At the time that we were debating family and medical leave, these families would lose their jobs if they didn’t show up, let alone get paid for it, y… - Ted Kennedy

Thank you, Caroline. I love you and thank you for all that you mean to me, to our entire family, and to millions of Americans everywhere. I see in you the poise and the strength of purpose that belonged to your father -- and the dignity and grace of your mother that inspired a nation. I remember election night in November of 1960. The results were so close that my brother went to bed still not certain that he had won. It was nearly dawn when victory finally became clear. And here is how Jack learned about it -- from three-year-old Caroline, who woke him up by jumping on his bed and shouting, "Good morning, Mr. President." It was the first time he ever heard those words from anyone. How proud he would be of Caroline this evening -- and of the magnificent woman she has become. How proud he would be of Al Gore and our party and the new barrier of bigotry we are breaking down with the choice of Joe Lieberman as the next Vice President of the United States.

Incremental measures won't suffice anymore. We need to succeed where Teddy Roosevelt and all others since have failed. The conditions now are better than ever. In Barack Obama, we have a president who's announced that he's determined to sign a bill into law this fall. And much of the business community, which has suffered the economic cost of inaction, is helping to shape change, not lobbying against it. I know this because I've spent the past year, along with my staff, negotiating with business leaders, hospital administrators, and doctors. As soon as I left the hospital last summer, I was on the phone, and I've kept at it. Since the inauguration, the administration has been deeply involved in the process. So have my Senate colleagues—in particular Max Baucus, the chair of the Finance Committee, and my friend and partner in this mission, Chris Dodd. Even those most ardently opposed to reform in the past have been willing to make constructive gestures now.

Well I'm, umm, were I to, to make the, the announcement to run, the reasons that I would run is because I have a great belief in this country, that it is, there's more natural resources than any nation of the world, has the greatest educated population in the world the greatest technology of any country in the world, the greatest capacity for innovation in the world, and the greatest political system in the world. And yet I see at the current time that most of the industrial nations of the world are exceeding us in terms of productivity or doing better than us in terms of meeting the problems of inflation that they are dealing with, their problems of energy and their problems of unemployment. It just seems to me that this nation can cope and deal with its problems in a way that it has in the past. We are facing complex issues and problems in this nation at this time, but we have faced similar challenges at other times and the energies and the resourcefulness of this nation, I think, should be focused on these problems in a way that brings a sense of restoration in this country by its people to in dealing with the problems that we face primarily the issues on the economy, the problems of inflation, and the problems of energy and I would basically feel that that it's imperative for this country to either move forward, that it can't standstill or otherwise it moves backwards.