E-mail a friendRep. Deborah Wasserman Schultz
airdate August 26, 2008
Florida Rep. Deborah Wasserman Schultz is Chief Deputy Whip of the 110th Congress. Her assignments include the powerful Appropriations Committee, and she's also a member of the "30 Something" Working Group—congressional Democrats under age 40. The first Jewish congresswoman ever elected from the state, she was a driving force behind the resolution that declared May 'Jewish American Heritage Month." At age 26, Wasserman Schultz was the youngest woman ever elected to the Florida state legislature.
Rep. Deborah Wasserman Schultz and Jodi Kantor of the New York Times give their reactions to Sen. Hillary Clinton's speech. (2:54)
Full Interview (8:37)
Rep. Deborah Wasserman Schultz
Tavis: We are live in Denver, where Hillary Clinton has just electrified, I think is the right word - the best one I can think of - electrified this hall here at the Democratic National Convention. For reaction to her speech tonight I'm pleased to be joined by Florida Congresswoman Deborah Wasserman Schultz, who served as a national co-chair for the Clinton campaign, and Jodi Kantor, political correspondent, of course, for "The New York Times." Nice to have you both on the program.
Jodi Kantor: Thank you.
Rep. Deborah Wasserman Schultz: Thank you.
Tavis: Congresswoman, let me start with you. You were an early supporter. Did she knock it out the park tonight, or what?
Wasserman Schultz: Oh, she sent it over the bleachers, across town - just could not have done a better job at laying out why it's so important that we elect Barack Obama, but also reaching into the hearts of her supporters and trying to help them understand why there is so much at stake, and we cannot risk allowing John McCain to be elected president of the United States.
Tavis: Why did you come on board with her so early on in the campaign?
Wasserman Schultz: I was raised to believe that a little girl in America can grow up and be anything she wants to be - even president of the United States. My parents taught me that my whole life. And I just didn't want to wake up the day after this election and not know that I did everything I could to make that possible.
But now, for me as a mom with three young kids, I also want to make sure that I don't wake up the day after the election and look at a John McCain presidency where we would give away the Supreme Court, we would drill for oil off the coast of my state, and ruin the future of my children.
Tavis: I want to come back to your state in a second and see how Barack Obama will play in the state of Florida - in the state of Florida, and specifically in the Jewish community. I want to talk about that, as well. But first of all, Jodi, your reaction to the speech tonight?
Kantor: There were two things that really struck me. The first was actually not the speech, but what preceded it. There was this video montage that showed sort of the greatest hits of Hillary Clinton. It was a very emotional movie, it was beautifully put together, and the reaction was just wild. It was a little bit of a surprise - I didn't know it was coming.
And it really had the feeling of giving her her due and giving her a moment. That is not something you would do for an also-ran. I don't know that there's ever been a convention when somebody else has gotten that kind of treatment.
Her speech itself was not very different from the kind of standard stump speech she gave as a presidential candidate, but her enthusiasm seemed very genuine. This has got to be a really hard night for her. To lose the nomination is one thing, but she kind of went out a hero. To have to come here tonight to somebody else's party is an incredibly hard thing to do, but she seemed to do it with gusto.
Tavis: Not just gusto; wouldn't you say she also did it with grace? The shout-outs to Barack Obama and Michele Obama and the Biden family and -
Kantor: Michelle Obama in particular, yes.
Tavis: Is that gracious, or what?
Kantor: It was extremely gracious, but I'll tell you - I think there's still a lot of Clinton suspense here, because President Clinton is going to speak tomorrow night. That is the big question. He arguably had the rougher ride in the primary campaign. His reputation suffered more. He's also sort of the more famous orator. It's been a while since he's given a really major speech on the national stage. I'm very curious to see sort of what the second half of this story is tomorrow night.
Tavis: To your point, though, aside from the politics of whatever may go down in his speech tomorrow and how it'll be reviewed, we've all been watching Bill Clinton give speeches for a long time, and before Obama came on the scene he has been regarded, certainly in contemporary times, as the greatest political orator of our generation.
I think Hillary put something on him tonight. I'm not so sure that even Bill Clinton can rise to the level that she hit tonight.
Tavis: Like I said, she reached into the hearts of her supporters; she grabbed Americans and gave them a moral imperative, and made people think about the path that we're on and the choices that we have to make. And she did that with class and style and grace.
Kantor: Another really important thing about the speech I thought was that she really proved that she's willing to play the attack role a little bit. It was really - she went on the offensive a couple of times with a couple of really memorable lines, and especially -
Tavis: No way, no how, no McCain, yeah.
Kantor: Well, and the Twin Cities one.
Tavis: Yeah, (unintelligible).
Kantor: The thing about George Bush and John McCain belonging to the Twin Cities - they're twins, that's where their convention is going to be. Because it is the Clinton supporters who are more on the fence. There are Clinton supporters out there considering voting for Clinton. So she's sending them an unmistakable message.
Tavis: Let me flip this thing dramatically. On the one hand, she did everything I think she was supposed to do tonight, expected to do, to your point, Congresswoman, to make it clear that she's supporting Barack Obama and she wants her supporters to support Barack Obama. I wonder, though, given how this speech was received tonight and how it will be reviewed tomorrow, whether or not it in some strange way might reinforce in some women's minds that they were right supporting her, that the Democratic Party has, respectfully, the wrong candidate.
Wasserman Schultz: No, I think the line where she asked her supporters to think about whether they supported her or whether they supported all the reasons that she ran in the first place, she really made people think about what their motivations were, and I think shamed them a little bit, because a lot of them have been acting like they can't get over it, and she made them realize, I think, tonight that it's time.
Tavis: To that point, Jodi, do you think she did a sufficient enough job tonight, to the congresswoman's point, for her supporters who have been disaffected to get over it?
Kantor: Yeah, but I don't think the women supporters are the problem, to tell you the truth. If you look at the polling, women consistently prefer Democrats, especially when you talk about the kind of pocketbook issues that are going to decide this year's election. Women are the economic decision makers in their families.
It's a pretty safe bet that the majority of her women supporters are going to go to Obama. One thing that was really surprising about the primaries is that Hillary Clinton won a lot of older men - White, working class older men were never considered her constituency. She won them. That's the constituency that Obama has the most trouble with, so they're sort of the ones that I don't think we know about yet.
Tavis: And what can he do about that at this point? What is his challenge on Thursday night to address that particular problem?
Kantor: It's so interesting, because on the one hand we expect Thursday night to be the sort of soaring oration that we have expected from Barack Obama. On the other hand, the moment sort of calls for a sense of economic identification, a sense of shared struggle. I think he'll try to convey that.
Tavis: Let me come back to you, Congresswoman, back to the issues I raised earlier.
Wasserman Schultz: Sure.
Tavis: Specifically about Florida, your state, and about the Jewish community. There are numbers that seem to indicate that Mr. Obama is going to have some challenges, for lack of a better word, in both of those areas - in the state of Florida specifically and across the country in the Jewish community. He's working hard, of course, in that regard. Assess for me his challenge in both of those specific areas.
Wasserman Schultz: Well, specifically his challenge in Florida is the same challenge that he has with the Jewish community in Florida. We had no presidential election in Florida, essentially, until just recently, so they really haven't been introduced to Barack Obama. And because his campaign has made Florida one of the 18 battleground states and they will have an unprecedented effort at winning my home state in November, people are going to have a real opportunity to get to know him.
In the Jewish community, all those insidious, disgusting emails that have been sent around about him, when the Jewish community has an opportunity to get to know him and meet him in person in south Florida, in Los Angeles, in Cleveland and New Jersey and New York, they are going to realize that they have to support him like the Jewish community has supported Democrats for time immemorial because they want to make sure that they have a president that supports all of our values in the Jewish community, not just some of them.
Tavis: Jodi, you and I are both in the media business; you're in the print business, of course. Give me your sense of what the universal headline would be tomorrow about what Hillary Clinton did tonight.
Kantor: I think we'll see a headline about her graciousness and her enthusiasm and her strong, ringing endorsement. Also what we're hearing from sources is that some of the tensions that have characterized the negotiations between the Obama and Clinton camps behind the scenes are starting to fade. So I think you'll see the unity headline.
Tavis: Thank you, Jodi, for coming on. Nice to see you.
Kantor: My pleasure.
Tavis: Congresswoman, thanks for your insight as well, glad to have you both here.
Wasserman Schultz: Thank you, thank you.
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