The walk-in privilege, to walk into the Oval Office and have a conversation with the president, is not something that everybody gets.

My mom's younger sister was born with Down syndrome. I was close to my grandmother when I was growing up. I remember talking to my grandmother about politics, and she told me that she regularly voted for the Democrats because she knew that they were going to look out for people like her daughter. That made an impression on me, too.

When the president offered me this job, he told me that if there were situations in which I needed to speak to him or I needed his advice or I needed to ask him a question, that I could go into the Oval Office and I could ask him.

There was also a sense that if he [Obama] did not win in Iowa, that it was very unlikely that he would be able to come back and win the Democratic nomination and win the general election. It was sort of an all-or-nothing bet. The stakes were that high.

have a lot of respect for the responsibility that journalists have to ask tough questions, to hold the administration accountable and to be advocates for the citizens of the United States.

My mom and my grandmother definitely were (Democrat supporters). It wasn't a sense that, "Well, we vote for Democrats no matter what," but it was sort of the sense that, "Democrats are typically the ones that are looking out for working people like us."

didn't come from a particularly political family. My parents were regular voters. My parents didn't make enough money to contribute to campaigns, and they didn't really knock on doors for candidates when I was growing up.