A Fighting Chance

She focused again, looked me straight in the eye, and said:

I’m here because I’m running out of hope. I’ve read about you for a long time, and I’m here to see you in person, to tell you that I need you, and I want you to fight for me. I don’t care how hard it gets, I want to know that you are going to fight.

I looked back at her and said, “Yes, I’ll fight.”

I didn’t really think about the size of the commitment I was making or what it would cost me or Bruce or the rest of our family. I simply thought, I can’t stand here and cry. And I can’t just walk out on her. She asked for a commitment, and I made it. Stand and fight—there was nothing else to say and nothing else to do.

She didn’t smile. She didn’t encourage me. She just held my hands and looked at me. Then she was gone.

That night, while Bruce and I walked Otis, the enormity of that meeting in New Bedford began to sink in. No public fanfare and no announcements in the papers, but I had promised to run for the US Senate.

I took a few more weeks to do some hard thinking and come to a final, official decision, but my heart was already in. And once I was in, I knew that the only way I could do anyone any good was to win—so I intended to win.

Nobody Got Rich on His Own

A few days later, I declared war on the rich. Well, not really. But the right-wing blogs and Fox News sure made it sound as though I’d started stockpiling weapons and would soon be storming the mansions of Fifth Avenue.

After that gathering in New Bedford, I continued meeting with voters all around the state. These meetings were supposed to be quiet affairs, a chance to sit in someone’s living room and visit with people about what changes we needed in Washington. On Saturday, August 20, I was invited to speak at someone’s home in Andover.

Early that afternoon, we pulled up to a nice family home on a quiet street. The houses in the neighborhood had been built in the 1940s and ’50s, and now there were plenty of trees and a comfortable, settled feeling. But today there were cars parked everywhere. The hosts came out to meet me. They were as nice as could be, but a little flustered. They had thought they might get a couple of dozen people, but it seemed that more than a hundred had shown up. People were crammed into the living room, the dining room, the entry hall, and the back porch. The hosts explained that the word had gotten out and people just kept appearing. They hated to turn anyone away, so they sure hoped I could speak loudly.

It was warm—not as bad as New Bedford, but with all those people packed into the house, it was hot enough to turn my face red and make me wish for a jug of ice water.

I spoke for a bit, then took questions. Really, it wasn’t all that different from a lot of house parties during those weeks, except for one thing: someone had a video camera. Whoever it was recorded my little talk and later posted a clip on YouTube. The clip got a lot of attention, and the next thing I knew, Rush Limbaugh was calling me names and accusing me of being the worst sort of radical. So much for discreetly testing the waters.

At the time, I thought the argument I advanced that day in Andover was pretty uncontroversial. Someone had asked me how we were going to tackle the deficit, and in my response I got a little wound up. We hear about the deficit as if it’s a monster and America’s only choice is to slash and burn huge swaths of our budget immediately or face total destruction. All or nothing, live or die.

Yes, the deficit is a problem, and it deserves serious attention, but I don’t buy that there’s only one way out. I think we have to face a more fundamental issue first: How we spend our government’s money is about values, and it’s about choices. We could cut back on what we spend on seniors and kids and education, as the Republicans in Congress insisted we should. Or we could get rid of tax loopholes and ask the wealthy and big corporations to pay a little more and keep investing in our future. How we spend our money isn’t some absurdly complicated math problem. It’s about choices.

Here’s what I said in that video:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.



Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless! Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.