America has seen enough of a handful of people growing rich at the cost of our nation descending into economic crisis.

We choose forward. We choose inclusion. We choose growing together. We choose American economic might and muscle, standing strong on the bedrock of the American ideal: a strong, empowered and ever-growing middle class.

As a guy that had been told to drop out many times as I was coming up, I don't think you should tell any candidate about what they should do and what decisions they should make.

My father passed away a few days before my election. This man, an African American born to a poor single mother in 1936 in the South, would worry in the last years of his life that he had better life chances when he was growing up than a young man born in the same circumstances would have today.

I love my dad. It's fair to say that I probably would not have thought of politics had I not seen my mom and dad involved in politics.

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.

There are certain things that Americans expect their government to do. Our infrastructure is vitally important. Putting people back to work with construction is important. Our roads, our bridges, our sewers, our waterways, our dams - this is what makes our country so special.

The harsh fact of the matter is that this nation has not remotely come to grips with how many of its laws are rooted in slavery and bigoted oppression. After the Civil War, the United States never said, 'Let's examine every law and policy and system and structure we have to evaluate whether or not they were created as a tools of oppression.'