Bruce Springsteen’s Wise Words in 2012 and 2024

Last week, I was driving in my car, and I turned on the radio. I heard Bruce Springsteen talking about our country in ways I hadn’t heard before.  I learned that the date of Springsteen’s remarks was October 18, 2012, made at a rally in Ohio in support of President Obama’s reelection.

Here are highlights of what he said:

For 30 years I’ve been writing about the distance between the American dream and American reality. Gauging that distance has driven me through a big part of my life. I’ve seen it from inside and outside. As a blue-collar kid from a working-class home in New Jersey where my parents struggled, not always successfully, to make ends meet.  To the ninth ward of New Orleans after Katrina. To meeting folks from food pantries all around the United States working daily to help our struggling citizens through the hard times they’ve been suffering through. Our vote – our vote – is the one principal way we get to determine that distance and that equation.

Voting matters and elections matter. Think of the events of the last 12 years and try to convince yourself they don’t.  We get an individual hand in shaping the kind of America our kids want to grow up in… I’ve lived through some galvanizing moments in American history.  The civil rights struggle, the peace movement, times you could feel the world shifting under your feet. I remember President Obama‘s election night was an evening when you could feel the locked doors of the past finally being blown open to new possibilities.

 I’m deeply concerned about the continuing disparity in wealth between our best-off citizens and our everyday citizens.  That’s a disparity that I believe our honorable opponents’ policies will only increase and it threatens to divide us in the two distinct and foreign nations until many of us will end up, like I wrote in a song in the 1980’s, Jackson Cage, just “the scenery in another man’s play.”

I’m here today because I’ve lived long enough to know that despite those galvanizing moments in history, the future is rarely a tide rushing in. It’s often a slow march inch by inch, day after long day. I believe we are in the midst of those long days right now…[and we can move] forward towards a country where, as I’ve written, “nobody crowds you and nobody goes it alone.”

You can watch the entire speech by clicking here.

Then, just a few days after I heard that, Springsteen endorsed Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.  Here are highlights of what he said on October 4, 2024:

We are shortly coming upon one of the most consequential elections in our nation’s history. Perhaps not since the Civil War has this great country felt politically, spiritually and emotionally divided as it does at this moment. It doesn’t have to be this way. The common values, the shared stories that make us a great and united nation, are waiting to be rediscovered and retold once again. Now that will take time, hard work, intelligence, faith, and women and men with the national good guiding their hearts. America is the most powerful nation on earth, not just because of her overwhelming military strength or economic power, but because of what she stands for, what she means, what she believes in: freedom, social justice, equal opportunity, the right to be and love who you want.

These are the things that make America great.

Donald Trump is the most dangerous candidate for President in my lifetime. His disdain for the sanctity of our constitution, the sanctity of democracy, the sanctity of the rule of law, and the sanctity of the peaceful transfer of power, should disqualify him from the office of President ever again. He doesn’t understand the meaning of this country, its history, or what it means to be deeply American.

On the other hand, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are committed to a vision of this country that respects and includes everyone, regardless of class, religion, race, your political point of view, or sexual identity. They want to grow our economy in a way that benefits all, not just the few…on top. That’s the vision of America that I’ve been consistently writing about for 55 years…

You can watch that entire speech by

Whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump is the next President will likely be decided by less than 100,000 votes in a handful of states. Helping to fund the organizations working on the ground right now in those states to get out the vote for Harris will make a huge difference in the outcome of this election.