Cass County Democrats held their annual Back to Blue dinner in Belton, Missouri yesterday evening. Well over 100 individuals gathered for dinner, conversation, speeches, and to recognize individuals and groups for their party and community activism over the past year.
The Master of Ceremonies for the evening:
Jessica Podhola.
Russ Carnahan, Chair, Missouri Democratic Party.
Loree Voight, Chair, Cass County Democratic Central Committee.
Ray James, Chair, Johnson County Democratic Central Committee.
Will Westmoreland (D): ‘….We’ve lost thirty-seven percent of our agricultural markets around the world because of these tariff wars. Thirty-seven percent. China wasn’t prepared the first time around. All their hogs were sick, they didn’t have any supplies of row crops. Well, one thing you can’t say about the Chinese is they just sit around and wait for another disaster. They don’t do that.
They went down to Brazil. They helped cut down about six percent more of the rainforest. The put in railroad tracks and better rail to the coasts and then they built better harbors for those big grain [inaudible] ships that come through there. And they went from buying thirteen percent of their row crops for Brazil to now buying forty-three percent of their row crops from Brazil.
Oh, and by the way, because he’s a Trump mini me we gave Argentina a twenty-billion dollar bailout, which they use to abolish the tax on soybean sales so that China could come in and but billions of dollars of soybeans from them subsidized by the American government.
You can’t make this stuff up….’
Will Westmoreland (D): ‘…When I talk about meeting people halfway, I’ve got a good friend in St. Louis that told me, Will, you need to add something to your speech, we don’t meet Nazis and we don’t meet racists halfway.
It’s not who I’m talking about, okay? I’m talking about like people like that row crop farmer in St. Clair County who got smacked over the head with an anvil three times and finally decided, you know what, maybe it’s not in my best interest to vote for this guy.
Those are the people we can meet halfway…’
Will Westmoreland (D): ‘…I think of three and a half more years with this guy and it just makes me break out in a sweat and I want to sit down in my recliner and just not get up again…’
‘…We’ve got Democrats running in places around this country where Trump won by twenty-five percent and we’ve got Democrats knocking off those candidates because people are so upset. He’s not above water in any single category that we measure a president under. In every single category that we measure presidential approval he’s below fifty percent. And in almost every category he’s almost down to thirty-nine percent. People do not like what’s happening.
Just because the media loves to put the little Joseph Goebbels on the TV from the Whitehouse and all the other people that you see and they give them air time and they yap, and yap, and yap….Those are not the voices of America. Thank God. Those are not the voices of America.
Those are voices that we heard a long time ago when we sent the greatest generation from this country over to Europe to fight against it and over to the Pacific to fight against it…’
‘…I hear a lot of similarities between their rhetoric and the rhetoric of Fascists that we heard back in the day.
So we’ve got to keep fighting. It feels different now, doesn’t it? For those of you who are a little gray around the ears like I am, it feels different this time. I mean, yeah, we were fighting for important causes in the eighties and the nineties, etcetera. But this time it feels different. It feels like it’s not just a policy that’s at stake. It feels like it’s our country that’s at stake. [voices] The soul of our country…’
‘…They can have our Democracy when they pry it from our cold, dead hands. And I hate to be melodramatic about it, but that’s how I feel about it. I’m gonna fight to the very end to defend this Democracy and I know you will, too.
The good news is this. The majority of people in this country are on your side…’
Around 100 individuals from counties across the district attended.
Saturday evening Lafayette County Democrats held their annual fundraising dinner and pie auction in Higginsville. Democratic Party office holders and party officials spoke at the event.
Will Westmoreland:….There’s a cloud brewing out there. And the cloud brewing over rural America is the darkest cloud out there right now. You know, Will Rogers used to say, it’s one of my favorite quotes, and some of you have heard it before, when they asked Will Rogers, ‘How do people learn in rural America?’ He said, ‘Well, some learn by reading, some learn by observing, and the rest of them just have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.’ [laughter] And there’s a lot of peeing on the electric fence going on in rural America right now. [laughter] But we can change that….
….We only need three percent of rural America to vote Democrat and we can win the presidency, the House, and the Senate. Well by golly, I’m a rural American and I kind of want a school board that doesn’t ban books. [applause] I want a county clerk that believes in free and fair elections. [cheers, applause] I want a health department that doesn’t think vaccines were sent up from the bowels of hell by the Devil himself. [laughter, applause]….
….I don’t give a damn about what every pundit in this country says, 33% in rural America didn’t vote for this dumbass [cheers, applause]….
Will Westmoreland: ….Everything that this administration does is a grift, but when it comes to privatization, when it comes to taking money out of our rural schools and sending it to private schools where 75% of the kids that get that money are already enrolled, it’s not just about the grift, it’s about indoctrination and you can count on that. [applause]….
….Did you ever see a president when he looks at rural ag policy he looks like a cow looking at a new gate? [laughter] Some of you get that. [laughter] This guy has absolutely pulled out the rug from under American farmers and this country….
….Every time I hear somebody say there’s not a difference between the two parties in this country I tell ’em, ‘bullshit.’ [applause] When my dad died when I was five years old and we didn’t have a place to live, and the republican party said, ‘you’re a burden to this country,’ it was the Democratic Party that made sure we had a roof over our head in the form of public housing. [applause] When the cupboards in our kitchen were bare, and the republicans said, ‘go to your church or go find a family member,’ it was the Democratic Party that gave us that funny money [applause] that we could take down to the grocery store and but food to feed our family. When my mother stepped up to the plate and went back to college to earn herself a degree to support her family and the republicans said, ‘we’re not gonna pay for it,’ it was the Democrats that gave her a Pell grant to go back and get that degree [applause]….
