Some Simple Messages for the Debate

how to reach the undecideds

Tonight I want to talk to you about two separate visions of America. One vision sees America through the lens of an economy designed to benefit the ultra-rich. A vision where your retirement funds, if you are fortunate enough to have them, are tokens for a casino that trades stocks in volumes of money every hour than most of us will ever earn in a lifetime. This visuon wants tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, some of which are not paying any income tax today.

The people that want this vision care only for themselves and their wealthy friends. The companies that control your housing, your food, your gasoline, your health care and your transportation raised prices during the pandemic, and never stopped. It gave us inflation that is finally coming under control thanks to the tremendous efforts of President Joe Biden. This vision is the one of the Republican party of Donald Trump. One of unlimited assault weapons, where deadly school shootings are a fact of life.

The Trump party doesn’t care about the working father of two who hasn’t received a meaningful raise in years. It doesn’t care that his wife is unable to work because they can’t afford child care. It doesn’t care that the family makes daily decisions about whether to dedicate limited resources to food, medicine, gas or the rent. It does not concern itself with whether he stays up half the night trying to think of some way to make ends meet.

Or about the single mother who has no choice but to leave her young children with her own ailing mother. She works in the city for a low wage but can’t afford to live there anymore because corporate landlords have bought up houses and apartments and raised prices beyond anything she can afford. She moved to the suburbs only to find the same thing happened. So she moves even farther out. She can’t afford a car and there is no subway, so she gets up at 4:00 AM every work day to take three buses, a trip that takes hours. After a long day at work, she takes the same endless ride home, feeds, bathes and puts her children to bed. If she is lucky, she gets a half hour of quiet time before going to sleep in preparation for the whole process to begin again.

No, the Republicans don’t care about her either. What the Republicans offer all of us is intrusion into our reproductive decisions but denying the child once born any social assistance, banning the books our children read, dictating our religious beliefs, making sure we have the hardest time possible casting our vote unless we happen to live in a precinct that is populated by their sympathizers, and ensuring that our children get the worst education possible so that they never gain the vital skill of critical thinking, so that they don’t question what is happening around them.

So that is what the Republicans want for us, fear, contempt for anybody who is different, disregard and disrespect for women and the division of us, one from the other. While we are busy hating each other, they are robbing us blind.

What we want to offer you is something very different. Not just a different economy, but a different society. A transformed government that feeds its people, guarantees them a living wage, provides reliable day care and a proper education and that stays out of their bedrooms and most of all, gives them hope. We want to take money out of politics by repealing Citizens United, which tells us that corporations are people and allows them to contribute in vast numbers to candidates and PACs. A tax increase for the very wealthy and corporations that will help us achieve all of these things. And we want to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act so you will never, ever have to worry again about being able to vote.

How do we do all of this? We elect a Democratic president and Democratic Congress. We institute majority rule for Senate votes. Most urgent, perhaps, is reforming this morally bankrupt Supreme Court. That means strict ethics rules and no more life terms.

We who ask for your vote cannot possibly do this alone. It will take all of us. We will prevail and we will start down the long road to a decent, caring and prosperous society that cares about its people, no matter their race, religion or gender, and which encourages us to care about and for each other.