At a rabble-rousing speech before members of the Seattle Metropolitan Democratic Club this afternoon, state Democratic Party chair Dwight Pelz trashed education reform, called George W. Bush “the worst President in American history,” and gave a shout-out to his mom, who was in the room.
Sounding every bit the party-leader-turned-talk-show-host, Pelz offered the following hotly worded observations:
On education “reform”: “[US Education Secretary] Arne Duncan should be fired immediately. Arne Duncan’s got blood on his hands in Wisconsin because he’s been trashing the teachers union. Bill Gates came out and said class sizes aren’t a problem in schools—he said 36 kids in a class wasn’t a problem … Wouldn’t it be nice if Arne Duncan and Bill Gates, instead of talking about standards and testing for teachers, talked about the fact that America is not committed to public education? The challenge facing education is that we really don’t give a shit about it. The position of the Republican Party is that we should not fund education in America.”
On the current hostility toward public employees and unions: “Coming out of the war, when someone had a good job, we celebrated it. Now when someone has a good job we’re suspicious of it.”
On why people should vote for Democrats despite their disappointing record: “There was a joke 20 years ago, when [then-Russian president Boris] Yeltsin was in power: ‘What did capitalism do in Russia in five years that communism couldn’t do in 50 years? The answer was, make communism look good. What is it that the Republicans can do that Democrats can’t do? Make Democrats look good.”
On the current state of the competition: “These are bad people. … They’re evil. These guys are fascists. When you eliminate collective bargaining, when you say people shouldn’t have the right to vote, when you say FOX News is the only source of information about what’s going on, that’s good, old-fashioned American fascism.”
On the current state of the union: “We’ve lost our sense of compassion in this country. We were a growing society. A growing society holds together and a declining society falls apart, and America grew until about 1980 and then we started to fall apart. George W. Bush is the worst president in the history of the country, and Ronald Reagan is the most overrated president in the history of the country.”
Whew. We have a call out to talk-show-host-turned-Republican-Party Chair Kirby Wilbur to see if he has any sound bites to contribute in response to Pelz’s pugilistic remarks.
