Student debt is crushing the lives of millions of Americans. How does it happen that we can get a home mortgage or purchase a car with interest rates half of that being paid for student loans? We must make higher education affordable for all. We must substantially lower interest rates on student loans. This must be a national priority.

We are imprisoning or giving jail sentences to young people who are smoking marijuana.

Given the fact that poverty is growing, more and more Americans are losing health insurance, health care costs are going up, the middle class is shrinking, the gap between the rich and the poor is growing wider. That speaks to the weakness of the opposition. People do not like George W. Bush. But I think it's fair to say that they are not flocking to the Democratic Party, or see the Democrats as a real alternative.

If you want to run for the United States Senate, you hire a consultant who will do polling for you, who will tell you the kinds of television ads you should run, who will tell you that most of the money you raise has got to go into TV. Raising money, and then putting that money into the hands of consultants, who then put on TV ads - that's more or less what campaigns are about. We've got to change that.

I understand what a normal political speech is. You get up there, tell a few jokes, you have the flags behind you, and you speak for 10 or 15 minutes in broad generalities.

I don't consider myself a pariah.

Sometimes the media says, well, this state had an election, it's the end of the campaign. It is not. We have dozens of more states to go. We're feeling good about the future.