get over themselves.

Good job ladies, if Dean would quit double talking it would not be necessary to shout through his speaking. You didn't call anyone a c...t, bit..., make death threats, restrict anyone 1st amendment rights to freedome of speech. That is what Obama supporter have done to fellow Democrats, supporters of Hillary Clinton.

The people that need to get over themselves is the Obama supporters. At the end of the election neither candidate had enough delegates to secure the nomination. Ultimatelys this elction has come down to the super-delegates at the convention in Denver. Superdelegate endorsements are ONLY VALID at the convention. Pledged delegates may even change their minds in the face of persuasive information.

Now, get over that.

Anonymous said...

9 million Hillary supporters refuse to vote for Obama. Do you think they are all Republicans?

See turndownobama.com for cites and details.

The choice is Hillary or McCain. If the DNC forces through a nomination of Obama, at least 3 million Hil's will vote for McCain, and at least 4 million will stay home.

Better a sane decent Republican that HILlary can beat in 2012, than a cheating nut like Obama.

Btw 'Charlotte Front and Center' has some nice photos of the protest.

Anonymous said...

I was a Hillary supporter, but now she's out of the running and I'm an Obama supporter. Some of these people need to give it a rest already and put their support behind Obama. Do they really want John McCain (Dubya II) in the White House?

Kerri said...

You can go HANG, Dean...right along with your pal Brazille. WHAT YOU HAVE DONE TO THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND THE CHANCE AT A DEMOCRATIC WHITE HOUSE IS BEYOND FORGIVING!!
You are being met with, and will CONTINUE to be met with, in EVERY CITY AND STOP ACROSS THIS COUNTRY, the voices you and your cronies tried to subjugate in the primary process. Low class? How is FORCING a LIBERAL to vote REPUBLICAN something to aim for?
You're a scum-sucking leech, if you ask me. I abhor and destest you. The unmitigated GALL!! Well, you WON'T be winning any prizes for it, unforutunately, in rail-roading the real candidate, Senator Clinton, you're also damning the country to 4 more years of republican rule. But hey, you don't give a flying fig anyway. I can only wish you the despair you've set upon the rest of us, 18 million fold.

Anonymous said...

Everyone's entitled to their opinion, and entitled to express it through freedom of speech. Heckle Dean all you want, but he's not the one running for president this time around. But what the Clinton supporters don't seem to realize is that their whining and crying isn't accomplishing anything, other than to make themselves and Clinton look like a bunch of sore losers. It's stupid to even consider abandoning the Democratic party simply because your person lost. Like it or not, Obama will be the Democratic nominee for president.

And this thing of Dems voting for McCain, just because Hillary didn't get the nod?!? You all must be out of your effing minds. You want a continuation of the Bush monarchy? You want four more years of diplomatic treachery and lying to the American people...lying to the whole world? You want four more years of watching America go down the economic toilet?

Remember that old political chant, "The whole world is watching?" Well, the whole world really is watching us now. You whiners need to line up behind your party and behind your nominee, instead of continuing to be so damned divisive.

Bottom line? Hillary lost in the primaries. Hillary won't get the nomination, no matter what. The Clinton era is over. Barack Obama will be the one facing McCain in the election. Stop whining, get off your butts, and support Obama and your party.

Anonymous said...

What people don't realize is that lining up like zombies behind a party logo is just what is hurting this country. None of these politicians or staunch party members are taking the needs of their constituents to heart. It, at the end of the day, is all about their egos. This is what is tearing our country apart and keeps those in DC and elsewhere from getting anything done.

tlatexaspuma said...

Adrian if you really believed that everyone had moved on and was supporting Obama you wouldn't be on this site.
You all are a bunch of whiners saying,"Vote for Obama." I for one am not going to. Now take your toys and go home.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
What people don't realize is that lining up like zombies behind a party logo is just what is hurting this country.


I agree and so do alot of other voters. There are alot of voters that refuse to line up like zombies. Article in LA Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-challenges25-2008jul25,0,230990.story

Anonymous said...

Wonderful . . . Democrats speaking their mind. Get used to it Howard. We will not support your self-annointed messiah. If Hillary is not on the ticket I will vote for McCain.

Anonymous said...

I voted for Hillary. She should of won! :-(

Anonymous said...

Country before party. Democrats who refuse to support the elitist, inexperienced, lying, cheating, flip-flopping selected nominee have a right to have their voices heard. Dean, Brazille, Axelrod and the DNC will reap what they sow in November. Voting Republican will be a first for me and countless other disenfranchised Democrats. Nobama, No Way, Not Ever.

Anonymous said...

Hillary's name needs to be placed into nomination. Obama's presumed nomination was pushed on the public by a DNC with a plan and a cooperative press. Such a squeaky close contest should never have been "wrapped up" and unity forced upon the party before the convention.
Unless Hillary's delegates get an opportunity to represent the 18 million Americans who voted for her, unity will continue to elude
us.

Anonymous said...

What about all those Obama supporters who booed at Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee when she was talking about the ideals of the Democratic Party in Houston at the Senate District meeting? They interrupted her speech merely because she supported Hillary Clinton, but the speech had nothing to do with Senator Clinton.

Anonymous said...

Poor Dean. He's better go back to PA and play with the hounds. Voters are quite angry with him. I can't imagine what he thought he'd accomplish with this running around . . . maybe he thought it would be harder for us to hit a moving target.

Anonymous said...

Bitter is the new brave...
Obama is a danger to freedom of thought and expression.

Sage said...

Unfortunately, good manners and protesting don't go together. People protest because their voices aren't being heard, thus having to be loud and obnoxious.

It was "rude, spoiled brats" who protested to end a war...and it did.

If you really believe protesters are low life you don't have much of an understanding of how protests work.

Usually those who put down protesters are those who have never had the courage of their convictions to do anything more than insult other people from behind the safety of their keyboards.

Mountain Sage

Anonymous said...

I find it astounding that there are so amny people who do NOT feel utter outrage at the sham of a primary the DNC has run. First of all, the KNEW they messed up BIG time when the levied the punishments on FL and MI and NOT to Iowa, NH and SC... If they felt they were truly in the right they would not have held the Rules and Bylaw Committee meeting in the first place. It was just Dean's attempt at trying to throw the voters of those states a bone.

Wake up folks, this primary was rigged from the get go. NOBODY - not even Howard Dean had any business pressuring the SDs to make up their minds by June. The results of the primery were so close it should have been decided at the Convention. There would not have been any party division because the process would have been played out according to their own rules which the DNC has chosen to ignore - over the lame excuse of party unity. And the hypocrisy of it all - is that the reason FL and MI were the only state to be punished because of moving their primary dates (out of t 5 states which had done so was that "they broke the rules". Didn't all this seem contrived and lame to you all???

Open your eyes, folks, you are letting these people take a hold of the Democratic Party to bend things to their own agendas. If WE do not hold our elected officials and our own Party leaders accountable then who will? WHO WILL? Think about it folks.

Anonymous said...

AWWWW, you widdle Obama followers don't like protests? You don't like First Amendment rights? Freedom of speech? NO SHIT!

The "changed" dem party will lose in November if Obama is the nominee. Ya'll are dreaming if you think he can beat McCain. Hillary was and still is the only one who could beat him. A vote for Obama was always a vote for McCain. Stop watching MSNBC, go on a cross country road trip...WAKE UP!

Anonymous said...

The people have spoken, and a majority of Democrats want Barack Obama to be the next President. And unless she's lying, Hillary does too. So which is it? If she's telling the truth, then her supporters should respect that and not work against her wishes. If she's lying to America, then that is an answer unto itself.

If you Democrats (and Independents) stay at home or actually vote for McCain, you're voting for a continuation of "business as usual" in Iraq, if not an escalation of our involvement. You're also supporting the long-range plan of having over 100 permanent U.S. military bases scattered across the country, where we will become the new "war lords" managing the affairs of people that (for the most part) hate us.

You know what else you'll be voting for? Probably a couple of more conservative Supremes, which means Roe v Wade will be overturned and various Civil Rights issues for women and minorities will be in jeopardy.

Seven-plus years of Bush have turned Departments like Justice and State and agencies like the EPA and the CIA into parodies of what they are supposed to be, twisting the truth into knots and serving as tools for corporate interests. A vote for McCain will guarantee that most of the Bush bureaucrats remain in place, allowing the disease to spread even more.

Your anger over Hillary's loss is clouding your judgment about what a McCain Presidency will mean, or you actually believe things have been going right for the last seven years. There is no third thing, so you need to ask yourself which of those two categories you fit into.

tlatexaspuma said...

scharrison, no a majority of Democrats do not want Senator Obama. When the primary season ended the only way that he got to the magic number was super-delegates.

Super delegates public declarations do not count. They can change their minds ( as some did during the primary). They are not committed to any of their public declarations. Nothing counts until they cast their votes in Denver on August 27th.

If the roes were reversed I am sure you would expect the democratic process to continue in Denver.

Unknown said...

There is a clear difference between defenders of Obama and the democrats insisting on a democratic process. The latter know the process and read the facts. The former regurgitate media talking point, and resort to personal insults. The difference is collective mindset is the most glaring evidence of our fractured party

Sage said...

"then her supporters should respect that and not work against her wishes."

Why? Are we somehow obligated to do as we're told just because we voted for Hillary?

I can decide how to vote for myself, thank you.

And for those who think we are spoiled brats, I have an article posted just for you.

Mountain Sage

Unknown said...

Let's not forget how the well mannered Obama supporters booed Governor Granholm in Michigan when she mentioned Hillary Clinton's name. Talk about rude.

Anonymous said...

"When the primary season ended the only way that he got to the magic number was super-delegates."

I'm a little confused. In the early to middle days of the Primary, Clinton had a considerably larger percentage of Supers than Obama, even though he maintained a solid lead in the Popular votes.

When Obama supporters complained about the Party Elite leaning towards Hillary and not reflecting the wishes of their constituents, I heard (and read) a lot of Clinton people pointing out that Superdelegates were people too and could vote however they wished. Until they switched their votes. Now they're the party elite culprits again.

Folks, I like Hillary. If she had won the primary by the same margins Obama did, I would be having the same arguments with staunch Barack supporters. But we have to take this country back from Free Market Hell. We simply cannot afford to continue doing the GOP's work for them.

Even if Hillary did (somehow) snatch the nomination at the convention, the General Election would be lost. Can you people get that through your heads? Repairing the breech from the primary is hard enough, but something like that would kill us. Downticket races all over the Country would suffer, and the Republicans would recover seats from town councils all the way up to Congress.

If that's what you want, keep going. But if you're concerned about people dying in an unnecessary war, if you're concerned about health & education for all children, if you're concerned about the environment, etc., then take some time to think.

Anonymous said...

Keep Dean out of PA - not everyone is a HOUND here!

Anonymous said...

I guess if practicing your right as an American to assemble bothers the DNC and the very arrogant puppet who they have poised to take the nomination, it lets us know how tolerant they will be toward any dissenters if (God forbid) BO did win the office. We just don't like the fact that someone with no experience thinks he can be president. After all, at least W was a governor first.

Anonymous said...

Funny after being a Democrat all my life and voting for them for over 50 years just because I dream to think I have the right to pick the person I feel best would run our country, I am now considered a Republican since they are the ones who would put the country first and care about the world?
I lost my husband of over 50 years last Friday and I will remember his telling me I could still get more calls in for Hillary in a given day and the last 30 might be our best ones. I now vote for the two of us and needless to say I will not let him down. Hillary or McCain.

Anonymous said...

For the first time in a very long time, I agree with Howard Dean about how low class people booing and interrupting public speakers.

Google "Obama supporters boo Hillary". You'll find thousands of links to stories about Obama's supporters booing and interrupting Hillary Clinton.

tlatexaspuma said...

Let me give you a couple of articles to start with. Obama supporters booing Hillary Clinton

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/
2008/01/hillary_clinton_booed_at_nh_democratic_dinner_/


http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/
05/clinton-says-sh.html

The reality is Dean and DNC know that PUMA'S are growing and showing
up everywhere.

PUMA at Fenway:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFwfjjrNTGg

Anonymous said...

You know what is really funny about Howard Dean crying about “low class” people booing him?
Not once during this primary season did he ever stick up for President Clinton or Hillary Clinton.
Not when Obama, the Obama campaign, Obama’s supporters and the media were calling both Clintons racists.
Not when Hillary herself was booed at almost every single Democrat party function and her campaign events by Obama’s supporters.
Not when Obama was using sexist language against Hillary, and not when the Obama campaign was engaging in sexist attacks on her.
Howard Dean sat back, watched and willingly allowed all of these transgressions against the Clintons to happen, but now he gets his back all up because he was booed by a handful of people.
Ever hear of Karma, Dr. Dean?

Unknown said...

sore losers...

seems to me that neither democratic candidate EARNED ENOUGH pledged delegates to win the nomination...

with that said, WHY was one of the candidates FORCED out of the race by Dean, Brazile and a whole host of blind mice from the MSN?

really, it's all going to be so embarrasing, this pitiful DNC coup d'etat when McCain wins in a landslide.

Anonymous said...

If Obama loses, it won’t be because of something Clinton or her supporters did. The DNC did this, the party elders did this!

Get Clinton on the first nominating vote!
Support her delegates, and her platform!
Require the Democratic Party be Democratic!
Give all the states their votes or punish all five!
Investigate the caucus irregularities and punish the perpetrators!
Get rid of all future Caucuses!
The world IS watching!!! If the Democrats really want a united party, they will fix this!

Anonymous said...

NC Girl said....
It is not too late for Hillary. For Obama to win, he needs to have Hillary as his running mate. I think that will ensure the democrats will win the White House.
He should quit being too proud and do what the rest of the country wants. Some of the people being considered have never been heard of. As soon as Hillary threw her support to Obama, he never mentioned her again.