What you learn growing up in a place like Buffalo is that your job isn't just your paycheck, it's your identity. It doesn't just give you dollars, it gives you dignity.

Growing up in Buffalo, I saw shuttered factories that once housed thousands of steel manufacturing jobs. I remember the hollowing-out of the middle class in our community. I witnessed hope turn to hardship as a once-thriving city reckoned with a fast-changing world.

It's a false choice to say we either have job safety or job growth. It's a false choice to suggest that the only way for a business to survive is to make sure workers have low wages and little or no benefits. There are ample models across this country where we've demonstrated the contrary.

Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman's right to make her own choices about her body and her health. That is not negotiable.

The why is what makes journalism an adult game. The why is what makes policy coherent and useful. The why is what transforms bureaucrats and foot soldiers and political leaders into viable instruments of rational and affirmative change. The why is everything and without it, the very suggestion of human progress becomes a cosmic joke.

Leadership is absolutely vital if there are comparable countries which can affect the security of the world you live in. Between Lincoln and Roosevelt's time, America was protected by huge oceans and, in practice, by the British navy. Today, it's different, and the obsession of the Obama administration has been for retrenchment.

Criticizing Fox News has nothing to do with criticizing the press. Fox News is not a news organization. It is the de facto leader of the GOP, and it is long past time that it is treated as such by the media, elected officials and the public.

For too long, I equated leadership with a position. I thought leaders were presidents or politicians or celebrities or four-star generals with a horse and sword.