Every American at some point has got to make the connection between their own hopes and dreams and who is elected to office. It's essential. It's very easy to pull the covers up over your head and say, "I can't handle it. Too much." But we just have to handle it and we have to accept that it's our job. Each of us. Nobody is going to take care of it.

We need to give the Iraqis a chance to build their own future. It should be in their hands. It must be in their hands. That is what democracy is all about. We can teach it, we can explain it, but they must want it enough to make it work for them.

I've gone through so many of these stages of defeat and loss and victory, the ups and downs, that I know how to handle it.

When you have a president-elect who calls the press every name in the book, I think it's a warning shot across the bow, and you go back to what you learn when you were a child.

Each issue has to be looked at as to whether or not it threatens a woman's health or her life, and if it does, you can't support it. And if she just wants to have her legal right to an abortion, she should be able to do it.

Our message will be that we're going to make federal government buildings a model - an energy-efficient model - and also start matching grants for cities and counties so that they can also do the same with their government buildings.

If we turn our back on the people of this country who need to work for a living, we shouldn't be here, to be honest, because that has to be an essential part of what we do to protect the country, from the standpoint of defense, protect workers and make sure they have jobs.