Our great history has been that people came to Michigan because you didn't have to have a college degree to get a good-paying job. Consequently, we have got a larger number of our population that right now are facing outsourcing, et cetera, without higher or advanced degrees.

We need, first of all, for there to be accountability, for there to be somebody who is responsible for enforcing standards and holding people's feet to the fire.

We need to be celebrating those who serve us rather than mocking them for the purpose of getting on TV and selling some books.

This is the place where anybody - like an African American kid raised by a single mom - can be president.

I love the protest signs protected by the First Amendment - some of them humorous, some of them passionate, some factual, some entirely incorrect - all of them free ideas.

The most powerful recent innovation in government is when states aggressively use community colleges for retraining. In Michigan, where large numbers of workers were displaced from the manufacturing industry, we created a wildly successful program: No Worker Left Behind.

Thank you for the opportunity for the Democratic Party and progressives to reclaim the votes of the sane citizens of these United States.