TIME political columnist Joe Klein sat down with Hillary Clinton on Tuesday in Hampton, N.H., to about her campaign and the state of the presidential race. To read more about their interview, see the cover story for the Feb. 18 issue of TIME. The following is an edited and condensed transcript of their conversation.
KLEIN: I was watching you in Iowa last week and you were working so hard and by the way, really well. And then I saw what happened last night and it occurred to me that it’s never easy for you in politics.
SECRETARY HILLARY CLINTON: You know what, I think that it’s always hard but there are a lot of issues and maybe even some obstacles that I’ve got to get over in order to make my case and have people listen. I felt really good as we were moving through those last couple of weeks before the caucus because it’s a very strange election, Joe. You’ve been covering them for a long time.
This has a lot of psychodynamics as well as economic pressures and there’s just an incredible sense of frustration on all sides of the electorate and for me, I could feel my campaign moving forward, picking up support, and I had to do every single bit of it to win.
KLEIN: You mentioned issues and obstacles. What obstacles?
CLINTON: Well, I think that there are lots of punditry and analysis about what is really driving voter interest, voter turnout in this election. And the grand statement, the insult, the scapegoating, the anger — all of that has constituencies, and I’m somebody who likes to make progress, get things done, get real results in people’s lives.
It is the classic Mario Cuomo distinction between campaigning in poetry, governing in prose.
KLEIN: I was there when he said it.
CLINTON: You were there. I remember you were. And I don’t want to overpromise. I want people — we have to knit this democracy back together. I feel that democracy right now in the world, writ large, is a fragile organism and leaders, both government leaders, political leaders, economic leaders, have to understand that we’ve got … to do, and we sure don’t need to overpromise or scapegoat or look for each solutions at the cost of engaging voters in a really thoughtful discussion about how we’re going to get problems solved, how we’re going to move forward, and that’s what I’m going to keep hitting on.
KLEIN: One of the surprising things to me seeing you last week for the first time in awhile actually on the stump was how passionate you’ve gotten. Was there a moment when that kicked in or did it just evolve or — I mean you used to be really serious.
CLINTON: Well, I still am to be fair. But you know I also recognize that I had to do a lot of spadework. I don’t think I would have won in Iowa if I hadn’t spent a lot of time in small groups answering lots of questions, listening to people… At many important points in politics, it’s the stories that drive your passion. It’s the people you’ve met along the way. It’s their worries, it’s their hopes, it’s their troubles that get you up in the morning. And look, I want to know the big picture. I study it, I try to learn it because I think it’s important if you’re going to be proposing how we get to universal healthcare coverage and get prescription drug costs down and all the rest of it, you’ve got to know the way the system is. You’ve got to know how to take it on. And you’ve got to know how to produce results. But what gets me up in the morning is meeting the woman in Clinton, Iowa, whose drugs have gone up from $10 or 20 a shot to $14,000.
It is an amazing story and that’s what fuels me because then you draw the connection. You pick up a newspaper and you say, okay, there’s a company called Valeant Pharmaceuticals formed by a bunch of hedge fund guys to go out and buy small drug companies, get a hold of old drugs. They’re not putting any new research money in, they’re not trying to find new uses for it. They just want to jack up the prices as high as they can to just make as much money as quickly as possible.
Meeting the woman, knowing what the market is doing, trying to figure out how we’re going to stop predatory pricing — that’s all part of how I think about it and because I’ve spent months in New Hampshire and in Iowa and other places, meeting people with these stories, it does get me agitated. It gets me outraged because I have a picture of somebody in my head who is being taken advantage of, and I have a much broader critique of the power of economic forces than Sen. Sanders does because being denied the drugs that keep you alive is the most dramatic thing that can happen to a person.
KLEIN: On the Friday before the caucus, the story comes out about the 22 emails. How are you going to get past this?
CLINTON: The same way I did Benghazi, by actually stating the facts over and over and over again, despite the Republicans’ best efforts to try to confuse the electorate, to try to create an issue where there was none and then testify for 11 hours and there will be some who will continue to raise it, but it has certainly gotten absorbed through the body politic. This will as well.
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