Why “Everybody Counts, Everybody Matters” still matters

In 2006, when I first went to Congress, I kept coming back to a simple idea: “Everybody Counts, Everybody Matters.” That slogan from my race in Minnesota’s 5th District was never just a line for a yard sign or a flyer. It was a statement about what kind of country we should be. It said that ordinary people are not an afterthought, not a burden, and not disposable.

That mattered then because George W. Bush’s America too often felt like a place where only some people counted and only some people mattered. One of the clearest examples came after Hurricane Katrina. When Barbara Bush visited evacuees at the Houston Astrodome and said they were “underprivileged anyway,” she exposed something ugly at the heart of that era: the quiet assumption that poor people, Black people, and displaced people could be looked down on, dismissed, and forgotten. That was not just tone-deaf. It reflected a deeper class contempt in the politics of that time.

Bush-era elitism was real, but it still came wrapped in politeness. It wore expensive clothes and spoke in careful sentences. It still pretended that government had a duty to everyone, even when it failed to live up to that duty. In that sense, what passed for elitism then looks almost quaint now.

I am not in Congress anymore. I left in 2018 to run for Minnesota Attorney General, and I have never looked back. I left Congress because I knew that laws alone are not enough. Someone has to enforce them. In 2019, Minnesota gave me that responsibility by electing me the state’s chief law officer.

Now I often talk about “Affording Your Life” because the economy is making basic survival harder and harder, even in the richest country in the history of the world. When elites capture government, they block good laws that could level the playing field, and they weaken enforcement of the laws we already have.

The Trump era has made that inequality harsher, louder, and more brazen. Wealth at the top keeps exploding while working people are told to pay more and get less. Billionaires get tax breaks. Corporations get favors. Loyalists get access, protection, and special treatment. Corruption is not hidden anymore. It is normalized.

That is what makes this moment so dangerous. The self-dealing is open. The privileges for insiders are constant. Criminals and fraudsters who serve the president or protect the movement too often find sympathy, clemency, or pardon. Political opponents, public servants, journalists, judges, prosecutors, and election officials are attacked as enemies. Law is turned into a weapon against rivals and a shield for allies.

Extreme wealth inequality is no longer just an economic problem. It has become a governing philosophy. The rich are insulated. The loyal are rewarded. The rest of us are left to struggle with weaker protections, thinner services, and a politics that demands sacrifice from everyone except the people already at the top.

That is why “Everybody Counts, Everybody Matters” still matters. Democracy should be judged by how it treats the many, not the money.

That is why I am running for reelection, and I am asking for your help. Donate. Volunteer. We need you. https://www.keithellison.org/