Remarks at a Get Out the Vote Rally in New York City - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Nov 13, 2000

November 4, 2000

The President. Thank you. Are you ready to win this election?

Audience members. Yes!

The President. Thank you for coming out. Thank you for your warm welcome. I want to thank the president and Mrs. Steinberg and Provost Gale Stevens for welcoming me here to LIU, along with your student body president, who is also there. I want to thank my good friend Carl McCall for making these stops with me today and for all the support he has given to Hillary and the superb job he has done for the people of New York.

And I want to thank Judith Hope for taking over the Democratic Party when we were not in very good shape and working her heart out and for showing such leadership.

And my Brooklyn buddies over here--in early 1992, when only my mother thought I could be elected President-[Laughter]--Clarence Norman and Major Owens were there for me, and I will never, ever, ever forget it. Thank you, and God bless you.

You know, this has been a great day for me to go around and campaign for Al Gore and Joe Lieberman and for Hillary, to go to the Bronx, which has also been very good to me, to go down to Harlem with Charlie Rangel, who will be the next chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee if we win this election. But I am honored to finish in Brooklyn because, as you heard Major and Clarence say, New York City has been wonderful to me and to Al Gore these last 8 years. Shoot, we've even gotten a pretty good vote out on Staten Island. Queens has been great; the Bronx has been great; Manhattan has been fabulous; but Brooklyn always came in first and gave us the biggest vote, and I thank you for that.

But I also am glad to be here at LIU and to have so many--soccer, softball, volleyball--I'm glad to be here because, fundamentally, this is a race about the future. It's a race about 21st century America, and the young people in this audience have more at stake than anyone else.

So I know you're all committed or you wouldn't be here. And it's easy for me to just sort of give you one applause line after another. But I want to ask you as a personal favor to just let me talk to you for a few minutes in a conversation. Why? Because the election is still a few days away, and because there are thousands upon thousands of people in New York and many of you have friends in other States who haven't even decided whether to vote yet, much less for whom to vote. All that talk about the base, that's a fancy way of saying if the people that are for our side actually show up and vote, we will win. If a higher percentage of the people that are for their side show up and vote, then we could lose, even if most people are really for us.

And so what I want to ask you to do when you leave here tonight is to take some time tomorrow and the next day and all the way through election day to tell people why they ought to vote--especially the young people--what the stakes are, what the choice is, and what the consequences are. I don't have any doubt in the world that if people really understand what this election is about and what the honest differences are, that we will prevail.

So here's what I'd like for you to say. First of all, remember what it was like 8 years ago. It's hard for a lot of younger voters to remember this. The economy was in the dumps; the society was divided; the political system was completely unresponsive. Al Gore and I came to the American people and we asked you to give us a chance to put the American people first, to provide opportunity for every responsible citizen in a community of all the American people--and I mean all, never mind your race, your ethnic background, whether you're an immigrant or native-born; never mind whether you're old or young, rich or poor, straight or gay, disabled or physically unchallenged. If you work hard and you obey the law, you're part of our America and part of our American family, and we want you to go forward with us.

Congressman Greg Meeks--give him a big hand there, come on up--from Queens. [Applause] You were just with Hillary? Good for you. [Laughter]

Now look, so 8 years ago we did that. We came in, you gave us a chance. And it's a different country now. It's a totally different country. We have the longest economic expansion in history, 22 million new jobs. So here's the first question, do you want to keep building on this prosperity and extend it to the people who haven't felt it yet? Do you want to keep it going?

Audience members. Yes!

The President. That's the first question you ought to ask every voter. Somebody tells you, "Oh, it doesn't make any difference whether I vote or not." Think about where we were 8 years ago and look at where we are now economically. And if you want to build on it and extend this prosperity to the people that have been left behind, then you've got a choice: Al Gore and Joe Lieberman and Hillary, Major and Greg. You know what our position is? How do you keep it going? First, keep paying the debt down to keep interest rates down. Why is that important to you? Because if you keep interest rates down, it means that you pay lower home mortgage payments, lower car payments, lower college loan payments, lower credit card payments, lower business loan payments. It means more jobs, higher income, a bigger stock market, a growing economy. They quadrupled the debt, and we're paying it down.