Acceptance Speech at Democratic National Convention

I am humbled by this nomination and so grateful to Al Gore for choosing me. And I want you to know tonight that I will work my heart out to make Al Gore the next president of the United States.

As I stand here before you tonight, blessed to have the opportunity I have, I know that we have become the America that so many of our parents dreamed for us.

But the great question this year is what will we dream for our country, and how will we make it come true?

We who gather here tonight believe, as Al Gore has said, that it’s not just the size of our national feast that’s important, no, but the number of people we can fit around the table. There must be room for everybody.

As every faith teaches us—as every faith teaches us and as presidents from Lincoln to Roosevelt to Reagan to Clinton have reminded us, we must, as Americans, try to see our nation not just through our eyes, but through the eyes of others.

In my life, I’ve seen the goodness of this great country through many sets of eyes. I’ve seen it through the eyes of my grandmother. She was raised in Central Europe, in a village where she was often harassed just because of the way she worshipped God. And then she emigrated to America.

On Saturdays, she used to walk to synagogue, and her Christian neighbors would pass her and say, “Good Sabbath, Mrs. Manger.” Well, it was a source of endless delight and gratitude for her that here in this country she was accepted for who she was.

And I’ve seen America through the eyes of my parents, Henry and Marcia Lieberman. My dad lived in an orphanage when he was a child. He went on to work on a bakery truck and then owned a package store in Stamford, Connecticut. He taught my sisters and me the importance of work and responsibility. With my mother by his side, he saw me become the first person in my family to graduate from college. […]

And I’ve also tried to see America through the eyes of people I’ve been privileged to know. In the early 1960s, when I was a college student, I walked with Martin Luther King in the march on Washington for jobs and freedom.

That was my honor. That was my opportunity.

And later that fall, I went to Mississippi where we worked to register African-Americans to vote. The people I met never forgot that in America every time a barrier is broken, the doors of open opportunity go wider for every single one of us. And I know that in a very personal way tonight. And I’ve tried to see America through the eyes of families who had the deck stacked against them, but fought back. […]

I’ve also seen America through the eyes of my wife and her parents. By now, most of you probably know Hadassah’s story. Her family was literally saved by the greatest generation of American GIs who liberated the concentration camps.

We could never express our gratitude enough to them.

And then her parents escaped communism and were welcomed as immigrants to America and given a new life here. The fact that half a century later their daughter would be standing on this stage is a testament to the continuing power of the American dream.

And in my life—in my life I have also tried to see this world through the eyes of those who have suffered discrimination. And that’s why I believe that the time has come to tear down the remaining walls of discrimination in this nation, walls of discrimination based on race and gender and sexual orientation. […]

And that also is why I continue to say, when it comes to affirmative action, mend it but please don’t end it. […]

You know when we see the world through the other—through the eyes of other people—you understand that the smallest changes can make the biggest differences in all of our lives. That’s something I’m really sorry to say I don’t think our Republican friends really understand. […]

In the end, this is a question of priorities. This is a question of priorities and choices. Our opponents want to use America’s hard-earned surplus to give a tax break to those who need it least at the expense of all of our other needs. […]

We see […] America’s hard-earned surplus through a very different set of eyes, the eyes of working middle-class families. We want to use America’s hard-earned success to preserve the future of Social Security and Medicare, to pay off our national debt, to cut the taxes of middle class families. We want to make the investments that will keep our economy moving forward. […]

It was 40 years ago, when we came to this city, and together crossed a New Frontier, with a leader who inspired me and so many others in my generation into public service.

Today we return to this same great city, with prosperity at home and freedom throughout the world that John F. Kennedy could only have dreamed about.

We may wonder tonight where the next frontier really is. Tonight, I believe the next frontier isn’t just in front of us, but inside of us: to overcome the differences that are still between us, to break down the barriers that remain and to help every American claim the possibilities of their own God-given lives. […]

Let them say that we helped them realize their hopes and their dreams. And let them look around at this great and good nation that we are all so blessed by God to share and say, only in America.