July 2, 2024
President Biden deserves our respect, our compassion, and our gratitude. The debate last week, however, made clear that the time is now for another Democratic candidate to take his place on the November ballot.
The nominating process for the Democratic Party needs to begin again. We need to recalibrate, and we need to do so quickly. Over the next two months we need to do what we should have been doing over the last year and a half: engaging in a robust conversation about this country and how we’re going to beat Donald Trump in November. Today I throw my hat in the ring. We need to have an exciting campaign and an open convention in August.
It is imperative that the new process not be manipulated by party and media elites. The search for a new candidate must be not directed by behind-the-scenes players, but rather must be a genuinely democratic process. All news outlets owe it to the public to fairly cover all FEC registered, qualified candidates going forward.
By the end of the primary season, I had received half a million votes. I traveled throughout the United States for over a year, gaining personal experience of ravages of both body and soul in communities throughout this country. And I did not just bear witness to the problems. I articulated solutions that speak to the minds and hearts of voters on the left, the right, and in the middle. I know how desperately people in this country want change.
With my candidacy, I submit to the people of the United States that a better way forward is both possible and necessary.
I am a candidate who both foresaw this crisis in our party and had the courage to act on it. I have seen firsthand the economic anxiety that now invisibly shackles so many Americans, and I have spoken to it consistently for the last year and a half. If the decency, intelligence, and yearning for a better life on the part of millions of Americans is harnessed for the purpose of genuine change, we will win the Presidency in November.
But we will not win by repackaging the status quo, because the status quo has failed the majority of the American people. We will win by being honest about what is really happening in this country, with an agenda that improves people’s material conditions over the next four years.
We will win by standing for a fundamental new beginning, delivering on a transformational vision of Medicare for All, tuition-free higher education and tech school, affordable housing, and a guaranteed living wage. We will win with an Economic Bill of Rights, establishing an economy that serves people rather than exploiting them. We will win with a plan to wage peace as effectively as we wage war, repudiating the undue influence of a forever war machine.
We will win by committing to the end of poverty. We will win with a historic commitment to America’s children. We will win by treating climate change as the global emergency it truly is. We will win by putting the safety of our food supply and the health of the American people before soulless, ill gained profits. We will win by dismantling America’s Drug War and creating a network of recovery options for the addicted. We will win by offering the American people a much Better Deal than the one they are receiving now.
Donald Trump has no plans to make life better for people over the next four years. That’s our job, and we need to do it.
We need to revive the spirit of the American people at a moment when hopelessness is rampant. For the last forty years I have worked closely with people whose lives were in trouble, and I know something about restoring faith in what’s possible. As a writer, speaker, entrepreneur, and non-profit activist, I have reached millions of people who were looking for hope that things could be better in their lives. I have helped provide that hope. I will provide it as a candidate and as President of the United States.
This country needs more than changes in policy. We also need a change in our hearts, for without that we will not be able to fuel the “new birth of freedom” we so desperately need. The American people need to rise up now. We need a new coalition of decency and love. We need to say no to the cynical vision of dictatorial forces, be they political or economic. We need the courage and the conviction to say en masse, so loudly and so powerfully that no one will doubt it, that this is our moment and we are ready to meet it. A government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” has been replaced by a government “of the donors, by the lobbyists, and for the corporations.” We the People will no longer tolerate this. The political industrial complex has had its way with us for far too long. It’s our turn now.
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