Huffington Magazine Issue 20 | Page 23

Enter Your speech at the DNC was certainly one of the most memorable at the conventions. Did you know going into it that you’d be that fired up? No! In fact, what’s so funny about it is that I’ve spoken at conventions before. I get one of the afternoon time slots, and you go up there and everybody’s on the floor milling about and talking, and the people in the back tell you don’t worry, don’t take it personally, just remember that you’re delivering your remarks to the people back home. Just look at the cameras and keep going. So in this case, what I assumed would happen was that I’d get up, nobody’d be paying attention, and I knew there was a huge time crunch ... Well, when I got out and the crowd started to react, I was totally surprised by that. I thought “OH, this is great!” During your speech, you came down pretty hard on Mitt Romney and his time at Bain Capital, stressing that “too often he made [his wealth] at the expense of middle-class Americans.” Since then his “47 percent” remarks have rocked the race. How important do you think these issues are to voters? It just shows that they are dividing the country [against those] who might take Q&A HUFFINGTON 10.28.12 advantage of something that perhaps they paid into, like Medicare or Social Security, because of the moment that they’re in in life, and that’s okay. And to say they’re victims or that they’re moochers is just so utterly offensive. You played Sarah Palin during Joe Biden’s debate prep back in 2008. What is that process like? We on the Biden side were in the hotel room in One way or another, this will be fixed. The container will explode otherwise. I don’t think there is any way we won’t get beyond it.” Delaware, and the stage was built to be an exact replica of the stage and the podium that were going to be at the actual debate. The room was equipped with computers and all of that for people to be able to do their research, background checks, pull up what was happening — not just during the debate prep, but for what policy positions that [Biden] could go after Sarah Palin and John McCain on, and to make sure that he was on the same page as the president...