Friends --

Eight years ago, I spoke at the Democratic National Convention. I was proud to speak then not only as the wife of our Vice President, but as a full-time teacher and a military mom.

A lot has changed since then, but three things are still true: I’m still teaching, I’m still a proud military mother, and I still know that Joe will fight for every American, every day.

Later tonight, I’ll address the Democratic National Convention again, after we formally name my husband as our party’s candidate for President of the United States. I’m excited to share with the world, once more, the story of our family and Joe’s vision for our future.

But right now, there’s something I have to ask: can you make your first donation to Joe’s campaign before I speak tonight?

Robert Bentley told a lot of lies when he was Alabama’s governor, and except for the big one about his love life, he never caught so much hell for fibbing as he did the time he told the truth.

“Our education system in this state sucks,” he told a conference of regional economic developers in 2016.

Alabama lags in a lot of national rankings, usually landing at or near the bottom of basic, objective measurements of quality of life. The harder thing to explain is why people here accept this.

In a place that could face the truth, people might shake off that collective embarrassment and try to do something about it. Civic leaders, elected officials and public employees of every stripe would unite behind the singular goal of raising our standards. Citizens would expect better, demand better, and send anyone packing who didn’t do better. People would care.

Being complacent in failure used to be an Alabama thing.

Now it’s becoming an American thing, too.

The United States has failed to deal with the coronavirus crisis. This week, the world passed 20 million confirmed cases. Even though we have just a smidge over 4 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. accounts for 25 percent of those coronavirus cases and 22 percent of coronavirus deaths. Every other wealthy nation is doing a better job getting this thing under control. But not us.

But what’s more remarkable is how many folks seem OK with these facts or are willing to pretend they aren’t real.

This isn’t American exceptionalism. It’s American acceptin'-ism.

We’ve become accepting of failure.

We’ve become accepting of being worse.

We’ve become accepting of lagging behind.

Because it’s easier to tell ourselves that we’re better than everyone else than it is to be better than everyone else.

The good news is that there’s a fix for this. Just as Mississippi came to grips with its sagging test scores and scrounged its way above Alabama in national rankings, we can change our mindset and our expectations. We can do the work. We can demand better.

Or we can surrender to the White House entertainment complex and its silly sideshows made to distract from its incompetence.