This summary is provided to highlight what I think are the newsworthy portions of the speech.
I sent a copy of this to the San Jose Mercury News. I suggest sending your own version to your local paper.
And I'm ready to get to work.
If we want to win nationally, we have to win locally. [Terry McAuliffe is giving us] a party in strong financial shape, with the infrastructure to meet the challenges of the future. That is no small gift.
Republicans wandered around in the political wilderness for 40 years before they took back Congress. But the reason we lost control is that we forgot why we were entrusted with control to begin with. The American people can't afford to wait for 40 years for us to put Washington back to work for them.
The first thing we have to do is stand up for what we believe in.
This week, the Republicans introduced a $2.5 trillion budget that deliberately conceals the cost of their fiscal recklessness. As far as I'm concerned, this budget does only two things: It brings Enron-style accounting to our nation's capital. . . . [and] Republicans cannot be trusted with your money.
We Democrats believe in fiscal responsibility and we're the only ones who have delivered it. The first time our nation balanced its budget, it was Andrew Jackson, father of the Democratic Party, who did it. The last time our nation balanced its budget, it was Bill Clinton who did it. Democratic governors do it every single year.
Not one Republican President has balanced the budget in almost 40 years. Borrow and spend. Borrow and spend. Borrow and spend. Americans cannot trust the Republicans with their money.
It was Democrats who pushed to create a Department of Homeland Security. It was Democrats who pushed to make our airlines safer. It is Democrats who are now working to make sure we close the remaining gaps in our security. It was Democrats who demanded reform of the intelligence community. Republicans had to be dragged kicking and screaming to our side on all of these issues.
There is no reason for Democrats to be defensive on national defense.
We believe that a good job is the foundation of a strong family, a strong community, and a strong country. And there is no reason for us to apologize for being willing to stand up for our belief that Americans who get up and go to work everyday have the right to join a union.
We believe the path to a better future goes directly through our public schools.
And most importantly, [the voice of Americans] ought to be heard by guaranteeing an open and fair vote on Election Day.
And finally, we believe that a lifetime of work earns you a retirement of dignity. We won't let that be put at risk by leaders who continually invent false crises to justify policies that don't work . . . in this case, borrowing from our children and shredding our country's social safety net in the process.
The President's plan for Social Security does nothing to guarantee Social Security's future [but borrows trillions of dollars]. Let me give you a sense of how much money that is. There are 118 million people under the age of 30 in America today. That means borrowing nearly $45,000 in each of their names.
Republicans will not tell America what our agenda is. We will do that.
People will vote for Democratic candidates in Texas, and Utah, and West Virginia if we knock on their door, introduce ourselves and tell them what we believe. But all of the ideas and organization in the world won't matter if people don't see our ideas as relevant to them, or the political process as connected to them.
You might find this hard to believe. . . but I'm not much of a Zen person. But I've found that the path to power, oddly enough, is to trust others with it. That means putting the power where the voters are. That is something Republicans will never understand. But we do.
Only we are the party of reform. Republicans can stop progress, but only Democrats can start it again. And we will rebuild our Party because our greatest strength is something the Republicans can and will never match -- the diversity represented in this room. Look around -- we look like America. We are America.
It's going to take a lot of work. Election by election. . . State by state. . . Precinct by precinct. . . Door by door. . . Vote by vote. . . We're going to take this country back for the people who built it.