The truth is, on issue after issue that would make a difference in
your lives - on health care and education and the economy - Senator
McCain has been anything but independent. He said that our economy
has made "great progress" under this President. He said that the
fundamentals of the economy are strong. And when one of his chief
advisors - the man who wrote his economic plan - was talking about
the anxiety Americans are feeling, he said that we were just
suffering from a "mental recession," and that we've become, and I
quote, "a nation of whiners."
A nation of whiners? Tell that to the proud auto workers at a
Michigan plant who, after they found out it was closing, kept showing
up every day and working as hard as ever, because they knew there
were people who counted on the brakes that they made. Tell that to
the military families who shoulder their burdens silently as they
watch their loved ones leave for their third or fourth or fifth tour
of duty. These are not whiners. They work hard and give back and keep
going without complaint. These are the Americans that I know.
Now, I don't believe that Senator McCain doesn't care what's going on
in the lives of Americans. I just think he doesn't know. Why else
would he define middle-class as someone making under five million
dollars a year? How else could he propose hundreds of billions in tax
breaks for big corporations and oil companies but not one penny of
tax relief to more than one hundred million Americans? How else could
he offer a health care plan that would actually tax people's
benefits, or an education plan that would do nothing to help families
pay for college, or a plan that would privatize Social Security and
gamble your retirement?
It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain
doesn't get it.
For over two decades, he's subscribed to that old, discredited
Republican philosophy - give more and more to those with the most and
hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington,
they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is -
you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The
market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own
bootstraps - even if you don't have boots. You're on your own.
Well it's time for them to own their failure. It's time for us to
change America.
You see, we Democrats have a very different measure of what
constitutes progress in this country.
We measure progress by how many people can find a job that pays the
mortgage; whether you can put a little extra money away at the end of
each month so you can someday watch your child receive her college
diploma. We measure progress in the 23 million new jobs that were
created when Bill Clinton was President - when the average American
family saw its income go up $7,500 instead of down $2,000 like it has
under George Bush.
We measure the strength of our economy not by the number of
billionaires we have or the profits of the Fortune 500, but by
whether someone with a good idea can take a risk and start a new
business, or whether the waitress who lives on tips can take a day
off to look after a sick kid without losing her job - an economy that
honors the dignity of work.
The fundamentals we use to measure economic strength are whether we
are living up to that fundamental promise that has made this country
great - a promise that is the only reason I am standing here tonight.
Because in the faces of those young veterans who come back from Iraq
and Afghanistan, I see my grandfather, who signed up after Pearl
Harbor, marched in Patton's Army, and was rewarded by a grateful
nation with the chance to go to college on the GI Bill.
In the face of that young student who sleeps just three hours before
working the night shift, I think about my mom, who raised my sister
and me on her own while she worked and earned her degree; who once
turned to food stamps but was still able to send us to the best
schools in the country with the help of student loans and scholarships.
When I listen to another worker tell me that his factory has shut
down, I remember all those men and women on the South Side of Chicago
who I stood by and fought for two decades ago after the local steel
plant closed.
And when I hear a woman talk about the difficulties of starting her
own business, I think about my grandmother, who worked her way up
from the secretarial pool to middle-management, despite years of
being passed over for promotions because she was a woman. She's the
one who taught me about hard work. She's the one who put off buying a
new car or a new dress for herself so that I could have a better
life. She poured everything she had into me. And although she can no
longer travel, I know that she's watching tonight, and that tonight
is her night as well.
I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities
lead, but this has been mine. These are my heroes. Theirs are the
stories that shaped me. And it is on their behalf that I intend to
win this election and keep our promise alive as President of the United States.
full:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/28/barack-obama-democratic-c_n_122224.html
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