‘A Common Experience’

An upbeat Hillary Clinton, fresh off her wins in Texas and Ohio, sat down for an interview with NEWSWEEK's Suzanne Smalley last Friday in Hattiesburg, Miss., before going on to Wyoming and Washington, D.C. She spoke about her relationship with women voters, her comeback strategy—and why her candidacy is good for the Democratic Party. Excerpts:

Smalley: Everybody had written you off — and here you are.
Clinton: [Laughs] Well, I really believe in what I'm doing, and I am supported and sustained by the millions of people who believe that I should be the next president.

A colleague of mine writes in an essay for the magazine this week, " [Clinton] and I are about the same age, an age when most women have become invisible to the rest of society, and there she is, energetic … and feisty and capturing the world ' s attention. " Is this what ' s fueling support for you?
I think there is a sense of identity and a common experience. You know, I know it's hard for young women to really feel the emotional connection because they didn't live through what we lived through. When I was a young woman, there were colleges I couldn't go to, jobs that I couldn't have ever had, a set of expectations that were pretty much imposed—and so women my age, we have gone through this extraordinary movement … But the true beneficiaries are our daughters and our granddaughters.

It ' s interesting you talk about that generational divide because another colleague writes an essay about feeling guilty for supporting Barack Obama. Is there anything you ' re going to do to win over young women?
Well, I think it's beginning to happen. I won the youth vote in Massachusetts and in California. I did very well with it in Ohio. And I think it's because more and more young people are starting to ask themselves, "Well, I've got this very personal feeling about Senator Obama, but I also want to be sure that I'm picking the person who would be the best president." So there is a sense of a real dilemma about the choice, which I recognize, but … I feel like we're really making progress.

If, at the end of the primaries and caucuses, Senator Obama still has a lead in elected delegates, and superdelegates give you the margin to capture the nomination, will that hurt you in a general election? And will that type of victory alienate the you ng people who are newly engaged in politics?
Well, I don't think we should speculate on what's going to happen … I think we should just proceed with the next-up contests.

What do you say to those people who say taking this all the way to the convention will hurt the party?
I think this has been good for the party. I think it has brought a lot of people in. Here we are in Mississippi as we do this interview and, I mean, thousands of Democrats are turning out. That's really exciting, so I feel strongly that what has happened has been good for the party and good for the country. I think it's going to be win-win, however it turns out.