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Democrat Barack Obama will create the change the country needs, Doyle said. But he warned that Republicans will do everything they can to stop Obama.
“The entrenched powers of the Bush-Cheney years have everything to gain from keeping things just as they are,” Doyle said to a smattering of applause. “They will pull out all the stops to make sure John McCain is elected because they know he’ll keep looking out for them. But I have news for them. Their days are numbered. Our time has come.”
Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus issued a statement saying that as Doyle attacked McCain in Denver, people in Wisconsin were dealing with a slowing economy and rising energy prices. McCain has put country before his personal and political ambitions, unlike Obama, and he’s more qualified to be commander in chief, the McCain campaign said in a statement.
Obama is the presumptive Democratic candidate for president. McCain is the likely Republican nominee.
Doyle told delegates John F. Kennedy inspired him to public service in the Peace Corps. He asked them to revive Kennedy’s spirit and move past eight years of Republican leadership that favored the rich and ignored everyone else.
“We are ready to reject John McCain’s campaign that offers nothing but four years of more of the same,” Doyle said.
He said his 8-year-old grandson, Asiah, told him he likes Obama because Obama will work hard. Then he said Obama has a plan to put 5 million Americans to work in clean energy jobs.
“I promise to you that I am going to work my heart out for Barack Obama. I’ll do it for my grandson so that he is blessed in his life with the hopeful and determined spirit that John Kennedy gave me,” Doyle said.
U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, took the stage shortly after Doyle. She railed against the high cost of health care, citing the story of Sue Strickler of Beloit.
Strickler, now 58, went bankrupt paying for cancer treatments for her husband, William Thompson Strickler, after they discovered their insurance didn’t cover his chemotherapy or radiation treatments. Her husband died in 2005 at age 54, Strickler said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.
“I’m never going to get credit cards again. I just have to watch my pennies very carefully. If anything unexpected happens, I don’t know hat I’m going to do,” Strickler said.
Baldwin said McCain offers more of what she called President Bush’s pro-insurance company, anti-health stances. Obama understands good health care is a basic need, she said.
In response, Cathy Stepp, a Wisconsin coalitions director for the McCain campaign, asked why the Democrats who control Congress hadn’t offered any major health care reform. She said McCain’s plan to make taxes on health care refundable is better than anything Obama can offer.
