Notable Supporters Talk About Why They Like Clinton
BEAUMONT, TEXAS -- Hillary Clinton headed south to Texas to make her final push before the March 4 contest here, but before Clinton took the stage, a few notable supporters had some remarks they wanted to share with the audience.
First up was actor and longtime Clinton friend Ted Danson, who is most famous for playing bartender Sam Malone on the TV sitcom "Cheers." Danson said Clinton would make the best president because she's intricately involved in the lives of her friends. Danson pointed to examples when Clinton would "congratulate" him when he had a "triumph" in his career.
"She knows what I'm doing with my acting, when I have a little triumph of some kind she is the first one to congratulate me. First time I do something not quite so good, she gives me encouragement and makes me go out there again. When I'm in a room with way more important people than I am, she makes sure that I feel important and she comes up and talks to me and remembers everything that is going on in my life. Wouldn't that be great to have a president who treated each one of you exactly that way?"
Danson continued making his case, "She will know exactly what is going on with your kids and make sure they have health care and make sure they get an education. When someone's mean to me, she's willing to spit in their eye. Wouldn't it be great to have a president who would do that?"
Next, Danson's wife, Arkansas native and Oscar winner Mary Steenburgen, took hold of the microphone to offer her wisdom of Hillary Clinton to the crowd.
"I am a celebrity and that doesn't make me qualified to tell you what you should do. But I'll tell you what I am qualified to tell you, I've had a friend for 30 years. I walked through life with her, I've watched her be a mother, I've watched her be a daughter, I've watched her be a wife."
"Let me tell you, to the women here, she does girlfriend really, really well."
Steenburgen went on to encourage the crowd to go out and vote for Clinton and said voters shouldn't be discouraged by Barack Obama's momentum. "You guys can do this! They may be outspending us 4-to-1, but that doesn't mean anything to the heart of a Texan who knows you can change history." The crowd cheered.
Finally, Clinton was called to the stage where she was joined by Danson, Steenburgen and U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla. Brown, who wore a candy-apple red fur head band and a denim jacket with what appeared to be long pieces of denim spaghetti, was all set to introduce the former First Lady but she digressed into another direction, making mention that she was the first African-American woman in Florida to be elected to the Congress in over 120 years.
Brown continued, "Let me just say one other thing, Martin Luther King said 'judge me by the content of my character, not the color of my skin.' When you get ready to pick your politicians, you better pick one like you picking a doctor. And we have one that is not just a 'Dr. Feel Good,' but one who knows how to get it done."
After that colorful round of speakers, Clinton finally took hold of the microphone where she began to lay out her standard stump speech, veering off only to make some sense of Brown's "Dr. Feel Good" comments.
"Congresswoman Corrine Brown said if you were picking a surgeon to operate on someone in your family, you would figure out what their background was, what their experience was what they've done in the past. As Congressman Brown said, you wouldn't pick 'Dr. Feel Good'."