Howard Dean in Democratic "Rock the Vote" debate

On Civil Rights: Stop being divided by race: reach out to white southerners

EDWARDS: Dean still has not said he was wrong [to seek those votes]. Were you wrong to say that?

DEAN: No, I wasn't. People who vote who fly the Confederate flag, I think they are wrong because the Confederate flag is a racist symbol. But I think there are lot of poor people who fly that flag because the Republicans have been dividing us by race since 1968 with their southern race strategy. I am tired of being divided by race in this country. I want to go down to the South and talk to people who don't make any more than anybody else up north but keep voting Republican against their own economic interests.

EDWARDS: The last thing we need in the South is somebody like you coming down and telling us what we need to do. I grew up in the South. I grew up with the very people that you're talking about. The vast majority don't drive around with Confederate flags on pickup trucks.

On Civil Rights: Reach out to every American, even Southern white males

BRAUN: In the Senate I opened myself up to the venom of the right-wing conspiracy by battling Jesse Helms over the Confederate flag. We have to as Democrats begin to engage a civil conversation how we can get past that racist strategy that the Republicans have foisted upon this country, how we can bring Southern whites and blacks and northern blacks and whites together, how we can come together to reclaim this country-and Latinos, and Asians, and Christians & Muslims & Jews & Protestants.

DEAN: We have to reach out to every single American. We don't have to embrace the Confederate flag, and I never suggested that we did. But we have to reach out to all disenfranchised people. I understand that the Confederate flag is a loathsome symbol, just as I understood all the anti-gay slurs that I had to put up with in Vermont after I signed that bill were loathsome symbols. If we don't reach out to every single American, we can't win.

On Civil Rights: Make no apologies for reaching out to poor Southern whites

DEAN: Rev. Jesse Jackson went to a South Carolina trailer park which was inhabited by mostly white folks making $25,000 a year. We need to reach out to those people, too, because they suffer as well. I understand the legacy of racism and bigotry in this country. We need to bring folks together in this race, just like Martin Luther King tried to do before he was killed. He was right. And I make no apologies for reaching out to poor white people.

SHARPTON: But Confederate flags are not for white people. Jackson went to South Carolina with all of us protesting the flag. The issue's not poor southern whites. Most poor southern whites don't wear a Confederate flag, and you ought not try to stereotype that.

On Foreign Policy: Let the UN handle the Iraq situation

A: I don't think we have any choice. I supported the first Gulf War. I supported the Afghanistan war. Our people had been killed. We have a right to defend ourselves. But now we can't just cut and run. We need to bring troops from Arabic-speaking nations in so this is an international reconstruction and not an American occupation. And I think, yes, the UN can do that.

On Foreign Policy: Gays deserve equal rights under the law

A: When I signed the civil unions bill, I didn't know anything more about the gay community than I did 25 years earlier. I did it, not because I knew a lot about the gay community, it was because I believed every single American deserves equal rights under the law. I have come to know the GLBT community over time because I signed the first equal rights under the law bill for gay and lesbian Americans.

On Gun Control: Background checks for gun shows

A: I support the assault weapons ban. I do not support the elimination of liability for gun owners. I support background checks. And I support background checks for people who buy guns at gun shows. I come from a rural state where people hunt. We have the lowest homicide rate in America. So my attitude is, let's have those federal laws and enforce them. And then let every state make additional gun control as they see fit.