00:00Bring a gentleman up here, my colleague, the congressman from Colorado.
00:06He is the future. He is our assistant Democratic leader that will become our assistant to the Speaker in the United States House of Representatives.
00:18Congressman Joe Madu.
00:21It is difficult if not impossible to follow our Chairwoman Emeritus who spoke with such clarity of conviction about the next President of the United States, Kamala Harris.
00:39It's impossible to follow Chairman Horsford and Chairman Meeks, but I will try.
00:44I am filled today with a sense of gratitude and pride.
00:49Maya Angelou once said that people may forget what you did, they may forget what you said, they'll never forget how you made them feel.
00:59President Biden did a lot during his consequential term in office, the most significant policy achievements since the Great Society of the 1960s.
01:08He said a lot, powerful articulations of the work we must do to protect our democracy.
01:15But what I think about today is how he made us feel.
01:19Every single American that we mattered, that we mattered to him, that we mattered to each other.
01:25I'm filled with a sense of pride and gratitude for the President's decision-making, for his leadership,
01:32and the wisdom that he displayed in selecting an incredibly exceptional woman to be his Vice President
01:40and now, ultimately, to be our next President of the United States.
01:45It is fitting, at a time of great euphoria here for the Black Caucus, that we also find ourselves in mourning.
01:52Yesterday we honored our dearly departed colleague, our beloved friend, Judge Sheila Jackson Lee from the great state of Texas.
01:59And as we gathered on the floor, Representative Mufume was reminding us that we stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before
02:07and that Sheila Jackson Lee had taken that baton from Barbara Jordan and carried it forward.
02:13And I imagine she's looking down today with great pride, great pride in the President and in the next President of the United States.
02:23I will say just one word about Kamala Harris.
02:27You've heard this from Chairwoman Emeritus Beatty, from Chair Horsford, from Chairman Meeks.
02:31It bears repeating.
02:33She is the most experienced candidate for President of the United States in a quarter century.
02:40She served as Attorney General, she served as a county prosecutor, she served as a United States Senator,
02:46and she has served for the better part of the last four years as Vice President of the United States.
02:50Her achievements will stand the test of time.
02:54And I cannot wait, I cannot wait, to Chairwoman Emeritus Beatty's point,
02:59to hold my daughter's hand, who's five years old, on January 20th
03:04and see this incredibly talented black woman become President of the United States of America.
03:10It is a moment that we will work towards and secure over the course of these next 105 days because we know everything is on the line.
03:18If we do our job, we will make that dream come true.
03:24And a key component of that dream, because when Vice President Harris becomes President Harris,
03:31she's going to need governing partners.
03:33We know she's going to have a Democratic majority led by Speaker Hakeem Jeffries in the U.S. House of Representatives,
03:38but the Senate matters too.
03:40And she will have a new governing partner in the United States Senate,
03:45someone whom she knows well, someone she trusts, someone who is a trailblazer in her own right.
03:52The first black woman to be the next U.S. Senator from the great state of Delaware, Lisa Von Rochester.
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