It stands to reason: Higher wages means higher loyalty and morale, which means higher productivity, which means a more profitable business.

When you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu, my friend Lee Saunders has said, and he is correct.

I firmly believe that the Democrats' message of inclusion and opportunity resonates everywhere. When we talk about health care as a right and not a privilege, and the impact of the repeal efforts, that resonates everywhere, because everybody in every ZIP code has benefited in one way, shape or form, and frankly, in terms of under-performance, I think we have all too frequently tended to take some of our core constituencies for granted.

Our workforce and our entire economy are strongest when we embrace diversity to its fullest, and that means opening doors of opportunity to everyone and recognizing that the American Dream excludes no one.

I think when we show voters in every ZIP code across America that the Democratic Party is fighting for them - I mean, Dr. King said, what good is a seat at the table if you can't afford to buy a hamburger? I think that's a message that resonates everywhere, and we have to boldly put that forth, and we've got to organize around it everywhere so that people understand, in Wisconsin, or in the heart of Baltimore, what we stand for.

Community colleges provide higher education where people live, helping to build strong ladders of opportunity that allow people to secure a foothold in the middle class.

One of the things the Democratic Party is trying to do is take the word off-year out of our lexicon, because we've tended to be an accordion as a party. We expand in the presidentials; we shrink in between; and we scratch our head and wonder why we lose midterms.