--- title: Hillary Clinton Cover Story on the Campaign Battle Ahead description: The Democratic presidential candidate talks to TIME about Iowa, children's issues, Republicans and faith canonical: https://time.com/4206955/hillary-clinton-interview/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-02-04T12:00:28.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:41:48.209Z article:section: Politics og:title: Hillary Clinton on the Campaign Battle Ahead og:description: Clinton talks to TIME about Iowa, children's issues, Republicans and faith og:url: https://time.com/4206955/hillary-clinton-interview/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf6ed0084d45ac808/69887c01e20a874868a8f5a7/hillary-cover.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2363 og:image:height: 1329 og:image:alt: Hillary Clinton Time Magazine Cover 160215 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Hillary Clinton on the Campaign Battle Ahead twitter:description: Clinton talks to TIME about Iowa, children's issues, Republicans and faith twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf6ed0084d45ac808/69887c01e20a874868a8f5a7/hillary-cover.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Hillary Clinton Talks Campaign Battle Ahead > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ## Video: What Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders Need to Win the Democratic Race [Watch (HLS stream): What Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders Need to Win the Democratic Race](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/88kr3X41.m3u8) (4:50)  _Published 2016-01-16. In early voting states like New Hampshire, the hard work of winning elections is often decided by volunteers on the ground._ by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Feb 4, 2016 12:00 PM UTC  Photograph by James Nachtwey for TIME by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Feb 4, 2016 12:00 PM UTC 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](http://time.com/4207609/hillary-on-the-race-her-rivals-and-angry-voters/). 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. **Read more:** [_Here’s Hillary Clinton’s Advice to Her Younger Self_](http://motto.time.com/4206533/hillary-clinton-advice-to-her-younger-self) 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: I love the ad of you and your lifetime support for children’s issues and seeing you with those pictures going all the way back. If you were to talk to that young woman in that photograph about what you know now and what the difference is, what would you say to her?** CLINTON: I’d say don’t ever lose your idealism. Stay true to your values about what you think needs to happen in our country to give more people, particularly kids, the chance to live up to their God-given potential. Keep working toward that, but also don’t just hang on to the idealism at the expense of actually producing results that will improve people’s lives….You could stay outside the political process and be an advocate and set the goals, and there’s a really worthy role for that and an American historical experience that supports that. **Read more:** [_Hillary Clinton on Running and Governing as a Woman_](http://time.com/4166539/hillary-clinton-woman-governing-campaigning/) But if you get into the arena as Teddy Roosevelt said, you’re going to get bloodied, you’re going to get knocked around. But it’s the only way to actually move a progressive agenda forward and that’s what I’ve always been interested in and that’s what I’ve tried to do in all those years since then. **KLEIN: And how would you tell her — what argument would you make for her to vote for you now as opposed to Bernie?** CLINTON: I’d say look at what a candidate has actually accomplished. There’s a role for rhetoric, there’s a role for political ideology. But the best way you can tell what a President can and will do is by looking at what that person brings to his or her candidacy…I know what it’s like to be knocked down and how you dust yourself off and you get back up and you keep fighting for what you believe in. But you do it within the process so that you can actually try to get results for people, so that you can point to our political system working. And I think that that’s what we need more of right now; not less. ### See Every Hillary Clinton TIME Cover  The September 14, 1992 issue of TIME Gregory Heisler  The May 10, 1993 issue of TIME Steve Liss  The March 21, 1994 issue of TIME Dirck Halstead  The March 18, 1996 issue of TIME Brad Markel  The July 1, 1996 issue of TIME TIME  The October 20, 1997 issue of TIME Patrick Demarchelier  The Feb. 9, 1998, issue of TIME. TIME  The August 31, 1998 issue of TIME Blake Sell—Reuters  The Sep. 28, 1998, issue of TIME. (Hillary Clinton at top center, behind Bill Clinton.) Cover Credit: DOUG MILLS-AP, KHUE BUI, DAN LOH-AP & STEVE HELBER-AP  The Feb. 15, 1999, issue of TIME. (Hillary Clinton inset at top right.) Cover Credit: MICHAEL O'NEILL  The February 22, 1999 issue of TIME TIME  The March 1, 1999 issue of TIME Aaron Shikler  The June 16, 2003 issue of TIME TIME  The August 28, 2006 issue of TIME Diana Walker for TIME  The Feb. 5, 2007, issue of TIME. (Hillary Clinton inset at top left.) Cover Credit: PHOTOGRAPH FOR TIME BY CHRISTOPHER MORRIS--VII  The November 19, 2007 issue of TIME John Ritter—Brooks Kraft  The Jan. 21, 2008, issue of TIME. (Hillary Clinton inset at top left.) Cover Credit: NICK WRIGHT  The February 18, 2008 issue of TIME Diana Walker, Doug Mills  The Feb. 25, 2008, issue of TIME. (Hillary Clinton inset at top.) Cover Credit: MATTHIAS CLAMER  The March 17, 2008 issue of TIME David Burnett  The Mar. 24, 2008, issue of TIME. (Hillary Clinton inset at top.) Cover Credit: ARTHUR HOCHSTEIN  The May 5, 2008 issue of TIME Callie Shell, Damon Winter  The May 12, 2008, issue of TIME. (Hillary Clinton under the second zero in "100.") Cover Credit: CHIP KIDD  The May 11, 2009, issue of TIME. (Hillary Clinton under the "E" in TIME.) TIME  The November 16, 2009 issue of TIME Marco Grob for TIME. Left inset: Getty Images  The November 7, 2011 issue of TIME Diana Walker for TIME  The Apr. 30, 2012, issue of TIME. (Hillary Clinton near top center.) TIME  The January 27, 2014 issue of TIME Photo-Illustration by Justin Metz for TIME. Pants: Don Farrall—Getty Images. Man: Bloom Image/Getty Images. Shoe: Yasinguneysu/Getty Images  The Mar. 23, 2015, issue of TIME Photograph by Spencer Platt–Getty Images  The Feb. 15, 2016, issue of TIME Photograph by James Nachtwey for TIME **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. **Read more:** [How Hillary Clinton Is Trying to Avoid Being ‘Shrill’](http://time.com/4206660/hillary-clinton-sexism-shrill-yelling/) 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. **Read more:** [_Inside the Clinton Plan to Beat Bernie Sanders_](http://time.com/4201806/hillary-clinton-martin-omalley-bernie-sanders-iowa/) When I’m actually in office, I work with Republicans and I have a long arc. I guess I have a long archive of quotes from Republicans talking about how good it is to work with me, what a good colleague I am, how we can find common ground. But when I run for something, you know, out come the long knives and they’re coming after me and I know that. It’s part of the tried and true tactics of the Republicans and their allies. **KLEIN: I had a colleague way back in the dawn of history who said “the big difference between Bill and Hillary Clinton is that he’s a Baptist and she’s a Methodist.” And in the last couple of weeks, really for the first time, I think you’ve been talking about your faith.** CLINTON: My faith is a central pillar of who I am and I’m grateful for it. **KLEIN: How do you address the increasing fragmentation of the country? Can move that from your personal religious experience to a broader one?** CLINTON: I do think there is an underlying spiritual dimension to the challenge that we face to keep our country together in a very literal sense so that we’re not flying out of a centrifuge, the center cannot hold. **Read more:** [_Clinton’s Email Troubles Come With Bad Political Timing_](http://time.com/4201045/hillary-clinton-emails-timing/) There are so many pressures on people today and a lot of them are divisive pressures. “The Big Sort,” that whole theory about how we want to hang out with people already like us. We want to watch news we already agree with. We want to form opinions that can be validated by public figures that we already think are on our side. And Robert Putnam’s work on the disintegration of community, and particularly on the impact that it has on kids, is very influential in my mind….We need to have a conversation about it. We need not to shy away from it. We need to fight through what will certainly be ridiculed. Dismissiveness, rejection. **KLEIN: Why? What are they going to ridicule and dismiss?** CLINTON: My husband and I talk about this a lot because the stark statistics about lower-educated white middle class people in our country having a deteriorating life span is distressing. **Read more:** [_Clinton Explains How Christianity Has Guided Her Politics_](http://time.com/4193231/hillary-clinton-faith-christianity-iowa/) The drug epidemic that is just gripping so many people, particularly young people so that overdoses now exceed car crashes as a source of fatality. The gun violence in communities, particularly African American communities. You go down the list, and you look at what is not only killing people but breaking hearts and disintegrating communities, in coal country, Indian country, inner city, poor rural — it’s because we are not seeing each other. We are not listening to each other. We are not understanding we are all part of the American community and at its core is this concept of citizenship. And everybody should be concerned about that. ## Transcript [ BLANK_AUDIO ] 30 days to the primary, every second counts. We're hoping that this will prove our tenacity and we're willing to not only go out here and knock on doors, but knock on doors in awful weather because That's how strongly we feel about this campaign. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Three weeks to go now until the first votes are cast in the 2016 presidential race. But the bigger surprise right here, Sanders is closing in on Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders deadlocked. Sanders is out for And that has her campaign admitting they are nervous. [ APPLAUSE ] People hearing the message directly from the senator is wonderful, but we can't have a rally every day. The conversations that matter to me are the ones that are happening between individuals. Because at the end of the day, that's what wins an election. If they're home. [ SOUND ] I think the best I ever did was 61 houses. And I think I got 7 commit cards. Which was pretty good. We've had a big push in the past 60 days. My job is not to convince people to change their vote, I'm just there to give them information. Hi. Hi. Mr. Thorner? And also, it's to inform people what day the Primary is on. Should be, here. [ SOUND ] I remember, I think it was about six years ago now, there was one. Disheveled crazy looking guy on floor of the Senate who gave a 10 and a half hour filibuster about how stupid the Bush tax cuts were. And I remember seeing that, being like, this dude is the only dude in the Senate with guts and this is exactly what I believe in. And I started following a little bit more about who is he was and everything I heard him say, I agreed with and loved. Like everything. Well, we're just out here for Bernie, because we believe that he's one of the most different candidates. That can really revolutionize- This is the grind, yes, this is where it's won. Those are the most effective and persuasive ways of talking to voters. All right, whose next? Yesterday alone we knocked on 17, 000 doors. Watch the ice. One day, 17, 000 doors. We're from the Bernie Sanders campaign and we were just wondering if you were planning on voting in the primary on February 9th. [ INAUDIBLE ] Hilary in the primary. Definitely. Wonderful. Be voting for both of you. Great. Leaning strongly in her favor? I'm still not sure. I love Bernie Sanders. Most of us do Who are in this part of the country. But there's some drawbacks, too. I'm torn- She's a woman with very strong convictions just like Bernie- That I admire. And she's stuck to them, but now she's moderated them to say well, I can meet the Republicans halfway. And I don't know what will happen if Bernie can't meet them halfway. I'm not sure that he would Even have a chance of [ CROSSTALK ] Yes, yeah. That's what I'm really worried. The worries that people have about his electability should have really disappeared by now. All these people that no other candidate would get should come out and vote for them Bernie's got those people. And people that haven't voted in 20 years. And I've seen them in the office making calls. I've seen them stepping up and doing stuff. And I think Bernie talks the talk and walks the walk. One of the reasons that I'm really For Hilary is because of the Affordable Care Act and I think she will not only keep it, but improve on it. I've had breast cancer, my husband's had prostate cancer, my son has treatable epilepsy. She's just right on for people from birth to death. If we get that win by three points or five points or whatever, it's gonna be us on On the ground making that difference, creating that margin, and that's what it's about. Doing it three times this week, because we're getting close to the wire. I definitely will do it the remainder of the Saturdays and possibly some of the Sundays. Then I have said that I'll come in two nights a week to make calls Bye. [ LAUGH ] See if we could get the dogs to vote, we'd be doing really just right. 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