From Sen. Webb’s statement on the Committee’s website:

Americans are a complicated and unique people. For nearly 250 years, we have been a beacon of hope throughout the world…. Our Constitution established a government not to protect the dominance of an aristocratic elite, but under the principle that there should be no permanent aristocracy, that every single American should have equal protection under the law, and a fair opportunity to achieve at the very highest levels. Throughout the world, our insistence on individual freedom and opportunity has been at the bottom of what people think when they hear the very word “American.”

We haven’t been perfect and from time to time, as with today, we have drifted to the fringes of allowing the very inequalities that our Constitution was supposed to prevent. Walk into some of our inner cities if you dare, and see the stagnation, poverty, crime, and lack of opportunity that still affects so many African Americans. Or travel to the Appalachian Mountains, where my own ancestors settled and whose cultural values I still share, and view the poorest counties in America – who happen to be more than 90 percent White, and who live in the reality that “if you’re poor and White you’re out of sight.”

The Democratic Party used to be the place where people like these could come not for a handout but for an honest handshake, good full-time jobs, quality education, health care they can afford, and the vital, overriding belief that we’re all in this together and the system is not rigged.

We can get there again.

Read the full statement or watch the video version:

See also a recent article in The Nation, Why Jim Webb Could be Hillary Clinton’s Worst Nightmare.

I like him.  UPDATE 10/15/2015:  After listening to him over the past year I’m not so keen on him anymore.  His response to Bush’s 2007 State of the Union address was excellent though.  I’ll always appreciate that.