Politics is like driving. To go backward put it in R. To go forward put it in D.

A lot of times, candidates for office, especially incumbents, seem to get drawn into their opponents' arguments, and fighting on their turf, because you want to defend yourself. That's wrong. Fight on your own turf. Make them come to you. Make them explain why they don't agree with your position. I think that a lot of times, too many liberals, progressives, lose because they're afraid to really stand up for what they believe in.

The burning issue of our time is the growing inequality in income and wealth in our country, and it's got to be addressed. We've got to stop it. It's eroding our politics. It's separating our society into the haves and the have-nots. It's condemning a whole younger set of our population to not be able to enter the middle class. And, it hits hardest in the prairie areas of the United States, our small towns and communities, where the jobs just aren't available and the incomes are low.

I am a Democrat and I love my party and I want them to have good policies and good candidates, so I hope to be supportive in some way, but I don't intend to be any kind of 'godfather' or something like that.

I don't know if there's any secret recipe. Just a lot of hard work. Pay attention to your constituents. I always had a great Iowa staff that did all my great constituent service work. And I found that people would forgive me for a lot of my "liberal sins" because I paid attention to the home front.

When I first arrived to Congress in 1975, I would spend several hours every week with Republicans - having lunch, drinking a beer. But by the time I left last year, that was a rarity. Every moment of free time is eaten up by fundraising. And the advent of all these groups that can threaten passage of this or that with an avalanche of money or a primary opponent has poisoned our politics.

Let's face it, in America today we don't have a health care system, we have a sick care system. We wait until people become obese, develop chronic diseases, or become disabled - and then we spend untold hundreds of billions annually to try to make them better.