>> hello green bay! before i begin, i got to make an admission to you. whoever set this up, hit a soft spot in my heart. i'm the biggest railroad guy you ever known. i have traveled round trip to wilmington, delaware to washington d.c. i am a railroad guy. 36 years everyday, never lived in washington. came home to that great son of mine and his brother and sister and my grand kids. it's great to be here. by the way, i heard you got a team here. i heard it when i was in 8th grade. green bay always had packers and special place in my heart. heart of all the guys i went to catholic school. i want to tell you. i know you know -- we always started home room with a prayer in the catholic school and learning school was in the name of the father and son and holy ghost and we go from there. i tell you, home room in the fall was lot different from any other time in the year. that's when we learned the names of the 12 apostles, paul, jimmy taylor, ray, willie davis, don, you get the point. that's all we heard about man. you think i'm kidding. i'm not kidding. you see this is how it worked. our headmaster from wisconsin. headmaster name was justin dinney. he used to sign everything j.e.d. and we called him the head jed. he come over the p.a. system and say, gentlemen, the packers won yesterday, therefore will become no last period today. that's why we love the packers man. if it wasn't your favorite team, it was your number two team, i promise you. let me start by recognizing great congressman who i believe will be your next great senator tammy baldwin. [applause]. i like to recognize all of the elected officials here and thank them for coming particularly jamie walls. you're the next congressman. i just want to make sure how important the members of the house and senate are. just remember jamie, i recognize you man. i want to to you pretend i didn't know you. brett thank you for that introduction. it an honor to be with brett. to be with a real organized labor day on the eve of labor day. i know how to say unions. i got elected because of unions. the steel workers were the first union ever endorse me. but there's something more special about it. this guy was one of the most decorated and celebrated division in united states army. screaming eagles and 101st division. these guys are real man. brett thank you for your years of service. folks, this country is you all know. i apologize, i've been here for a half an hour i want you to know that. i don't want any record saying i was late. the good news was, there was 250 people still trying to get in. i apologize for our all standing this long. to state the obvious, this country faces the starkest choice for president in my memory. now that governor romney an congressman ryan have been nominated -- i don't need your boos, we need your votes. now that they're a team, i mean this sincerely, those stark differences are more stark. congressman ryan have given a absolutely clear definition for governor romney's vague commitment. in a strange way, we have two incumbent parties. we know exactly what they the other team will do. the reason we do, the house republican party has already passed the ryan budget. has already put in place everything that romney says he's promising to do for the whole nation. take a look at what they did and we will point out what they did in that republican house because honestly the best way to show the deferences. they called their plan new, bold, and gutsy. the unable i come from, there's nothing gutsy by giving a trillion dollars new tax cut for millionaires only. look folks, there's nothing bold about gutting medicare and turning it into a voucher system in order to pay for those cuts in taxes for millionaire. what's new about their plan? not only it not new, it not fair, it's simply not right. it will not grow the economy. how do we know? they tried before and it didn't work before. folks, we've seen this movie before and we know how it ends. [applause]. it ends in lost jobs, stagnant wages, watching the equity in your home evaporate, it ends in a catastrophe for the middle class. it ends in a great recession of 2008. listen to the theme they're now running on. i quote, restore the dream and greatness of this country. restore the dreams and greatness of this country. why do we have to restore those dreams and greatness? but they're not telling you -- what they're not telling you is who took them away. what they're not telling you is the very proposals that the congressman voted for the last 14 years, the very economic policies, the governor supported as both governor and a businessman, they are the very policies that put america's greatness in jeopardy. ladies and gentlemen if you listen to them at the convention, they talked about the state of the nation and all of these terrible things that happened in 2009. how do they think we got there? really, think about it. do they think we have amnesia? how do they think this happened? did it just fall from the sky on september15, 2008 when lehman brothers went under? ladies and gentlemen, my grandson hunter, his little sister a -- is a little older than she is. pop, did casper the friendly ghost do it? when congressman ryan was elected in 1988, and took office in 1999, it was a democratic administration. we had a balanced budget. the middle class was thriving. what they didn't say was that the day we were sworn in, before the president sat behind the desk to resolute in his office, he was handed a tab for 1 trillion dollars in deficit for that year before we got started. the american middle class was devastated. much of what they did tell you wasn't on the level at that convention. you heard congressman ryan on wednesday night blame the president. listen to this now, he blamed the president because the recommendations of a bipartisan debt commission that we appointed weren't acted on, the so called simpson-bowles commission. he said the president appointed this commission and recommendations weren't enacted upon. what he didn't tell you was he sat on that commission. where he and his house republican friend that's he lead, had they voted with the commission, it would have been voted on but he voted no. he would not let it go to the floor. he walked away. by the way, the commission he's talking about recommended a balanced approach to bring down our debt and control the debt crises. here's what they said, they said we recommend you cut $3 in spending for every dollar in revenue raise. the president plan calls for a similar approach but governor rom fee -- romney and congressman ryan reject that approach. romney repeatedly said he will reject any deal that included $10 in spending cuts even if it adds $1 in tax for the wealthy. congressman ryan fail to mention any of that, convention omission i'd say. i love these guys. i love these guys. i love these guys how they claim to care about the deficit. when we left office it was in balance. ladies and gentlemen, the thing i most love about him is, how they discovered the middle class at their convention. wasn't that amazing? all of a sudden, their heart was bleeding for the middle class. i was impressed. i thought where have i been the last four years. i must have gotten all wrong. listen to congressman had to say in his convention speech. he's a good guy and great father. listen to what he had to say. he said, the truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care themselves. the truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves. that's what he said. well folks, let's measure what he and governor romney want to do for those who cannot defend or care for themselves. the best way to do that, as my dad would day, my dad has a great expression. he could tell you, show me your budget and i'll tell you your value. [applause]. folks, they'll cry foul but let's take a look at their budget. understand what they value. massive cuts in medicaid, throwing 19 million people off healthcare including the million seniors and several million children. i'm not making this stuff up. massive cuts in medicare. folks let's be honest here. what the president and i are talking about is protecting medicare. i find it fascinating, the these guys expect the people to believe that guys like me who spent my whole life and my party has spent their whole time generating, creating and caring for medicare are somehow against it now and their for it when they're been against it or want to do less of it for the past 40 years. when governor romney and congressman ryan are talking about creating a new system what some are calling a a vouchercare. it will replace the medicare system. then it's going to say to them, you go out there and shop for the best insurance you can buy with this voucher. that's what it is. if it weren't so serious, you think i was making it up. my mom, god love her, who lived to 93, she was at the last convention to me. my mom was a smart woman but my mom, i can't picture handing her a voucher at age 80 and saying you go out in the insurance market and you figure out what's best for you. ladies and gentlemen, it's that simple. we are for medicare, they are for vouchercare. it's basic and they are for massive cuts in social security for future generations. massive cuts in education, eliminating tax credits to send your kid to college. tens of thousands of people in this state take advantage of that to keep their kids in school. pell grants they cut by an average of $1000 for the 9 million working class kids who are in college now benefiting themselves and soon to benefit america. they put insurance companies, these are the fact, they get rid of obamacare. it means insurance companies are back in charge of your healthcare. allowing them to cut off your coverage when you get sick or when you hit what they call your limit. allowing them to change the rates that they charge for women versus men. knocking 6.6 million young adults off their parent's healthcare coverage. folks, this is not your father's republican party. no for real, this is a different breed of cat. this is not even mitt romney's father's republican party. by the way -- [applause]. there's another thing they didn't tell you at their convention. they didn't tell you why they were eviscerating all of these efforts to help working and middle class people of america. they doing it all on the service of massive tax cuts for the wealthy. we use phrase like massive and i say there's another elected official, let me give you two specific examples. $500billion of the extension of the bush tax cuts for the wealthy goes to 120,000 families. did you hear what i said? one-half trillion dollars will go to 120,000 american families. on top of that, they want to add $250,000 tax cut per year for anybody making a million dollars or more. look, guys, they talked about the middle class at their convention, what they didn't tell you is this tax policy theirs carries a big price tag. as a non-partisan tax policy point out, middle class families with children will pay an average of $2000 a year or more to pay for those tax cuts for 120 families and beyond. that's a fact. on top of that, governor romney says in his first 100 days, he will repeal wall street reform. he let the banks begin to write their own rules again. listen to what he said and just briefly skirt about it foreign policy in his speech. in iraq, where my son served for a year, we lost 4488 fallen angels. 32,227 wounded over 16,000 requiring care for the rest of their lives. romney said it was a mistake to end that war by bringing all of our warriors home. in afghanistan, we have lost 1980 fallen angels as of yesterday. i'm precise because every single one of those lives deserves a recognizing. god only knows what happened in the last 24 hours. [applause]. as of yesterday, 17,382 of our warriors have been wounded, some mortal. romney thought the decision that the president of the united states, we have 50 allies working with us, nato and other countries in afghanistan. the president organized them. all 50 of them said, it time to set a date to hand over responsibility to the afghans and bring our 90,000 troops home. [applause]. what did romney say? he said that was a mistake. look i seen these warriors. i have traveled in and out of the afghanistan and iraq over 20 times. i've seen these men and women. i've been up in the operating base above the mountains and above the valley with kid sitting on hill top getting shot at every single night. i've been out there in armored humvees in scorching deserts of iraq. i wish every member of american public can see what i saw on those multiple treps. these kids are incredible. this 9/11 generation over 2,800,000 young men and women since 9/11 raised their right hand with a recruiter and said, i want to join. knowing almost system -- certainly they were going to iraq or afghanistan. ladies and gentlemen this is one of the finest generation in the history of america and they should be recognized. [applause]. we only have one sacred obligation to prepare those we send to war and car for them when they come home! [applause]. now, we want to move from cooperation with russia to confrontation with putin's russia. these guys say president obama is out of touch? how many of all have a swiss bank account? untold millions in the cayman island? how many of you if you running for office let the american people see your tax returns? out of touch? what romney and ryan espoused, i know they believe it and mean it, they espoused is the social policy right out of the 19 of -- 1960s and economic policy that's brought us to great recession. ladies and gentlemen this is no time to turn back. we must continue to move forward. your very standard of living is at stake. there's no single doubt in my mind that we're on our way to rebuilding this country stronger than it was before the recession. i am absolutely certainly that we're on our way to rebuilding the middle class because i know give a half a chance, the american people never, ever let the country down. we believe in the american people. because i know you. we know you. it's never, never been a good bet to bet against america. ladies and gentlemen, join us, help us finish what we started with your help, we'll win wisconsin and we will win the presidency. thank you all and may god bless you. may god protect our troops. ♪ ♪ >> watch gavel to gavel coverage of the democratic convention from charlotte, north carolina. every minute every speech live here on c-span. next a discussion on southern voters in the election. then robert kennedy's remarks at the 1964 democratic convention at 11:00 p.m. another chance to see "q&a" with ami horowitz. cbs news hour led the discussion on current trend and issues influencing southern politics, the 2012 election and future of the south. this is about an an hour and 15 minutes. >> hi everybody i'm judy, woodruff, i'm delighted to be here. i want to thank scott keeter with pew. i saw so many people in the room taking notes. i think you're going to be swarmed with people who ask questions and that will be looking at those not only your website and thumb drive and anything they can get their hands on information. i want to thank my dear friend susan king at the university of north carolina. if you're wondering why see asked a duke graduate to moderate this discussion, i will tell you, it's because i promised to be on good behavior. i was not going to wear any blue devil paraphernalia. i came from a brief rehearsal at the arena. we're preparing to anchor for the pbs news hour. it looks great over there and the democrats dope a great job setting it up. i am really thrilled to be here. this is such an extraordinary group of thinkers and writers and scholar who you are going to have a chance to hear from in just a moment. i want to get the program off right away. i also want to thank the charlotte observer for generously hostly this. within of the nation's great newspapers. i will also say that i spend some of my growing up years in the south. i went to college here in the south and so, i really do have a long time special interest in this part of the country. i long been aware of how i think it is not really well part of the country not really well understood. i'm particularly -- it is so often caricature, my goal this morning is to bring some clarity to that and this is the perfect group of folks to do that. let's plunge in. we're going to talk a little while and we will open it up to all of you for questions and comments. the only journalist i may not call on is my husband and he's with bloomberg news. you done it all. you done newspapering, you've been in government and you were the state department spokesman during the carter administration. you were leaders and repositioning in the democratic party. from your perspective, where do you see the party in its position in 2012? >> >> the party arnett position in 2012 -- >> let's make sure your mic is working. i apologize, i think i'm blocking everybody's viewing. >> let me begin by saying, each of us were told we had three minutes proportionate to each of our predecessors had ten minutes each. if i do the math, that means i have 15 minutes. i will not use that 15 minutes because i'm neither a scholar nor a person who studied the figures. in 1928 my grandfather came back from voting in the presidential election and announced to his sons actual shock and surprise, he couldn't help himself, he voted democratic. why was that a surprise? because the democratic party begun process in desserting the south for a more national constituency. it nominated a catholic an impossible thing for the very protestant ethics politics represented by some of these charts. when he voted nonetheless, voted democratic. they stayed democratic in 1932. they stayed in 1936 because they weren't sure the farms were saved there and thereafr, begin long show unravelling of passionate love affair has been completed by two of our predecessor speakers in 1980. the divorce didn't happen like that. it was a response to any number of changes not in the south. but in the rest of the country and in the democratic party specifically. so that each stage of the divorce proceedings, what you had first was what seem to be to an unchanging south a deliberate affront to faithful love and regard. in 1948, the democrats come forward with a civil rights plank which mr. truman was passionately interested in much of the shock of many supporters gone for vice president precisely because he was no liberal. suddenly it turns out that he is. we have the dixie crat walkout and brand new disaffection in the south. we also have in that 48 walkout what becomes the predicate for something else, which is the growing republican interest in the south but a different kind of interest. my dad in 1952 goes with eisenhower, he goes with eisenhower because eisenhower represents the new south an urban, moderate conservative south which will break the iron grip of the one party system. a lot of people were, republicans at that time, not a lot, but certain types in the metropolitan south were there. of course eisenhower does relatively well and in any case, establishes in the eisenhower years that it is possible for she's swing states of vote could be republican. so all of a sudden, you keep looking at the sudden blips on the chart votes for republican. they are, of course, cultivated in a way that republicans never bothered with in the post-civil war era. the old dixie crat crowd is not the eisenhower crowd. the democratic party gives a great gift to republicans in both the election of the catholic through our governor here as well as a few major democrats in the south to endorse in the 1960s election. you elect a catholic, which is a direct repudiation. suddenly find himself endorsing civil rights measures which are too much of the south and with his assassination and the obsession of the democrat from texas, a man with great ambition, mr. johnson, passage of successful civil rights act. each one of which, whether it was housing or voting, says to the south, we just want to put your face in it. when i say the white south, what the rest of the democratic party is saying to them. nixon comes along much conversation about the southern strategy. by that time, you didn't need to be very smart to know the south was in an uproar. there was george wallace who by that time, run couple final for presidency -- time for presidency. i want to emphasize this over and over again, the democratic party is changing dramatically. the south is not at that point. along comes the period of this slowly building depth. not nearly of marriage but relationships. so you have now another famous moment. nixon wins. he's not hurt by the fact there's another candidate in there. the fact is the democrat has no possibility of carrying in the south. strange thing happens, the democratic party gets even more to the left as far as the rest of the country is concerned. along comes the mcgovern election. i remember it well because i was traveling with something called the grasshopper special, which was liz carpenter's "lady bird" special from the 1964 election. we were serious about carrying the south. we spoke at the north carolina state fair and so help me, that wonderful silly man, nick came and spoke with us guaranteeing that jesse had a target. they knew at this point, the party was dead in the water as a lot of us who were in the south. other person came out to see us was jimmy carter who came out of the front door the capital in atlanta and greeted us and i thought, what is this idiot doing. he cannot be serious. so 72, a lot of us are looking around and saying prior to 1972, the only way the democrats can win was find a southerner. a lot of us thought we found one and that was in terry. that was a dry stream and had a lot of fun saying something about him. he led the way to jimmy carter, which incidentally jimmy being no fool coming out knowing democrats remember he stood with the party. jimmy actually carries much of the south. if you took out the third party, he would have carried a more states he lost. that's it for the democrats. you see the reason the national party had been walking its own walk, best personified by the fact in the gore election, he didn't need florida. all he had to do was carry new hampshire and he would have carried it without a single southern state. by that moment, the reversal was total in american politics. a democratic party which had to have the solid south to do anything and republican party that used to win without it, now a republican party which have to have a near solid south and a democratic party that doesn't have to have it to win in a national election. this is a fundamental change in the politics of america and certainly in the south. if you're a democrat like me in the deep south, every now and then i look up at my dad in heaven, saying dad, is this enough of a two party system for you. this has now gotten completely gone. extraordinary piece of work in talking about the now possibility of a new marriage is built entirely on something which is the final point i want to make. the south of that marriage has now begun the same fundamental change that the north of the old marriage underwent for some time which it wrote off essentially in the south. this new south of the emerging south, the economically vital new south is a south unlike the south in of preceding 350 years is not static. not the same black and white folk but has vast streams of people who are no longer tied tie -- tied by history or pass. whether it's yankees or hispanics coming in and black folks coming back. we're practically america now if the way we have coming out of being frozen in our population. it become dynamic in in the way our population work. my grand dad, he could not pull the eagle today. they don't pull eagles anymore in louisiana. a lot of folks who are now southerners can in fact come to grips the new south. believe me, because nobody is willing to talk honestly about race, it needs to be said at least occasionally that it wasn't a small thing that three southern states voted for obama. it was a revolutionary incredible thing that three southern states for obama. almost as revolutionary as a nation which had never been able to find it in itself to actually think that head of the line was a black candidate voted for a black presidential candidate. we are simply no longer the place that engage in the early marriage, the long romance but that's true nationally as well as south. i have no idea and i don't think many people do. what happens in the long term and the short term, it is still the republicans to lose on a basic kind of way. because it changes if not yet, become magnified. elsewhere around this campus, they will be having she's sessions on the blue south. lot of folks have great hope some way to recreate the democratic approach which will not offend so many white southerners. they're my friends and i wish them luck, i don't see how it works frankly but i hope it can. without doing violence. >> hodding carter thank you for that. peter you have focused on the economic health of this region. talk about how the global marketplace has changed the way of life here. >> thank you judy. it's always hard to follow carter. hodding and i done this a number of times. i'll just be myself and try to talk a little bit about the way in which the south has been transformed. as you'll see i'm a bit more pessimistic about the south and some of the other speakers today. jean might be pessimistic than i am. i'm an economic historian. some of you might be wondering what a economic historian is. it's a person who loves numbers but lacks charm, grace and whit to become an accountant. i think that's me. what i like to do today is talk a little beth about some of the force that's have created the south about which i'm so pessimistic. one forces that created the sun belt south between 1945 and early 1980s have been spent. it considered as a whole was removal of a huge number of workers out of very backward, inefficient, low skill under capitalized agricultural sector and other sectors particularly unskilled labor could be employed more efficiently. what were these sectors? for the most part, low skill, low value added manufacturing industry. particularly those of assembly or basic processing nature rather than metal fabricating or things like that. such industries, aren't great by adding capital to human labor, they really significantly increase productivity which allowed for rising wages, rising income and rising living standards for more and more of the south's population. in this, the region was following but only implicitly a tried and true time-tested development strategies that most of the developed world experienced once they developed. basical move out of agriculture. by the 1980s, this strategy begin to play itself out. as technological change rendered labor requirement and southern manufacturing reduced and jobs were increasingly lost to other parts of the world due to globalization, the sun belts convergence on economic norms slowed. southern per capita income has not converged at all upon national norms in the early 1990s. median household income in north carolina over the last few years actually fallen. it's about 43,000 a year, putting us 40th in the nation as a whole. even before the end of the so called convergence, the lead story, the rise of the so called sun belt urge in my view quite misleading or incomplete. as m.v.c., the policy think tank that was talked about earlier, there was shadows in the sun belt particularly rural and non-metropolitan parts of the region. with the decline in light industry in these yours as it accelerated in the 1990s, many of these areas have essentially become economic basket cases. to be sure, the trajectory of better place, better situated parts of the region, the metro areas that was talked about particularly financial center such as i.t. hub, such as r.t.p., places where creative class live, tourist area, affluent retirement communities and rich areas and government centers and the like have done better. increasingly pulling away from the rural and metropolitan parts of the south. in many ways what we're seeing in the south looks like what many development economist look at the rest of the world called a middle income trap. similar to places like thailand and malaysia today. where an economy stagnant after reaching a certain middle level, usually because they're manufacturing in labor cost structure no longer allow them to compete in lower cost area but the labor force isn't skilled enough. in an international context, the model of the southern labor force today is, i'm pretty expensive and i'm not very skilled. that's within of the problems we have to deal with. last week there was an article in the new york timeses on the textile workforce. in the course of the article, minimum wage for textile workers is $37 a month. they work a minimum of 200 hours a month so that come out doing the math, 18.5 cents an hour. these workers have the same equipment our workers have in the south, which is one major reason why bangladesh is the leading supplier of the world of tommy hilfigure and gap. north carolina has been hit particular extremely hard by the recession in 2008. in the case of north carolina, the unemployment is about 8.6%. it's the fifth highest in the entire united states. my institute just put out a recent study in your thumb drive and you'll see that every part of the state, every income group, every job classification, every age and every age category has been hit hard by this recession. the structural factor that's i just eluded to, combined with the problems of charlotte's financial sector, you know what happened with wachovia and wells-fargo and industry of the state. and ironically continuing robust migration have meant the labor market in north carolina has been tremendously stressed over the last few years. especially since it never recovered from the 2001 recession. the most stunning finding in the study we completed, is that since 2000, north carolina has added about 0.3% jobs while the state as a whole has gained almost 20% in population. this is the economic backdrop in the south for the fall election in my view. one way or another if the south is going to emerge economically out of this age of rapid technological change and globalization, southern workers have to become more skilled. whether or not there's the political will to bring this about is a key question. we just put out a report, plato versus plumbing. what we have to do in the south is develop multiple pathways to ensure post-secondary education for all north carolinians and southerners so we could move up the value change and create a future economically for the fast growing part of the united states. thank you. [applause]. >> intriguing idea, ensuring post-secondary education. you can see what a rich collection of ideas we're having thrown out here. we wish we had hours and hours to talk. i see the clock ticking. kareem crayton i will turn to you next. law professor, you have focused on voting rights. i want to you give us the insight into all of this emphasis we're seeing in the news on the new voting rights law that's have come up in a number of states. how are these voter i.d. requirements going to affect this campaign and are these laws going to have a bigger effect in the south? we know pennsylvania, ohio, as well as florida and some other parts of the south. give us a sense of the south in particular. >> thank you judy. i'm also a native southerner like hodding. i have not been a native southerner at long. he has far more to say. i will keep my comments short. let me try to respond to your question by emphasizing a couple things that add to what some of the wonderful background i think all the speakers have offered. i think in general, north carolina has a particular place even among southern states. hodding mentioned earlier, thats is something, three southern states voted for the president. it's important to see the very important distinctions that are here in north carolina politically speaking. that separated from even other southern states, even those in the peripheral south. we heard a lot about the presentation of commercial and banking which are definitely not part of the south. there's a -- to get to the question that is important, one that there is actual serious party in the state. republicans have had a foothold in this region. north carolina has not fit that region easily. this the one state where you have 12 years of at least so far, uninterrupted democratic control of the governor seat. you're not going to find another state where that's true. there is of course in this state, at least until 2010, democratic control of the state legislature. not something you can say in a bunch of other states. there is a very significant presence of racial coalition building here. we talk about barack obama putting a coalition together. that's been true in north carolina for some time for folks both black and white who compete certainly on the democratic side. case in point, in the current state legislature, there are i think about seven african-americans in the state senate, none of them represent the african-american state constituency. however, it's important because that is a trend that is likely to be changed and it is likely to be changed because of party competition. so that's going to be an important question that comes up during the course of the year. two other issues that are going to be relevant to the upcoming election involve voter i.d. laws. republicans have also taken basically a template that was devised in conservative think tappings and taken it around to a large number of statements to be adopted in the president's election, so you can only cast a ballot if you present photo i.d. of a certain type issued by a government to indicate you are who you say you are. now, it turns out that most of the folks who don't have access to the photo i.d., who currently don't have things like a driver's license include the poor and the he will derly and non-white -- elderly and non-white citizens, it will have an effect in metropolitan areas getting access to voter i.d., which is not an easy thing to do, in many cases where you have to pay for it. there's litigation going on around that. in many cases it's not quite clear whether or not that is going to be in place for the upcoming election. one reason that's not likely to be as significant in the south as it is elsewhere is because of the application of the voting rights act. most of you have probably noticed that district court in washington, d.c. invalidated the enactment of a statute in texas that tried to do this on the grounds that texas could not show that the effect would not be discriminating against the poor and non-white citizens. that's not a law that applies in places like pennsylvania, where there's no sort of -- we call it pre-clearance, no early effort to determine whether or not the law is likely to create discriminatory impact. so in the south -- south carolina is a state that's next in line to have that kind of review process. that protection is an important one for those who believe that the law is going to have a negative impact. final thing to mention is early voting. in a large number of the southern states the democratic party used early voting quite effectively to get african-americans in particular out to vote. they utilize sunday morning voting after church. getting a large number of people to the polling places. that is not going to be as widely available as it was before. in a number of states arguably because of economic belt-tightening. the legislatures have decided to curb that somewhat, and to some extent they've been successful. that is likely to have some impact on the extent to which democrats can lock in a number of votes fairly early. the game is going to fundamentally change, to use the phrase, because of this policy. last thing to mention -- all of these laws, as i think i've made clear, are all being sort of seen through the lens of the 1965 voting rights act which was mentioned earlier. the important piece that is sort of looming over all of this discussion is the voting rights act itself is under assault and will likely be challenged in the united states supreme court, if not better the elections, shortly afterwards. so i think much of the conversation about whether or not these laws have discriminatory impact or had in light of some concern that at some point or another this protection might be invalidated by the supreme court. [applause] s >> again, you're raising all sorts of questions, i'm sure, that folks have and hopefully we'll have some time to get into some of that. next is jaqueline hall. you wear two hats. one is as a history professor and the other is as the founder of the southern oral history project. that means you're talking to people across the south. you're hearing from the grass roots. so my question is, is there a profound change in the way people live and the way they work in the south today? we've been talking about laws, we've been talking about the economy, politics. how different is this region from what it was 20 years ago, 40 years ago? >> well, -- >> you've got three minutes. >> three minutes, right. [laughter] >> like my colleagues, i will limit myself. the program in recent years has been looking at the impact of the civil rights movement on the south. and at both the profound changes that the civil rights movement has brought about in the lives of ordinary people and also the limits of the civil rights movement. and the changes are obvious, the end of legal segregation, of discrimination and the unleashing of the economy. you wouldn't be seeing what you see around you in charlotte if it hadn't been for the civil rights movement. the civil rights movement helped white southerners as much as it did black southerners. but there are also limits to what the civil rights movement achieved, and part of one of the key aspects of that, and has to do with what i think is kinds of a misunderstanding of what the civil rights movement was about, because economic issues, economic justice, issues of poverty were at the very core of the civil rights movement. it was not just about legal segregation. and those goals had not been -- have not been realized, and i would say another aspect of the civil rights movement that is misunderstood is the kind of distinction in people's minds between the good civil rights movement which succeeded and the bad war on poverty, which failed. these two efforts were totally intermingled. they had the exact same protagonists. the people who had been fighting segregation were the people who were feeting poverty. the segregationists who had been visiting violence and other kinds of retribution on the civil rights activists were also fighting the war on poverty. and the war on poverty had a lot of successes, which it hasn't gotten credit for. and i think the fact that we don't remember all of that has helped feed a kind of disillusionment with the hope that government effort can actually make a difference in the economy and in poverty. another limitation has to do with the kind of lingering racial resentments and stereotypes on the part of white southerners, and i think i may be actually more optimistic than some of the people on the panel in the sense that i think that those racial attitudes have changed profoundly. we don't realize how much we changed, unless you go back and actually look at what kind of veer length civil rights. and it lingers not just because of the legacy of slavery and segregation, not just because they've been there all along and it's going to take a long time to get rid of them, although that's certainly powerful, but because of things that have delib rat -- deliberate policies and propaganda that has intensified and stirred up and renewed those feelings. and they have to do with political strategy. the southern strategy, which has been alluded to and kind of broadly conceived, how is the republican party going to win over the south? well, part of that strategy had to do with demonizing the policies that came out of the civil rights movement and were meant to realize the gains of the civil right movement. affirmative action, for example, was one of the kind of wedge issues that was used to bring white workers into the republican party by creating the belief that this is a zero-sum game and if you open up opportunities to blacks and women, why working men will lose. the attack on bussing, which was aimed mainly at white sbur annites who would disavow over racism but who very much believed in homers rights and were very much blind to the way in which -- what one scholar has called affirmative action for whites, which was in place from "the new deal" into the civil rights movement, had created these kind of white enclaves, these neighborhoods that needed neighborhood schools and then, of course, the welfare queen. and this is still there. this is still behind the -- it's all coded now, but this identification of welfare with frans and the notion that these -- african-americans, and the notion that these are people who are getting something for nothing, these are people who are lazy, this is very, very powerful. and it helps not only to perpetuate these racial stereotypes, but it helps, again, to discredit efforts to create and maintain a strong safety net. another thing i want to mention in terms of successes that people don't notice and limit to what the civil rights movement has been able to do has been in school desegregation. in the 19 0's the south had the -- 1980's the south had the most integrated schools in the country. that had to do with federal oversight, but it also had to do with -- take charlotte as an example. swan v. mecklenburg, 1971. a landmark case, which did what you have to do if you're going to integrate the schools. it said that you cannot have all white suburbs and integrated inner cities. it has to be a metropolitan plan. you have to have two-way bussing because of entrenched residential segregation, which is there because of public policies in the past, and that was a hard-fought battle but it was embraced by an interracial coalition, which included white , blue-collar workers, and it became a tremendous point of pride for the city. and that has been -- is now being completely reversed because of the decisions of the conservative supreme court, which has made it impossible to create those metropolitan integration plans. so now the schools of charlotte and throughout the south are resegregating. so in sum, i would say, so what are the limits, what are the challenges? these lingering stereotypes and along with the lives in the south of modern forms of segregation. i think the convergence that we're seeing is that southern -- i agreed pleadly that the growth of metropolitan populations is good for the democratic party. it's where our hope lies. but the most segregated cities in the country right now are all north of the mason-dixon line and they all have to do with defacto segregation, and that is the kind of segregation that we're going to have to the metropolitan cities of the new, new, new soufment and then, of course, there's the entrenchment of rural poverty and the continued association between race and class, which i know that gene can talk about better than i can. >> great, thank you very much, jacquelyn. [applause] so you did, jacquelyn, mention poverty. in fact at one point you said the war on poverty had a lot of successes in the south. so i'm going to turn to you, gene nichol, who is a distinguished law professor and head of the center on poverty, work and opportunity. there hasn't been a lot of talk in this campaign about poverty, but there's been a lot of talk about jobs and about unemployment in the south. expand on what we just heard from jacquelyn. what role does poverty play in the political landscape? and if you want to, talk about how poverty plays off against the middle class and how the middle class is such a factor in this campaign. >> judy, i will do my best to do that. let me say, too, it's great to see you all here and be part of this panel. this being the south, i should note that this panel was to begin at 11:30 on sunday morning, which is proof positive that journalists are heathens. [laughter] the only programs we believe in on sunday morning at 11:30 come out of the pulpit. now, i'm a lawyer, so i'm an admitted heathen of long standing. it's nice to have your company. i would say, too, that i, like peter, i do a lot of programs, which means i never expected to speak this morning. so you'll have to forgive me for a meandering presentation. i'm going to talk about poverty. poverty in the united states, but more pointedly, poverty in the south. one of my favorite writers is wallace stegner, who writes not about the south, but the west. stegner characterizes the west as the native home of hope. and i think he means it in the good sense and in the bad sense, too. sort of the big rock candy mountain notion. i always thought you could borrow a bit from stegner and characterize the south as the native home of poverty in the united states, which means that we have more poor people and more political leaders who are untroubled by it than the rest of the country. so i think neither of those are a high compliment. you know the broad numbers about poverty generally, though, as judy said, we never hear these discussed in political campaigns. some discussion of the middle class, a lot of the discussion of the wealthy, but almost nothing of those at the bottom. but in the united states, over 15% of us live in poverty, some 47 million. the highest raw numbers likely in our history and the highest percentage in over 20 years. the figures are worse by race, with black, latino and native americans closer to 30% living in poverty. it's worse by age. kids, the youngest, the most vulnerable, the poorest, over 22% in the country, over 25% of our kids in north carolina live in poverty. and then if you cut that again according to race, in north carolina it seems to me a sort of badge of humiliation, 40% of our children of color live in poverty. numbers that are tough to mention in plight company and out loud -- polite company and out loud, numbers which almost indicate a failure of a commonwealth. the south, though, is worse. the figures are worse, the economic circumstances is worse than the rest of the country. if you look at it by region, according to the census data, about 17% of the south lives in poverty and the other three regions would be between 12% and 15%. uninsured, over 19% of us in the south are uninsured. the rest of the country ranges from 12% to 17%. there was new data released on this front last week, which is not in your materials. it indicated that florida now has over 25% uninsured. i didn't hear that mentioned in tampa. there was a lot of discussion about how bad the affordable care act was, but no discussion of 1/4 of floridians having no health care coverage. the states with the highest poverty rate in the united states, eight of the 10 are southern states, all but virginia in the south, all of the southern states are above the national average, some way above, with states like mississippi having over 30% living in poverty. 10 states with child poverty over 25%. nine of those are in the south. there are six million kid living in extreme poverty. that means income of less than half the federal poverty standard, and of those six million, 42% come from the south. there are 11 states with over 10% of their children living in extreme poverty, and 10 of those 11 are in the south. the pugh study, a new one, relatively new on economic mobility indicated that the lowest economic mobility in the united states is in louisiana, oklahoma, south carolina, alabama, florida, kentucky, mississippi, north carolina and texas. so this picture is pervasive. and in the south it's not getting better at the moment. the south was the only section of the country in the last census where these poverty figures got significantly worse. the next point being congenial to being concerned with poverty. this is not a southern attribute. i think we've seen that recently. states are refusing to accept stimulus money, for example. some are more heavily loaded in the south. we did sort of an odd look at the support in opposition to the affordable care act. very dominantly those states with the highest level of uninsured expressed the greatest opposition to the affordable care act and almost vice versa in an outcome which would surprise madison. the states having the most to benefit frequently expressed in the greatest opposition. and similar arguments when it comes to medicaid expansion. great opposition so far in texas, florida, mississippi, louisiana, south carolina and georgia. alabama, where apparently there would be a 53% reduction in the uninsured under medicaid expansions, saks 49.9%, and yet a vehement opposition. so we can debate why this is so. why would it be that we have the most poor people and the politics which is most deadly opposed to doing things about it? that has been debated in the south for the last 100 years at least. why is it that the south treats poor people the way it does? different theories from w.j. cash and bob dylan, sort of only a pawn in the game. i'm not going to try and answer that definitively. a lot of people here know much more about it than i do, including ferrell, and hiding or jackie. first of all the south has in common with the rest of the country the invisibility of poverty, the removal of poverty from our political agenda. the removal of the concern of the bottom 30% sort of across the board. so if that's true, the united states generally, it is certainly true in the south. i think we have in the south the "what's the matter with kansas" phenomenon, which is some version of social conservative joining with economic conservatives, even if they end up not really getting their part of the bargain but voting against the economic interests of those at the bottom. and then jackie has opened the door and sort of carried for me the harder news, which is that whatever else, reaction to poverty is even more occasionalized in the south than it is in the rest of the country, then it becomes more visible all the time. we just saw a political convention last week which was sort of remarkable on this front in its rhetoric and in its outlook. i'm going to end with this. but i kept having in my mind stephen colbert sort of coming to the front of the republican convention and going, "hail, white people!" with kind of an astonishing look even from the aesthetics of our polarization. so i think there could be great argument about why we have reached the stage that we have, but we do seem to have more poor folks in the south and a less powerful commitment to do something about it than much of the rest of the nation. [applause] >> ok. so provocative comments from five folks in a row. and i'm already -- i'm going to warn all of you. i'm coming to you next as soon as we hear from our final panelist. i'm coming to you for questions, so we're going to get right to that. jesse white you ran the appalachian regional commission for many years. you looked toe rural areas in the scout. was it scott who called them the non-core county? here we are in the banking capital of the world in charlotte. are there two south, the you are are ban well-to-do south and then the south that we just heard gene nichol describe? >> i think that's a pretty good summary of where the south has come. i think the comment i would like to leave you with is that the south is no longer either mabry r.f.d. or the booming sun belt. it's a lot more complicated than that. the images that the american people have been left with of the south, neither one really obtain. what you've seen in southern economic development for the last 50 or 60 years you've heard about today, the convergence of the per capita income. the south was about 50% of the u.s. average in the great depression. we got up to about 90% 20 years ago. we've seen the urbanization, the metropolitanization of the south's economy. we've seen successes in technology development. a lot of good things that have changed the face of the south. but what these recessions have revealed over the last 30 years are the tremendous impact of globalization and technology. and it has ripped the covers off of the bed of the southern economy and really has revealed two south, judy, like you were talking about. if you look at the investment patterns of public dollars in the south in the last 50 or 60 years, we have invested very well compared to other states in post-secondary education. we've invested incredibly poorly in elementary and secondary education until recently, and it's created in bifurcated workforce. the top half of us are globally competitive with anybody, the bottom 1/3 has been left behind. and as we moved away from an economy based on cost advantages and mass production, which was tied to this branch plant recruitment strategy of economic development, and these jobs have started disappearing, it's left this bottom 1/3 high and dry. there's also been a tremendous spacial impact. i mean, we actually still have more distress in urban areas by numbers, but in terms of percentages and in terms of outlook and in terms of prospect, the rural areas are really have been left behind. i guess i won't take but another second just to conclude that in an election that is supposed to be all about the economy, as a southern white person from the same state as hyding -- you'll notice you run across a lot of mississippians because we don't live there anybody. we've got a cabal working to take over carolina. there are several of us there. [laughter] but it's always astonished me how my -- excuse me -- fellow white southerners almost consistently vote against the economic interest of the region from which they come. i mean, especially since reagan . the broad policy of the republican party has been to reduce income taxes, which helps the south less, because we have lower incomes, and reduce spending on social and economic programs, which hurts the south more because we have more at-risk people and more people left behind. and time and time and time again white southerners seem to be shooting their own toes off. i've never really quite understood it, except for these other factors we've talked about, which is race, guns, gays. you know the social and cultural currents that are affecting voting behaviors. so it will be interesting to see how -- if southerners return to voting their economic interests. i wouldn't hold my breath. thank you. [applause] >> well, thank you. i see the clock is ticking. we have 12 minutes. it's up to you. who has a question? this gentleman right here. >> thank you. charlie of north carolina, drick national convention. stratagem for missed opportunity. -- is that going to help carry north carolina or not? >> i didn't know if we had to be recognized. it was a great idea at the time for sure. [laughter] again, i hit on the point earlier, and i'll be quick about this. racial coalition building was actually quite significant in this state. and still, in the state legislature there are people who can appeal to folks in a racially missed constituency, and that's true both for whites who have done that traditionally in the south but also for african-americans. i think for a variety of reasons, some of them dealing with external factors, the economy not doing especially well has not been good for white, working-class voters, which is one part of that coalition. but also, again, given all these different changes that are -- if they are affected, likely to limit african-american voter turnout. that, too, could be a real threat to the democratic party. but the extent to which one thinks in the long term, there have to be inroads in the south. the population is moving southward and westward. so if you're going to be competitive in the long term, you've got to have an imprint here. so whether or not in this election it's effective, i leave to others to discuss, but i think at least as an initial decision, it wasn't a dumb one. >> hodding, do you want to add a thought to that? >> no. it goes on at some length, and i won't. >> all right. another question. yes, sir, right here. >> we talked about race, voting, taxes, poverty, education. we have not talked about the deficit. would you comment on that in the context of the south and north carolina. >> peter, do you want to jump on that first? >> i think we had a pretty good solution in some ways to an initial approach to the deficit problem coming in part from one of our native sons. it's been lost in some ways, i think, by january 1, 2013, some version of that will come back, regardless of who gets elected. i think the bigger problem right now, i think -- and i think what you'll hear next week -- is that it's too soon, really, to worry in great -- right now about the deficit. bond rates, interest rates are so low right now. the economy is still in a very precarious position. so i think at least in charlotte next week there will be higher priority economic issues than the deficit at least over the next six months. >> for someone like me, anyway, we do have an economic deficit which is challenging and powerful. we also have a priorities deficit, it seems to me. a country doesn't have to come to the conclusion, for example, that it's going to tax capital gains at half the rate that you're going to tax much of the income of the rest of the workforce. it doesn't have to decide that we're going to have a great and powerful housing project in the united states, that is the mortgage deduction. it's just that maybe 80% of it is going to go to those making over $100,000 a year. our state legislature doesn't have to, as they did just a few weeks ago, cut $350-something million to wealthier corporations, as they decide to cut in half the allocation to food banks, giving everything that's going on -- given everything that's going on in north carolina. so i do think we have an economic deficit and we have a money deficit as well. >> ray, it's amaze together me that we have managed -- amacing to me that we have managed in the process of our lives together to take off the table from any kind of intelligent conversation whatsoever a military budget which has no relationship whatsoever to what faces us as an international threat, that we are paying in our military side as if we faced five are your yans simultaneously in the soviet union days and need to keep raising that budget, democrat and republican. now, look, if the wise men of the simpson bowles commission or the bowles-simpson commission really were serious about what they were doing as opposed to taking three from category a and three -- they would have been done something very, very serious, not the get their attention by letting this damn budget be sort of slashed arbitrarily, but actually have done something on the dugouttary spending. not that that's any more solution than taxing people like you and me. but it is part of the solution about which i don't see how you have a solution without. and it's funny, except, of course, we live in north carolina. we live in virginia, and we live in florida. and you know what else lives in north carolina and virginia and florida? the biggest allocation of federal spending that god could help for in bases and in location of servicemen who are the great pump-priming example that southerners love and pretend is not federal pump-priming. i mean -- anyway. [laughter] >> we don't get a lot of the actually military construction. i mean, it's mostly base money, i think. >> we already paid it out, boy. come on. >> i think our defense budget is more than the next 17 countries combined, something like that. >> maybe 40. >> question, question. yes, sir. >> i'd like to ask the panelists, how long can we continue to go down this path that you have all described without addressing a single one of the issues that confront us today? how long can we continue down this path 1234 >> i woke up one day and i said to myself, why is it that in a set of circumstances which in other places and other times would have had people out marching, would have people out at levels of protests which would be hair-raising, we don't have any of it, that somehow we are at a stage of acceptance, resignation, passivity, intimidation -- no, i don't think intimidation, but there's something out there that we're drinking. and i'll be honest with you, because i despise much of the medium except the one that my dear friend is working with, one of the things you've got which you never had in society before was an ability to flip a switch and quit thinking about anything except the entertainment in front of you. you don't sit there plotting too many damn revolutions while you're sitting there -- i mean, and i'm a horrible movie-matcher, so i know how it is. but we have a lot of stuff that we are able to do, which is escapist stuff, which will take you out of it. i honestly, you know, being a mississippian, when i think to myself, judy ran a thing on terry sanford six years ago, five years ago up here and it was a great thing about him. but the thing about terry which so got us who were elsewhere was he went right to the heart and said, look, let's talk about education. let's talk about something that actually affects everybody. who the hell is talking about something that actually affects everybody? and you asked the question how long that can go on. i do not know. i don't understand it. but y'all are all smart. why is it, big boy? you're the man that brings them out into the streets. huh? >> i guess the question is, what comes next? >> yes, sir, i know, i know. >> who wants to tackle that? [laughter] yes, right here. >> thank you. >> i'm a daughter of richmond, virginia, but from college on i've lived in the godless state of massachusetts, and i am struck again by my return to the south of how prominent the racial lens is. and as we know, lenses can illuminate, but they can also obfuscate. so without denying the importance of race as a factor in many of the south's trends, stories, narratives, how would you characterize the lens of gender, of women? white southern women, women of color from the south, are there differences based on data, based on, you know, oral history reports of women's perspectives on life here compared to other regions of the country? love to hear something about women. >> jacquelyn, do you want to weigh in, and if either scott or farrell have some data they want to throw in as we. >> yeah, i was really struck that -- >> why did you pick jackie? [laughter] >> i was raising my hand. i was struck that in the beginning when we were talking about even the polling data we didn't -- gender didn't come up at all. we didn't hear anything about abortion and so on. but then -- this is a really complicated question, and i just would say two things about it. one is that -- and, again, this comes from the work that the program is doing. we are now focusing on documenting the women's movement in the south. and contrary to the assumptions that there wasn't a women's movement in the past, there was and there is, and there's been a very powerful one which needs to be understood and seen more clearly. but it is also true that to my mind -- and this hasn't come up. one of the biggest things that obama has going for him is the gender gap. this is so important. i mean, without the gender -- without -- and women have been -- there's been a gender gap for i don't know how many of the last elections, in which women went from -- including women in the south, went for bill clinton in much larger proportions than white men, i'm talking about. however, the gender gap has been narrowing in the south, so that -- in 2008 i think the gender gap in the south, unlike anywhere else, almost closed. i don't think there was any difference between white men and white women voting in 2008. 2012 i don't know. i know in north carolina the polls are showing that there still is a gender -- with white women going for obama more than white men but the gap is not as great in the rest of the country. when you look at women of color, then that changes completely and the gender gap opens back up again. so i think that one of the big challenges that the democrats have and the progressive forces have is to address themselves to women in the south and to open that gender gap back up. >> all right. i'm told by the bosses here that we are going to wrap up. it is just after 2:00. i want to thank everyone for coming. but let's 'thank these extraordinary panelists for their presentations. [applause] and thank farrell guillory and scott keither with their hands up. but we especially thank all of you. susan, do you want to come up and say a quick hello? [inaudible] >> our "road to the white house" coverage continues tomorrow when president obama speaks at a u.a.w. campaign rally in toledo, ohio. live coverage begins at 12:30 p.m. eastern on c-span. attorney general robert f. kennedy spoke at the 1964 democratic convention less than a year after the assassination of his brother, president john f. kennedy. many in the democratic party had urged robert kennedy to run for the presidency. though he refused, he did announce he'd run for u.s. senate just a few weeks after the convention. as this 15-minute speech begins, we're showing you just the last couple of moments of an ovation that lasted nearly 10 minutes. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] chase chause [cheers and applause] [cheers and applause] [cheers and applause] [cheers and applause] [cheers and applause] [cheers and applause] >> attorney general kennedy -- [cheers and applause] [cheers and applause] >> i would like to address the delegates. [cheers and applause] >> they were probably aware that this is going to be an emotional night and we just can't tell what emotions are going to do with about 6,000 people. [cheers and applause] >> mr. speaker, mr. johnson, senator jackson, ladies and gentlemen, mr. chairman -- mr. chairman, i wish to speak just for a few moments. i first want to thank all of you, delegates to the democratic national convention and the supporters of the democratic party for all that you did for president john f. kennedy. [cheers and applause] >> that ovation, by the way, ran about 12 minutes. >> i want to -- i want to express my appreciation to you for the efforts that you made on his behalf at the convention four years ago, the efforts that you made on his behalf for his election in november of 1960, and perhaps most importantly, the encouragement and the strength that you gave him after he was elected president of the united states. [applause] it was the greatest strength to him to know that there were thousands of people all over the united states who were together with him dedicated to certain principles and certain ideals. no matter what talent and individual possesses, no matter what energy he may have, no matter what integrity and honesty he may have, if he is by himself and particularly a political figure, he can accomplish very little. but if he's sustained, as president kennedy was, by the democratic party all over the united states, dedicated to the same things that he was attempting to accomplish, you can accomplish a great deal. no one knew that really more than president john f. kennedy. he used to take great pride in telling of the trip that thomas jefferson and james madison made up the hudson river in the 1800's searching for butterflies. but they ended up down in new york city and that they formed the democratic party. he took great pride in the fact that the democratic party was the oldest political party in the world, and he knew -- [applause] -- he knew of the linkage of madison and jefferson with the leaders in new york, combined the north and the south to combine the industrial areas of the country with the rural farms. that this combination was always dedicated to progress. all of our presidents have been dedicated to progress, from thomas jefferson in the louisiana purchase, and when thomas jefferson also realized that the united states could not remain on the eastern seaboard, he sent lewis and clark to the west coast. of andrew jackson, of woodrow wilson, of franklin roosevelt who said our citizens were in great despair because of the financial crisis, of harry truman, who not only spoke, but acted for freedom. [applause] so that when he became president, not only had his own principles or his own ideas, but he had the strength of the democratic party, so that when he became president, he wanted to do something for the mentally ill and the mentally retarded, for those who were not covered by social security, for those who were not receiving an adequate minimum wage, for those who did not have adequate housing. for our elderly people who had difficulty paying their medical bills, for our fellow citizens who are not white, who had difficulty living in this society, he dedicated himself, but he realized also that in order for us to make progress here at home that we had to be strong overseas, that our military strength had to be strong. he said at one time only when our arms are sufficient without doubt can we be certain without doubt that at the will never have to be employed. so when we had the crisis of the soviet union and the soviet block in 1962, the soviet union with drew their missiles and the bombers from cuba. [applause] even beyond that his idea really was that this country and this world, really, should be a better place when we turned it over to the next generation than what we inherited from the last generation. [applause] and that's why -- and that's why with all of these other efforts that he made, the test band treaty, was so important to him. that's why he made such an effort -- that's why he made such an effort and was always committed to the young people not only of the united states, but the young people of the world. and in all of these efforts, you were there, all of you. when there were difficulties, you sustained it. there were periods of crisis. you stood besides him. when there were periods of happiness, you laughed with him. when there were periods of sorrow, you comforted him. i realize that as an individual that we can't look back, but we must look forward. when i think of president kennedy i think of what shakespeare said in romeo and july yet. he shall die. take him and cut him out among the stars and he shall make the face of heaven, that all the world will be in love wnds pay no worship to the garish sun. i realize as an individual that really -- [applause] i realize that as an individual and even more importantly for our political party and for the country that we can't just look to the past, but we must look to the future. so i join with you realizing a request has been started four years ago that everyone here started four years ago, that that's to be sustained and that's to be continued. the same effort, the same energy and the same dedication that was given to president john f. kennedy must be given to president lyndon johnson and hubert humphrey. [cheers and applause] if we make that connection, it will not only be for the benefit of the democratic party, but far more importantly, it will be for the benefit of this whole country. [applause] >> when we look at this we might think that president kennedy once said we have the capacity to make this the best generation in the history of mankind or make it the last. if we do our duty, if we meet our responsibility and our obligation, not just as democrats, but as american citizens, in our local cities and towns and farms, in our states and in the country as a whole, then this countries going to be the best generation in the history of mankind. [applause] and i think if we dedicate ourselves, as he basically did through all of you when he spoke, when he quoted from robert frost and said that we can really apply it to the democratic party and to all of us as individuals, the words so lovely dark and deep, but i have come to keep and miles to go before i sleep and miles to go before i sleep. mrs. kennedy has asked that this film be dedicated to all of you and to all the others throughout the country who helped make john f. kennedy president of the united states. i thank you. [cheers and applause] >> watch gavel-to-gavel coverage of the democratic national convention from charlotte, north carolina. every minute every, every speech live here on cl span, next, "q&a" with ami horowitz. then vice president biden. after that a discussion on southern voters in the election. tomorrow on "washington journal" "charlotte observer" political reporter tim funk previews the democratic national convention. mark nix president of the right to work foundation discusses his group's fight against what it calls compulsory unionism and efforts to pass legislation on the state and federal level. and florida avalanche confidential informant mike wi