'The Republican Party left people like me': Workers in the Democratic convention spotlight

Unlike the Republican National Convention, where only business owners and politicians mattered, the Democratic National Convention incorporated the voices of workers, telling their own stories of life in this economy. Not only the union presidents or the people who came up to talk about being an auto worker or a fire fighter, but veterans and more talked about themselves as working people, their struggles as veterans or women being the struggles of workers looking for good-paying, fair-paying jobs, and about the importance of President Barack Obama's efforts to create jobs and promote fairness in the workplace.

In case you missed these important moments in the DNC, here's video and highlights from many of the people who spoke as and for workers.

Cincinnati fire fighter Doug Stern:

I am an Ohio firefighter and an unlikely choice to be addressing you tonight, because for the vast majority of my voting life I have been a Republican. So why am I here?

Well, something happened recently. The Republican Party left people like me. As a member of the middle class, they left me; and they certainly left me as a public employee. Somewhere along the way, being a public employee'someone who works for my community'made me a scapegoat for the GOP. Thank goodness we have leaders like President Obama and Vice President Biden who still believe that public service is an honorable calling.  When I go to work, when there is an emergency, I want someone on my crew who has my back, someone who helps me get the job done, someone who is willing to go through hell with me. I expect the same out of my elected leaders.

Where Stern is struggling with today's Republican agenda and the budget cuts and outright attacks that come with it, Randy Johnson, Cindy Hewitt, and David Foster struggled with Mitt Romney's Bain Capital.
"I don't think Mitt Romney is a bad man," Johnson said.

I don't fault him for the fact that some companies win and some companies lose. That's a fact of life.

What I fault him for is making money without a moral compass. I fault him for putting profits before working people like me. But that's just Romney economics.

To me, making money without a moral compass makes you a bad person no matter how nice you are to your wife and kids. But maybe Randy Johnson is more forgiving than me. Cindy Hewitt took on the inevitable Republican outcry that these workers are just poor losers in our noble and moral economy:

It was a really difficult time for me and my co-workers, but not for Governor Romney and his partners. While we watched our jobs disappear, they ultimately walked away with more than $240 million. Of course I understand that some companies are successful and others are not'that's the way our economy works.

But it's wrong when dedicated, productive employees feel the pain while folks like Mitt Romney make profits.