In my last year of university, I took a public speaking class (mostly for fun). One of the topics I chose for speaking on was Genealogy. The opening of that speech is something I'm going to re-use here.

When you live in a small town and someone wants to know who you are, how do you tell them? If someone hasn't met you, and wants to know you, they don't want to know your name is Anne and you have two cats and your favorite color is green. They want to know who your dad is, and who your grandfather was, and who your uncles and aunts and great uncles are. You name your family, your pedigree. Knowing my grandfathers and great grandfathers names tells the people in this small town what they need to know: who raised me and what values they instilled in me. When I say "I'm Warren Riden's granddaughter", what it means is that my family is honest, and they are people who work hard. It means my grandfather fought the Nazis in France, and my dad went to college and studied math. We'll fight for our country, we've never gotten in any trouble, and we're smart. When someone asks who I am, what they really mean is: where did I come from?

Family history. As a political party, maybe we need to turn around and look behind us. Maybe we need to remind ourselves who we are. MAYBE, in order to really know who we are, we need to really sit down and think about who we were - and where we came from.

When Andrew Jackson ran for president in 1828, his opponents tried to label him a "jackass" for his populist views and his slogan, "Let the people rule." Jackson, however, picked up on their name calling and turned it to his own advantage by using the donkey on his campaign posters.

The 1920 Democratic National Convention is notable in that the Democratic Party platform supported the right to vote for women. This stands in contrast to the Republican Convention, where the suffrage plank in the platform was rejected. Only months later, the 19th Amendment would be ratified in all the states, making it the first election that allowed women from all states to vote. Also at this Convention, Laura Clay became the first woman to receive a delegate vote for the nomination, though ultimately Governor James Cox became the nominee.

When Franklin Roosevelt accepted his nomination in 1932, he promised "a new deal for the American people." Indeed, his "New Deal" would later give relief to a country hurting from the Great Depression.

In 1960, Kennedy's election energized the party. His youth, vigor and intelligence caught the popular imagination. New programs like the Peace Corps harnessed idealism. He pushed for civil rights and racial integration, assigning federal marshals to protect the Freedom Riders in the south. He challenged America in the Space Race to land an American man on the moon by 1969.

In 1968 George McGovern chaired a commission to significantly change the rules governing the selection of delegates. As a result of the commission, the party adopted rules that helped ensure that the Convention would reflect the diversity of the party. Specifically, the commission stated that state parties must "encourage minority-group participation so that they will be represented on the national Convention delegation in reasonable relationship to their presence in the population of the state."

In 1972 Shirley Chisholm became the first African American to make a bid for the presidency with a major political party.

We've had our share of scandals, and of defeats, but these things are central to who we are. We're the ones who think for ourselves instead of doing what our church leaders tell us to do. We're the party of women's rights and equality. We're the party of equal representation. We're the party of firsts for all minority citizens in this country. We're the leaders rather than the followers.

THIS is who we are.

If you want to support a Republican candidate, you ARE NOT ONE OF US.