I cannot help but to continue to feel that the Democrats are spinning their wheels, stumbling around with policy positions and apologies for past mistakes, constantly on defense instead of taking the offense, while leaving the vital issues of the day to be defined by the Republicans. I believe we need to rise above the policy, the negatives, the wheel-spinning to something more important. Something we define as the vital issue of this election and the political warfare that now enmeshes all of us. It seems that we are too often in the trees and unable to see the forest.
I realize that this language cannot be used as written, or even close to what is written, but sure as hell would like to hear someone say it in some way.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. and Ms. Moderators, I would like to take just a few minutes to talk about something that transcends anything that we will discuss during the course of the next several hours. I ask your indulgence and the indulgence of my fellow candidates on this stage.
We are, indeed, here on this stage for one reason: to win the privilege of being the Democratic nominee for and election to the Presidency of the United States of America. We each have committed ourselves to the hard work, the ups and downs, the aggravations and successes, the glare of media attention, and the floods of lies from our adversaries because each of us believes that he or she has the qualities and the ideas necessary to lead our country into a better future for us and the world.
But make no mistake, though we will prod each other, criticize each other, try to gain advantage over one other tonight, we are united in one thing and one thing only, one cause only. We are united with you the audience here, the television audience, and every American who is participating in what is taking place.
What is this cause, the central and existential cause of today? It is the the cause to ensure that this great American experiment of freedom and liberty, as deeply and brutally flawed as it has been and still is today, is not extinguished, that this young and vibrant country, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from this earth.”
The American beacon light of liberty is being snuffed out, here and across the globe. But we should realize that we, our side of this cause, are this light. We are those who demand liberty for all, justice for all, freedom for all, dignity for all, economic possibilities for all. We are the ones who reach out into the world to find those like us who will fight along with us for these values. Our cause is to rekindle this light of liberty after the direct, corrupt, deceptive, vicious, and with just the events of this last week in the Middle East, the almost totally successful snuffing out of this light. Our cause is to make this light brighter and more inclusive, even in the face of staggering opposition to such a purpose.
Our adversaries in the other party have steadily and uncompromisingly marched us toward an America where power is in the hands of only a select few, where only the very rich are free while the rest of us are virtually bound, where political corruption and elevation to office are mere stepping stones to more wealth. Our adversaries seek a country where a select minority will govern a large majority, an American Apartheid. Where a large portion of Americans are deprived of the right to vote. Where extremely powerful institutions are used to persecute and destroy political opposition. Where our government abandons and undermines allies who have stood with us to build a better world, while aiding and abetting dictators who will keep people, effectively, enslaved. Our adversaries, despite their lying efforts, do not represent the light that is the American experiment, they are the darkness that will destroy it.
We cannot let this happen, for if it does, our country will likely turn inward and become a husk of its former self. We will lose our allies and friends who, without us, will have to fend for themselves against more powerful neighbors. The world will probably degenerate into instability on the one hand and on the other the tyrannical, oppressive, and technologically strangling order that is now the experiment taking place in China.
Our country, under a regime imposed by our adversaries, will almost certainly be a grim place to live.
Solutions to the problems that face us at home and globally, need, require, the American experiment to be alive and well.
This is our cause. We will have to fight for it, from our towns and communities, to the Presidential election itself. This is why we are here on this stage and why you are here in the audience. When everything else seems to fail, let each of us remember this purpose to ourselves and to each other.
But to win we need a vision, a vision for America that takes us beyond the struggle we are in now. This vision will not come from the policy positions we espouse or the jabs we may successfully land, but it must come from our united effort to create it and then communicate it to the American people. All of them. We must relight the beacon that is the great American experiment. This is really our job tonight, our only job, and I invite my colleagues here on this stage to help me do just that.