I became a conservative for the first dozen years of my professional life in Berkeley, Calif., and it was a reaction against political correctness, so I get it.

I think the Republicans are trying to learn from their mistakes about attacks on women because the women's vote will backfire.

I'm comfortable on the progressive side. But I'm still more pitched at fighting the Right than I am about building a progressive platform for the future. It's fair to say that that conversation doesn't interest me as much.

The GOP's policies are not designed to help the middle class. They are designed to help their wealthy, powerful friends and donors under the misguided idea that wealth will one day trickle down.

The public is going to be looking for examples of immaturity or inexperience or whatever it might be, but I think that's where we have to prove what we're capable of doing from a policy standpoint and from a leadership standpoint.

You can't wake up one morning and say, 'Right, now I'm going to be a leader.' I think it is something that's in you, that you're born with, and which develops. Some people have that character, that personality and it comes naturally. You can't force it. It has to be authentic and natural. Innate.

A visionary leadership is required to harness rapid technological change for positive benefit rather than allowing to become disruptive and further exacerbate economic inequality.

The U.S. used to be perceived as the moral leader of the world, and we have absolutely lost that.