We Have Now the Great Opportunity'
Excerpts from remarks by former California governor Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown Jr. in the living room of Rose and Richard Arthur in Merrimack, N.H., on Jan. 11:</br></br>This is a campaign which I like to call an insurgency campaign and the reason I say that is because we're trying to do something that I don't see done that often in politics, and that really is make a change. Something you can see and feel and experience.</br></br>The reason why I believe so many people don't vote anymore is because they don't feel that their vote will actually add any difference to their lives - either good or bad. It's just another empty ritual that comes along and they don't want to take part. And I think that's a very damning statement about the state of politics.</br></br>Now when everything goes along fine and people are having economic security and opportunity, maybe that voter participation doesn't have the same significance. But when, as we see {in} . . . so many other places in the country, a real decline in opportunity and real hardship and people losing their jobs, then we look to the political system for some kind of redress, for some kind of sustenance and leadership to do what isn't being done.</br></br>And it is my point here in this campaign, the reason why I am here, is I don't think the political system is responding, or will respond. You're going to see a lot of money coming out of Washington because Bush is the president and he wants to get reelected. But in terms of what needs to be done to create real opportunity for the people of this country, I don't see it happening. . . .