Chris Dodd came to Groton yesterday, to speak at a Town Committee fundraiser. I took a number of pictures, which you can view at the link here, or at the link on the upper left on my home page. Since I had the chore of sitting by the door taking money I couldn’t take in the speeches nor could I take any video. However, Terri Roper took video of the whole thing, along with interviews of some of the attendees, who included Ned Lamont, Dan Malloy, Nancy Wyman, and State Representative Gary LeBeau, who told me he is forming a gubernatorial exploratory committee. I hope all those explorers don’t get completely lost. Terri will be putting it up on the local cable network, and when she does I may try to put some of it on youtube.
We had a little more than a hundred people there, judging by the financial proceeds, maybe a bit more since not everyone paid to get in.
I didn’t get to hear all of Dodd’s speech, since I had to duck out to mind the table, but I was very gratified that he expressed his appreciation to me for penning the resolution the Committee adopted back in May.
Here he is, with Liberal Drinkers and Waterford Democrats Atul Shah and Jessica McLaughlin.
You can read Ted Mann’s account of Dodd’s appearance here. As Ted mentions (perhaps too much-why do these nutjobs deserve so much press?) there were assorted teabaggers outside. As I pointed out to Ted, one of them was an old man holding a sign opposing “socialized medicine”. Had I been in the mood for pointless argument, I would have asked him if he had spurned his Medicare benefits and social security checks, consistent with his principles. It is an odd thing that in this country we simply re-define popular programs that are socialistic as “not socialism”, thus maintaining our ruggedly individualistic purity by definition, if not in fact. If Obama’s system passes, and if it does indeed drive private insurance out of the mix (we can always hope) future generations of teabaggers will no doubt redefine socialism to exclude the medical benefits they will, at that point, not want to give up.
We were happy about the turnout. My wife, who organized the whole thing (along with Ruby Silva, Natalie Billing, Liz Duarte, and Town Chair Betsy Moukawsher) can now relax, we have a few more dollars for our treasury, and we are in good shape going in to the fall elections.
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