This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class.

My finely honed political instincts tell me that almost nobody believes that they should be paying higher taxes.

What a vindication of the belief that ordinary people can do extraordinary things, what a reminder of what Bobby Kennedy once said, about how small actions can be like pebbles being thrown into a still lake, and ripples of hope cascade outwards and change the world.

Presidential elections always turn on personalities, they turn on how campaigns are run, they turn on natural desires for change.

It was as if he had come to mistrust words somehow. Words, and the sentiments words carried.

Part of what's unique about climate change, though, is the nature of some of the opposition to action. It's pretty rare that you'll encounter somebody who says the problem you're trying to solve simply doesn't exist. When President Kennedy set us on a course for the moon, there were a number of people who made a serious case that it wouldn't be worth it; it was going to be too expensive, it was going to be too hard, it would take too long. But nobody ignored the science. I don't remember anybody saying that the moon wasn't there or that it was made of cheese.

Writing has been an important exercise to clarify what I believe, what I see, what I care about, what my deepest values are. The process of converting a jumble of thoughts into coherent sentences makes you ask tougher questions.