Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy, 90th Street Rally, New York, NY

Senator KENNEDY. Bill Ryan, your next Democratic Congressman from this district [applause] - we need some good Democrats down there in Washington. [Applause.] I want to present to you, with a good deal of pride, my running mate on this ticket who is going to run with us on Tuesday, Lyndon Johnson, who came all the way from Texas today to be with us. [Applause.] Lyndon Johnson and I have each been in 40 States. That makes a total of 80. [Applause.] And we have said the same thing in every State. We stand for progress, North, South, East, and West. [Applause.] He is here with his wife. I want you to meet the most popular lady in Washington, Lady Bird Johnson. [Applause.] And he has also brought his two daughters, Miss Lucy Baines Johnson, and Miss Lynda Bird Johnson. [Applause.]

When we leave here tonight, we are going to have a rally at 2 in the morning in Waterbury, Conn., and I want to introduce to you, the Governor of the State of Connecticut, Abe Ribicoff. [Applause.]

I want to apologize for being about 5 hours late. We were not playing golf. [Applause.] We have been out carrying the message. I was traveling alone through New York, and no other candidate for the Presidency can make that statement. [Applause.] I was not accompanied by Nelson, Cabot, Tom, Ike, Barry - any of them. [Applause.]

We come here tonight in the closing days of this campaign to ask your help in turning the Republican Party out of office and putting the Democrats back in and moving this country forward. [Applause.] I have been called in the last week by the candidate of the Republican Party, who is waging that high level campaign for which he is justly celebrated, a liar, an economic ignoramus, a Pied Piper and I just call him one thing, a worthy member of his party. [Applause and laughter.] He stands in a great tradition, right out of McKinley, Harding, Coolidge, Dewey, Landon, and all the rest of them. [Applause.] He came in here - he thinks he is running as a committee [laughter]. They are not electing a committee next Tuesday. They are electing a President of the United States, and in spite of the fact - all of you have seen circus elephants with tusks, thick skull, thick skin, no vision, and when they move around the circus ring they have to grab the tail of the elephant in front of them. That is what he is doing. [Laughter and applause.] That was all right in 1952 and 1956, but now he is running, and I believe that on Tuesday, November 8, the people of this country face not merely a choice between Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates, not merely a choice between parties, but between a position which says that we never had it so good, that our prestige has never been higher, which is right out of the book of Stanley Baldwin, who almost lost England World War II - I believe the people of this country want the truth and they want to move and they want to see us build our strength here and around the world. [Applause.] So we are leaving it to all of you to make the right decision. We will now move on to Waterbury, Conn., and in the next 2 days we are going to cover all the six New England States, and I want to tell them that as New York goes - and I think it is going Democratic - so goes the Nation. [Applause.]

I read the New York Daily News poll, not always their editorials, but I think we have a good chance here. So I want to express my thanks to all of you for standing in the rain, and we are delighted to stand with you. The Republicans are home in bed. [Applause.] But next Tuesday night it is going to rain for them and the sun is going to shine for us. [Applause.]