Campaign

With six weeks left until Election Day, President Obama seems poised to win Virginia, again. And, for good measure, Tim Kaine looks likely to win Virginia’s open Senate seat.

Much of the impetus for those victories will come from Northern Virginia.

On Wednesday evening, I offered an amendment in the Rules Committee to have the House consider the Senate-passed five year farm bill prior to Congress leaving Washington for seven weeks. For reasons that are beyond me, House Republicans blocked my amendment by a ratio of 8 to 2, along strict party lines. In so doing, they ensured that millions of American farmers would be left in a state of uncertainty and vulnerability. During that meeting, instead of considering the farm bill, or any of the other major pieces of legislation that the House has avoided under Republican leadership, we considered a recycled package of 5 anti-environment bills, 4 of which had already passed the House. Why? Because it was more important to vote on a hyper-partisan messaging bill than to provide real, tangible support for our farmers.

Individuals living in Michigan in 2007 and 2008 experienced a sense of hopelessness as month after month Michigan led the nation in unemployment.  Day in and day out news stories featured families being broken up as their children left the state looking for a better future. There was a constant fear that the Big Three Automakers, the job base of hundreds of thousands of working families in Michigan, were about to disappear. 


It isn’t your fault if you tune into the House of Representatives floor proceedings this week and mistakenly think you’re watching “Groundhog Day.” During the last week Republicans will call the House into session before the November elections, Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor have chosen to bypass the important issues that the American public is asking for action on – a comprehensive jobs package, a bipartisan farm bill, dealing with the looming fiscal cliff and sequestration – in order to once again consider several extreme anti-environment and anti-public health bills that have already passed the House before but which will never pass the Senate or be signed into law by President Obama.

In 2008, when Americans went to the polls, our nation was in dire straits. Unemployment was high. The housing market had collapsed. Our national debt was swelling. 

Like a great locomotive, our nation was off the rails, teetering on the edge of a precipice. With great hopes for the future, voters cast their ballots looking forward to the change a new conductor promised.

But three and a half years later, our situation is no less precarious.

Ohio is the birthplace of seven American presidents, second only to Virginia which has produced eight. And if one were to split hairs, you could argue that while William Henry Harrison was born in Charles County, Virginia he actually spent most of his life in Ohio.

Even when Ohio is not putting forth one of its native sons for election to our nation’s highest office, its Electoral College votes and its role as a “swing state” routinely place it at the center of the political world every four years—which is something we Ohioans are used to.

Are you better off now than you were four years ago?

It’s a question that we’ve heard a lot over the past several months. But when talking to people back home, it’s become clear that the real question is “Do you think your kids and grandkids will be better off than you are?”

Unfortunately, the answer is often “no”.

Today, on Constitution Day, it is alarming that the fundamental right to a vote - the one that generations fought so hard to expand and protect, first with Amendment 15’s Race No Bar to Vote, Amendment 19’s Women’s Suffrage, and Amendment 26’s Voting Age – is now under attack by the Republican Party.  This is ironic given the Republican Party’s constitution-centric platform.

The comparative diversity of the Democratic Party is fully on display in Charlotte.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — As the Democratic convention gets under way, here in Charlotte and across the nation, there’s only one question that counts for voters: Are you better off today than you were four years ago?