Subject: CNBC opinion: Gov. Jennifer Granholm: “The message Democrats need to hit for 2016”
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 10:16:25 -0500
List-Id: <CTRFriendsFamily.americanbridge.org>

*CNBC opinion: Gov. Jennifer Granholm: “The message Democrats need to hit
for 2016” <http://www.cnbc.com/id/102291832#.>*

By Gov. Jennifer Granholm

December 23, 2014

After the 2014 electoral debacle, much has been written about Democrats
needing a message. Of course, first and foremost, Democrats must be
obsessed about creating good-paying jobs in America. But there's one other
message that is authentic to us and to our hopeful Democratic nominee:

Family.

Since long before the time Hillary Clinton wrote that "it takes a village,"
she has been advocating a belief that we, as a country, are all in this
together. That, just like in your own family, our American family takes
care of each other. In your family you take care of your aging parents.
Period. In our American family, we take care of all of our parents, through
strong policies like Social Security and Medicaid.

In your family, you lend your brother a hand if he gets laid off. You don't
cut him off; you help him. In our American family, we make sure that all of
our brothers and sisters are given a bridge to something better through
unemployment insurance, if they find themselves without income.

That's what we do. That's who we are. As we say in the faith community,
that's whose we are.

Yes, we believe that people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
But we also know this truth: many children were not issued boots upon
arrival. These are all our children. We are a family. And in a family, no
one gets left behind.

And you know what? It turns out that when we believe that way, and act upon
that belief, our economy does better too. If our children are better
educated, our brothers and sisters make a better living, and our parents
are taken care of, we will all be better off.

This is exactly what Hillary Clinton has dedicated her life to — what she
calls "the basic bargain of America," that "no matter who you are or where
you come from, if you work hard and play by the rules, you'll have the
opportunity to build a good life for yourself and your family." This is the
same opportunity that young middle-class Hillary Rodham had, and the
opportunity that she wants for everyone in the American family.

That is why Hillary has long advocated for a progressive tax structure to
ensure, among other things, that we can fund a basic safety net for
Americans. For while you may fall on hard times today, and I may fall on
hard times tomorrow, together we hold a net that is strong enough that
neither of us will fall through.

That is why Hillary has protected working families going through difficult
times through no fault of their own, leading the fight in the Senate to
extend emergency unemployment benefits.

That is why she has been determined to expand access to education and
healthcare for children across all walks of American life. As First Lady of
Arkansas, she expanded early childhood education for economically
disadvantaged children. In the Senate, she worked across the aisle with
former Missouri Senator Kit Bond in an effort to expand voluntary full-day
pre-K for children from low-income families. Today, as part of the Too
Small to Fail Initiative to improve the health and well being of children
five and under, she is working to close the "word gap" for kids in
low-income families who often have smaller vocabularies than their
classmates.

Hillary Clinton has worked to increase health coverage for millions of
children in low-income and working families through the State Children's
Health Insurance Program, a program she helped created as First Lady.

As Hillary says, "You should not have to be the grandchild of a governor or
a senator or a former secretary of state or a former president to believe
that the American Dream is in your reach." Opportunity and success
shouldn't be limited to those lucky enough to be born into wealthy
families, or to the grandchildren of governors or senators. Instead, we
should remind ourselves that we belong to one another, to one team, to one
family. And we are fiercely proud of belonging to a country — a big
American family — where no one gets left behind.

That is why I am ready for Hillary.