Valgkamppoesi: Hubert Humphrey over en kopp kaffe

Hubert Humphrey i stor­form på et valg­kamp­møte i det rurale Wis­consin i for­bin­delse med pri­mær­valget i april 1960:

«I still have my cup of coffee here. After all, I got a couple of Nor­we­gians over here you see, and since I’m only half a Nor­we­gian they only gave me half of a cup and I wanted to fin­nish it off.

Anyway, when you’re out speaking, as I have been, why once in a while a good cup of coffee sorta braces you up for the next meeting.

Now gent­lemen, I am one of the can­di­dates in your Wis­consin pre­si­den­tial pri­mary race. We’re going to have an election here on Tuesday, April the 5th.

Now this election is off course a very impor­tant one in terms of your state.

Now my fri­ends, during my ser­vice in the United States Senate for twelve years, I have given more time, more atten­tion, to mat­ters of agri­cul­ture than any other one subject.

Now Senator Humphrey is not out here just to please you, by these com­ments. I say that Wis­consin have lost hund­reds of mil­lions of dol­lars of sales. I say that the busi­ness men of Wis­consin have lost hund­reds of mil­lions of dol­lars worth of busi­ness because of reduced farm income.

And I charge here that not a single can­di­date in this pri­mary election has paid any atten­tion to the farmer at all, except Hubert Humphrey…

Instead of you reading about who you wanna have as pre­si­dent in Life Magazine, you ougtha take a good look at him in the flesh. You oughta hear what they have got to say. Because let me tell you what: Life, Time, For­tune, Look, and News­week don’t give a hoot about you here in this place.

And I know, they laugh at ya. I’ve been down to their edi­to­rial boards, some of them, and I’ll tell you they have no more apprecia­tion of a far­mers pro­blem than they have of what’s going on on the other side of the moon. Thank­fully they don’t know the dif­fe­rence between a corn cob and a ukulele.

I can tell you that my votes aren’t very popular some­times in New York City, or Boston. … When I read the edi­to­rials; The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, … they say that the far­mers’ being sub­si­dized, and they look at Hubert Humphrey’s record and they say ’well this fellow, this Humphrey he’s just the Mid­west, he’s just for those far­mers. That’s what they say. They’re right. I am.»

Tran­skri­bert fra Robert Drew’s fasci­ne­rende doku­men­tar­film “Pri­mary” (1960).