Governor Martin O’Malley Delivers Remarks at the 2015 NHDP State Convention on September 19, 2015

Governor Martin O’Malley Delivers Remarks at the 2015 NHDP State Convention
 
Manchester, New Hampshire—Today, Governor O’Malley will give remarks at the 2015 New Hampshire Democratic Party State Convention. His remarks, as prepared for delivery, are below:

Introduction
 
Thank you Mr. Chairman.
 
It is great to be here with all of you, once again, in New Hampshire -- where democracy is still alive and well, and every person makes a difference!
 
Knowing that New Hampshire has the third largest legislature in the world, I'd like to see a show of hands of all of you who are currently serving in the legislature or have served in the legislature so we can acknowledge your Democratic service... (applause)
 
Thank you all for your service to your neighbors.
 
I'd like to acknowledge two supporters of my campaign Alderman Dan O'Neil, Commissioner Paul Martineau, for their success in Tuesday's election.
 
I also want to acknowledge Joyce Craig and Jim Donchess on their recent success as well.
 
My name is Martin O’Malley.
 
I am a Democrat.
 
I am running for President of the United States.
 
And I am running for one reason -- and one reason only -- and that is to rebuild the truth of the American Dream we share, and I intend to win!
 
Republican Debates
 
Over the last four weeks we have witnessed not one, but two, un-answered rounds of nationally televised Republican Presidential debates led by that racist, anti-immigrant carnival barker, Donald Trump.
 
Their party once had leaders and visionaries.
 
Lincoln asserted our unity and our common humanity.
 
Eisenhower liberated the world and built our nation’s highway system to connect us.
 
Now Republicans create traffic jams, denigrate New American immigrants, they say awful things about women, and they dismiss everything from climate science to vaccines.
 
They can have their anger and their fear.
 
But they cannot go unanswered!
 
Anger and fear never built a great country.
 
Our nation needs new leadership, not new divisions.
 
Our country needs a new consensus, not new hates.
 
And today -- for the progress of our nation and the dream we share -- that new leadership must come from the Democratic Party!

The Covenant Between Us
 
You and I are part of a living, self-creating mystery called the United States of America.
 
But the promise at the heart of that mystery is no abstraction; not some vague idea out there somewhere.
 
It is the very real promise,...
 
It is the very real covenantt among us and between us as a people, that wherever you start -- whatever your parent's zip code or income -- you start where you start, and through your own hard work, talent, and love of family, your own grit and determination you can get ahead.
 
Call it an economy that works for all of us,...
 
Call it a country that works for all of us,...
 
Call it the American Dream.
 
Whatever you call it, the truth of the matter is that it worked well for most of our 240 years as a country,...
 
And it can work again!
 
The genius of our country -- our formula for success -- is that we take action in every generation to include more of our people more fully in the economic, social, and political life of our nation.
 
This is the genius of American Capitalism as well -- when it's not rigged, and manipulated by powerful wealthy interests, by monopolists, and by economic royalists.
 
Fuller participation.
 
Fuller education.
 
The dignity of every person.
 
Opportunity for All.
 
This is who we are when we are truly ourselves.
 
Let me ask you a question....Show of hands.  How many of you believe very firmly that you have enjoyed a better quality of life than your parents and grandparents? Next question. Tougher question.
 
How many of you believe just as firmly that your children and grandchildren will enjoy a better quality of life than you have enjoyed...raise your hands. (pause)
 
That is the central question on the table of democracy we share.
 
We must answer with action, not words.
 
Actions Not Words
 
My campaign is not about digging trenches around those who are already entrenched, …it’s about US, it's about the people.
 
Progressive champions like John and Mary Rauh and Pete Burling, well respected activists like Don and Pam Jorgensen, and new leaders like Dave Allen and Jay Surdukowsi.
 
I am not the only candidate for President who holds progressive values,...
 
But I am the only candidate for President with fifteen years of executive experience -- as a big City Mayor and as a Governor -- turning those progressive values into actions.
 
New leadership.
 
Getting things done.
 
Actions, not words.
 
As Mayor and as Governor, I forged a new consensus for progress that reduced violent crime to thirty year lows while also reducing our incarceration rate to twenty year lows.
 
Actions, not words.
 
Instead of cutting public education funding, I forged a new consensus to increase funding for public education by 37%, and -- we made our public schools the best public schools in America for five years in a row!
 
Actions, not words.
 
We froze College tuition four years in a row to make college more affordable for more families.
 
We became the first state in the nation to pass a living wage.
 
We raised the minimum wage.
 
Actions not words.
 
We passed Fair Share, and we expanded collective bargaining rights for workers.
 
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce named us number one for Innovation and Entrepreneurship three years in a row, and we defended the highest median income in the nation all through the recession.
 
Actions, not words.
 
We expanded family leave.  Instead of making it harder for people to vote, we made it easier,... we passed Driver’s licenses for New American immigrants,...
 
And after the slaughter of the Innocent in Newtown, Connecticut,... we passed comprehensive gun safety legislation with common sense background checks, and a ban on the sale of combat assault weapons.
 
Actions, not words.
 
We passed the DREAM Act, and we passed Marriage Equality – and when our Republican brothers and sisters cynically petitioned those measures to referendum in an effort to overturn them, we took our case of equal justice and human dignity to the people... AND WE WON!
 
Actions, not words.
 
Economy
 
(Grace story)
 
We have come a long way since the Wall Street crash and the Bush Recession of 2008.
 
As our country teetered on the brink of a second Great Depression, we elected a new leader in Barack Obama to move our country forward, and that is exactly what he has done!
 
The good news is this -- our country has now created 66 months in a row of positive month over month job growth.
 
Our country is doing better, and that is the good news these un-answered Republican debates are keeping the American people from hearing.
 
But we elected a President, not a magician. And no one person can fix in just eight years, the bad economic policies of the prior thirty.
 
We still have work to do.
 
For the hard truth of our times is this:
 
Seventy percent of us are now earning the same or less than we were 12 years ago – and that is the first time that has happened this side of World War II.
 
There is a growing injustice in our country -- an economic inequality that threatens to tear us apart.
 
Wealth and power have been so concentrated in the hands of so very few that it is actually taking opportunity out of the homes and the neighborhoods of the many.
 
This did not happen by accident.
 
Powerful, wealthy special interests have used our government to create -- in our own country -- an economy that is slowly leaving a majority of our people behind.
 
Look how far we have strayed from the choices of our parents and grandparents.  
 
My father went to college on the G.I. Bill because of a far-seeing country.
 
Fifty years ago, the average GM employee could pay for a year of a son or daughter's college tuition on just two weeks wages...
 
Today, we are saddling our graduating kids and their families with more college debt than any developed nation on the planet.
 
Last year, bonuses alone onWall Street totaled more than all the earnings of every American working at minimum wage combined.
 
(CEO's pay)
 
This is not the American Dream!
 
This is not how our economy is supposed to work!
 
This is not how our country is supposed to work!
 
The Agenda
 
In tougher times than these, Franklin Roosevelt told us not to be afraid.
 
In changing times, John Kennedy told us to govern is to choose.
 
I say to you, progress is choice.
 
Job creation is a choice.
 
Whether we give our children a future with less opportunity or a future of more opportunity, this, too, is a choice!
 
To succeed again, we must return to our true selves and remember:
 
Our economy is not money, our economy is people – all of our people.
 
A stronger middle class is not the consequence of economic growth – a stronger middle class is the cause of economic growth.
 
No American family who works hard and plays by the rules should have to raise their children in poverty?!
 
Therefore we must take action, together, to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour -- wherever and however we can!
 
We must return to the economic justice of paying overtime pay for overtime work!
 
We must make it easier – not harder -- for workers to join labor unions and collectively bargain for better wages for all of us!
 
We must advance the cause of equal pay for equal work and paid family leave so that all women can participate more fully in the economic life of our nation -- because "when women succeed, America succeeds!"
 
Three weeks ago, I put forward 15 Strategic Goals to Rebuild the American Dream we share:
 
Increasing the net median wealth of American families by at least $25,000 within ten years,..
 
Making wages go up by 4 percent a year within four years,
 
Full employment for American veterans
 
Taking big money out of our politics by implementing public financing of congressional campaigns within 5 years.
 
Reducing deaths from drug overdoses by 25% by 2020
 
National Service as a universal option for all young Americans.
 
Instead of cutting Social Security, we must expand Social Security!
 
Do you want to make wages go up again for all Americans?
 
Then let us bring 11 million our neighbors out of the off-the-books, shadow economy by passing comprehensive immigration reform!
 
The enduring symbol of our nation is not the barbed wire fence,... it is the Statue of Liberty.
 
Let us take the actions necessary to make a debt-free college degree a reality for every American family within five years.
 
I am the first candidate in the Democratic Party -- and let us hope not the last -- to put forward a plan to move our country to a 100% clean electric energy grid by 2050, and create 5 million new jobs along the way!
 
These are the ambitions worthy of a great people.
 
But none of these things can be accomplished by words alone.
 
They will all require action and new leadership!
 
Why new leadership?
 
There are also a couple things we need to stop doing -- as a Party and as a country -- … first among them, we must stop giving a free pass to the bullies of Wall Street to run roughshod over the common good of the American people.
 
Tell me how it is, that not a single Wall Street CEO was ever convicted of a single crime related to the 2008 economic meltdown.  Not. A. Single. One.
 
What have we come to as a nation when you can get pulled over for a broken tail light in our country, but if you wreck the nation’s economy you are untouchable.
 
We must reinstate Glass-Steagall; we must prosecute financial crimes.
 
And if a bank is too big to fail, too big to jail, and too big to manage, then it's too damn big, and it needs to be broken up before it breaks us up.
 
Second, we must also stop sending American jobs and profits overseas with bad trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership!
 
Many of us remember NAFTA.  We traded away good manufacturing jobs, and in return, we got back empty promises and empty pockets.
 
I am fundamentally and adamantly opposed -- as an American -- to secret trade deals that our Congress is forced to vote on before the rest of us are even allowed to read them!
 
It's not what other countries are doing to us.  It is what we are not doing for ourselves!
 
We need to build up our own American economy!
 
Conclusion  
 
America's role in the world is to lead by example the cause of a rising global middle class -- free from oppression, free from hunger and want, free from fear.
 
The images from the humanitarian refugee crisis in Syria tell us we must do better if we are to have any credibility as a moral leader among nations.
 
Our own policies of forcibly detaining women and children refugees in for-profit detention camps on our southern border tell us we aren’t living up to our own principles here at home.
 
We can and must bring forward new thinking in the conduct of our Foreign Policy as a nation.
 
We can and must forge new alliances for a more effective and far-seeing National Security strategy that reduces threats before they lure us into military actions, or other actions that diminish us as a country.
 
All of these things are connected.
 
All of these things depend upon our making ourselves Stronger at Home. They depend upon the choices we make because of our concern and care for one another as Americans,... because of our compassion for the larger family of humanity of which we are a part.
 
The poet laureate of the American Dream, Bruce Springsteen, once asked:
 
Is a dream a lie, if it don’t come true?…
Or is it something worse?
 
Whether or not the American Dream is made a living reality again for our children and grandchildren, isn't about the big banks.
 
It's not even about the big money that seeks to take over our politics.
 
It's about US -- U period. S period.
 
It is about you and me, and whether we still have the ability, the desire, the grit and the determination to forge a new consensus for progress.
 
I believe we do, and I am betting you believe as well.
 
We are a good people.
 
We are a generous people.
 
We are a compassionate people.
 
We are standing on the threshold of a new era of American progress.
 
But, together, we must take the actions necessary to walk through that door!
 
Yes, I know this is a tough fight.
 
Yes, I know there are many among us who say we face long odds.
 
But I like the odds, and I kind of like tough fights!
 
Maybe the toughness of the fight is how the hidden God let's us know we are fighting for something worth saving!
 
The American Dream is worth saving!
 
Our children's future is worth saving!
 
Our country is worth saving!
 
This planet is worth saving!
 
And the Democratic Party is up to this fight!
 
For, ours is the party of the people!
 
Ours is the party of action!
 
And ours is the only party today that can rebuild the American Dream;
 
And make the promise real again for all Americans!