YouSaid · the spoken record

David Litt

lines on the record

98

first

2017-10-09

most recent

2017-10-09

sittings or episodes

1

sources

podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

1. “For most of the book, my girlfriend plays a sort of plays a role in the book. You know, obviously America plays a role in the book. That's where this whole thing is happening. What is that kind of adult love look like as opposed to that kind of early crush that I had on the young woman I rode naked with from the Rhode Island primary or that immediate falling in love feeling I had with President Obama than candidate Obama, which was amazing and I wouldn't trade it for anything but it wasn't sustainable for years and years and years. Those things can't last forever and you have to figure out how to build something more lasting.”

   2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “How is it that we can simultaneously be disillusioned and still believe in something? And I think when I first moved to D.C. for sure, I was a believer in that idea that there was a continuum where belief and faith was on one side and disillusionment is on the other. And today I would say I'm both disillusioned and a believer, and I think some of that is what it means to, that's what it really means to love a country or love a person or love a president, is to understand their flaws and admit that they have faults, but also believe anyway. And I think that was, to me, that's the, you know, it is a clich ⁇ at the end of a book to say it's really a love story, but I hope that by the end it's a clich ⁇ that I've earned because I think it became a book about what it really means to love a political hero, what it means to love, I mean, my fianc ⁇.”

   2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “The other reason that I'm an optimist these days is I think I'm a sort of long term optimist. I am not the difference between maybe where I would have been in 2008 and who I am now is that I don't think this is going to get better quickly. I think it may get worse in the near term, but I think in the long term it will get better. And we can shorten the amount of time it takes before things start to improve if we work at it. So I think that's the challenge is, I mean, to me that is not... Not disappointing. I mean, that's life. And part of it is thinking about”

   2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “One thing watching President Obama not necessarily personally all the time, but working for him for years, you do try to see some of those traits. And his relentless optimism, I do think, as somebody who's not by nature either an optimist or a pessimist, I can go either way. But I do admire that about him, and I try to think about that. And I remember after the election, someone I'd worked with on the senior staff sent around an email and said for every but for most of the people you know, whether or not you had an important White House job or a less important White House job, you will be the person people look to to know how they should feel about stuff like this. And so you have an obligation to be an optimist. So that's one thing is kind of being surrounded by... Optimists, you know, dogged optimists for a long time.”

   2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Right. And I think, and it comes in increments and it comes despite the fact that all of us will make mistakes at our jobs. I mean, most of my book is about mistakes I made at my job, most of which were not super consequential, some of which were. But it's impossible for a movement to always execute flawlessly. And if we take every backslide or every mistake, and as a reason to give up on the movement, then that's the ultimately the enemy of progress, I think.”

   2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “And realizing that he was right. I mean, I have extraordinary. Not just respect, but I just feel so honored that I got to work for someone like that because I do think he's an extraordinary person. But you also realize that even extraordinary people are people.”

   2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “Right. I'm not a perfect man and I won't be a perfect president. I used to think that's exactly what a perfect man would say. So therefore he will be a perfect president.”

   2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Yeah, and I don't know what the right choice there would have been. I do think that two years later, when Congress tried the same thing with the debt ceiling and the government shutdown and President Obama said we're not going to negotiate with hostage takers if you do this, it's on your head. And I think that was effective. And I'm glad we did it that way the second time. But I think in that moment it was. This is the conclusion that I sort of came to frequently and I thought was important throughout my time at the White House, which is Everybody there is a human being that when I was on that plane in 2008 watching President Obama, I don't think I really thought that he was somehow above being mortal, but I kind of did. I mean, he used to say on the campaign, as you well know,”

   2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “Right. And I think that everybody has, if you're a citizen in a democracy, and certainly if you're working full-time in public service, you have some obligation to think critically about what's going on, but also some obligation to be humble and recognize that most of the time when I was pretty sure I was right, it turns out I was not. But the debt ceiling fight in 2011, that was a moment when. I felt like we were, you know, I felt like I watched this happen. For me, I knew something bad was going on when I no longer had any speeches to write. Because at the time I was writing for the senior staff and when the senior staff wasn't giving any speeches, that meant they were doing more important things.”

   2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Yeah, someone should have asked me. No, so that is like there's a little bit of by definition an impudence in saying, well, you know.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “Absolutely, so to me the first really difficult moment where I thought, you know, I don't think we got this one right. And again, it's not like I was 25. So I'm very careful about writing a book and saying,”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “What can we do as a country to keep this from happening again? And recognizing that some of it is obviously the people who are dead or injured and their families who lost a loved one, some of the tragedy I think now, and here I'm just speaking personally, but I think that some of the tragedy is that every time this happens, Americans everywhere wonder am I next? Is someone I love next? And we know that this is going to happen again because we're not doing anything about it. And the fact that we're constantly afraid in our own country, I mean, there is something tragic about that too. And I think dealing with the full scope of the tragedy was not easy. It's one of those moments where you miss having a president who's capable of it.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “Sort of watched them go through that process, but it was What was interesting, and I think to the president's credit, was the turn that happened in the second term where we, mostly in the second term, where we had always spoken about tragedies and empathy for victims, and completely sincerely, and we continued to do that. But I saw this also another part of a change that was not just about reflecting on the last tragedy, but thinking about the next one. And certainly this week after this awful shooting in Las Vegas, one of the things that it made me really miss from a president is some leadership not just on comforting the bereaved, but also about thinking about”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “I didn't do any of the speeches directly after a mass shooting. I watched, you know, so those were mostly done by coach teams. Cody Keenan, yes, the chief speechwriter in the second term were Terry Zuplat, who was his deputy.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “And what's, I mean, everybody remembers that routine for the Trump jokes, which they should. Those were pretty brutal and amazing. But the other thing that I remember about that dinner was that Seth Myers told the joke about bin Laden, about where bin Laden was hiding. Do you remember this, that the joke was like, you know, they say he's in the Hindu Kush, but really he hosts a show on C-SPAN every night or something like that. And they cut to the president. And even now, if you go back and watch President Obama in that moment and you know that he knows.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “About on the death of Osama bin Laden and had this moment of like, oh, I am very glad I did not hit send on that email the night before.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “Yeah, well, that's, I remember seeing the new draft that had Hosni in it, and Hosni also just as a word is not just not a funny word. And so I remember thinking I'm the new guy, and I know that probably, you know, I shouldn't be weighing in and making a stink about everything, but like the White House needs my opinion. American needs me to tell them how wrong they were to change my joke. So I got my BlackBerry out and I had a whole email ready to go. And it was like I had a little bureaucratic angel just sitting on my shoulder saying, stay in your lane. Yes. And I did that. I didn't hit send on the email. And the next night, obviously, after the correspondence center, the next day I went to a music festival with some friends and was coming back when I got on the final draft of the speech that Ben Rhodes wrote.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “Right, we're in that meeting. Yeah, I've read about this from your perspective as well before I wrote about it from mine.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “Draft, which was a big deal for me. First of all, the fact that I could even see the drafts made me feel very excited and very cool and insidery, even though I wasn't in the meetings or anything. And I thought this was going to be an edgy joke. Bin Laden sound, you know, it has a ring to it. Not a good person, but really nice sounding phrase. And so I thought this was going to be a great joke. And then love it and Favreau and you, I think.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “That year, John Lovett was running the speechwriting process. He left a couple months after that. So this was the last year he was in the White House for the correspondence center, and he was with Favreau. And I was pitching them jokes. And the joke was about the conspiracy theories about the president and specifically about his middle name, the president's middle name. And so the joke was Tim Paulenti, the 2012 Republican candidate. He sounds all American, but do you know his real middle name? It's Tim Bin Laden Polenti. And I thought this was going to be a great joke. I saw that it would have made it into the”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “So they cover the controversy, and then that becomes, that's how it worms its way into the mainstream media. And, you know, I think it wasn't a catastrophe. It wasn't like Thanksgiving was ruined for America forever. But I do think that it was one of those moments when you realized you do something that seems small, but if you do it for the president, it's not small. And that's true of everything. I mean, even when your job is not to be in the inner circle.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “Around the time the turkey was being served, and by the time dessert was out, this was already a controversy. It was already a thing. And I saw the way that the mainstream press, I think I used the example of ABC News in the book, that they don't cover the thing because this is a nonsense controversy, but they do cover the fact that people are upset about it.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “Yeah, the first, well, not the first speech I wrote for the president, but the first videotaping that I wrote for him was for the Thanksgiving video address in twenty eleven. And I spent a ton of time because to me this was the most important thing Barack Obama was ever going to say. I mean, I threw myself into this thing, but what I forgot was to mention either the word God or the word the Almighty in there. And to be fair, George W. Bush had also done that. He had left out God from, I think, five of eight Thanksgiving addresses, the Daily Show did the research at some point. But obviously Fox News didn't really care when George W. Bush didn't mention God, but when Obama didn't mention God, it was a thing. And so it was my first experience, at least firsthand, with how quickly the right-wing media complex gets to work, because I remember being at Thanksgiving with my family and was sort of everybody was very excited.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “Pre live the following workday, in my sleep in which I inevitably do something wrong, you know, leave out a pronunciation, leave the ale out of the phrase public investment, I mean something bad. And the, you know, kind of had this moment where when you wake up and you're exhausted from a full workday and you go back into work, and I remember talking to a friend who started the White House maybe two or three months after I did, and she said at one point, you know, it's weird I've been dreaming about work every single night. And I was like, yeah, don't, you know, almost like, all right, you're in the club. Don't worry. That happens to everybody.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “You must not be that great. And so finally, I just be like, no, I'm never sleeping. But what I should have said is that I sleep, but I just relive the workday. Or even worse, I get to...”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “Well, I did get to sleep. Although I never admitted it, I always felt like in DC people say, you know, how much do you sleep? And I would say, actually, you know, I try to get eight hours because it's important. And people give me this look like you must not really be.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “Something that would speak to people who are 24 and just starting out in something that feels very big. Because it was absolutely terrifying. I mean, for six weeks straight, I dreamt about work every night. I don't know whether this ever happened to you in your, you know, at any point in your”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “The way I always thought about it was that there was a once in a lifetime experience once a week, sometimes more than once a week, which was incredible. And you got to be part of, it wasn't just cool, exciting things. It was that things that were exciting and thrilling and also part of this big thing that you really care about. But also it was extraordinarily stressful. That's almost that word doesn't really do the experience justice, I don't think. And one of the things, one of the reasons I sat down and wanted to write this book was that I felt like most White House books don't dive fully into just how anxiety-provoking that kind of responsibility, even at a low level, can be. And especially when you've never had a real job out of college and you wonder why someone's paying you to do anything at all, let alone work in the White House. And I wanted to write.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “The way I tried to capture it in the book in a sentence was that it felt as magical as being Cinderella at the ball, but I also felt like Cinderella before the ball. Like I never worked that hard as I did in that moment. And”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “That's right. The vetting was pretty scary because there was somebody who was responsible for going back and looking at all of my old stand-up routines in the White House Council's office. And she was on the softball team. And so like a year and a half later, we were at a game. And she was like, by the way, I saw all your old stand-up routines. I was like, oh, God. I guess she thought they were relatively funny and more importantly not too embarrassing, but it was a weird thing to think that, you know, everything you've ever done, you start to think about like, what if they find out about that?”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “Sent you my resume just so that I didn't show up literally not knowing anybody or anything about the place. And then because Valerie Jarrett was looking for a speechwriter and hadn't been able to find the right person, I met with Favreau and basically he said, you know, if you want, you could just stay here and work in the White House and write speeches for Valerie. I said, yeah, okay, you know, twist my arm. I could work in the White House if you want And so it was not on my radar that I might get a job like that until about a week before I got that job. And it was totally surreal. I mean, I think it was surreal throughout. But the first six weeks or Did someone make a mistake? I mean, this is not supposed to happen.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “Totally. I mean, I still never imagined that I would work in the White House. The reason you got my resume was that I was going to go to Chicago for the reelect and just unpack boxes until someone hired me to do something. I figured I would go back into field organizing. And I guess Jeff Shessel or Jeff Nussbaum or someone had. One of the Jeffs at Westwing Rider”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “It was totally the opposite. It could not have been less hopy or changing. Because it was also an introduction to a part of Washington that I didn't know about. And as much as I knew about it, I just assumed we were going to change it. And when I say we, I mean the Obama movement, I figured, you know, these kind of clubby back rooms, relationship-driven stuff that really shouldn't, isn't serving the American people. Well, now the right people are here, and so that's all going to go away. And obviously it didn't. Yeah, it was dispiriting. It doesn't justify exactly how I behaved, but it was still a disheartening moment.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “Yeah, those babies do not get a second chance. The general sense that I got was that people went to the crisis communications firm when it was cheaper than reforming your behavior to kind of spin your misbehavior. I don't think that's universally true, but I think in my experience, my limited experience, that's what was happening a lot.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “Something along those lines. I mean, the firm that I worked for when I interviewed, they said, you know, we work for a crib company and one of the cribs collapsed and killed a baby, so we helped them get a second chance. And then a few. Months or a year or so after I left another crew collapsed and killed another baby. The sense I generally got.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “A crisis, I mean, even now, I don't know that I could fully define that. A crisis communications firm is basically your company does something, at least in my experience, your company does something really bad. In theory, a crisis communications firm helps you handle the aftermath and helps you apologize and reform your behavior so it doesn't happen again.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “Yeah, I figured I would be the Secretary of Defense. But I, yeah, I moved there and I figured that there would sort of be a place for me somewhere in Obama's Washington. And it became clear the longer I was there that because there were so many thousands of organizers who started on the campaign and so many people who started before I did, I mean, when you talk about Iowa, you know, I was not one of the people who believed when this was an impossible long shot. The way I describe it is I was sort of into Barack Obama at exactly the moment he was cool. So there were not nearly as many jobs in the administration or in the sort of broader Washington apparatus as there were organizers. And so it became a, you know, I ended up at a crisis communications firm where I was probably the worst intern in Washington, D.C. for a fairly long time. Almost got fired as an intern.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “Yeah, I moved to Washington for two reasons. One of them was that I first moved back in with my parents and I wanted to get out of living in my childhood bedroom. So suddenly Washington began to seem very appealing. And the other reason was just a broad sense of hope and change. You know what I mean? President Obama was there. That's where this movement was. And so I thought I should be there. I didn't have a plan. And I certainly didn't show up expecting to get a job in the White House or job writing speeches or anything like that.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “And the we, the distinction, I think, between the we that sort of says the supporters of this candidate and the we, all of us. You know what I mean? My relationship with a Hillary supporter that didn't go so well aside, I think in theory at least, there was the sense that we encompassed not just the people who agreed with us already, but the people who we felt like we may not agree with now, but we. Have a lot in common, even if we don't always know it.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “I remember that even from going to rallies in the 2008 campaign where I would watch a speech, I saw one or two that then Senator Obama gave, that when he was done, you didn't get the sense that he was great as much as you got the sense that we were great.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “The main thing that I remember was watching a woman who named Linda who I had been staying with and she had been part of Democratic Party politics in Wayne County, Ohio forever, still is, and was a lifetime member of the NAACP, even though she's white. And I just remember watching her cry. And this, because for me to have said at the time, you know, I never imagined a African-American president. Well, that doesn't mean that much. You know, I was 22 years old, so okay. But for her I mean when she said I don't know that I'll ever see a black president in my lifetime, that meant a lot more and realizing that this thing she never thought would happen was happening and that she had been a part of it You know it was it was that sense of accomplishment not just of how special Barack Obama was but how special we all were and that was”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “The great things to me about field organizing and about the campaign was that you found these bridges that kind of built themselves. So it wasn't just a campaign talking about unity. It was also creating unity. The process, and I think that's so important that it's not just, you know, it wasn't just about change. It was change. And it made it a lot easier for people like me to believe because you could see it happening all around you.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “Well, I did. I remember very clearly this was one of our volunteers. He was half pulling my leg in a way that like Midwestern sense of humor I feel like is different than a New York sense of humor. But he was half pulling my leg, but he said, so you're from Manhattan, huh? And I said, Yeah, and he said Sir, are you a vegetarian? I said no. And he said, oh you gay? I was like, no, I'm a straight carnivore. But, you know, he was like, there was a little humor to that and a little bit like, you're not from here, are you? But one of the”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “Race, not just race, I think a sense of this idea that there's a real America and that it's being threatened by... Others, and that it's our job to defend real America from these other people. And I mean, I would have been lumped in with the other people because I was working for Obama because I was a Democrat. So race was absolutely a part of it, but there were so many things.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “There was this celebration taking place inside, but also that a lot of the stuff that had been stirred up on the campaign wasn't going away. I mean, I remember people would come by our headquarters and just yell at us for the next few days.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “November 4th, 2008, I was in our field office. During the day, I was in the boiler room, which was a fancy way of saying a volunteer's living room that they weren't using, and we had been told that for an organizer, the hallmark of a good election day is that you're really bored. And so by that standard, things went great. I had absolutely nothing to do all day except sit and stress and try not to read any of the news that was coming in. And then that night I went to our office on Market Street and was there with maybe sixty or seventy volunteers watching on this very, very old television that was owned by the local Democratic Party. And it was interesting because this was not Manhattan or Los Angeles or Chicago where millions of people celebrated when Obama won. This was a county that went even in a good year for Democrats, a great year for Democrats, went 60, 40 for McCain. So you knew that”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “Person, and three months later she was a neighborhood team leader in Worcester and she was for all intents and purposes, a field organizer, she had her own team of volunteers that she was managing, and she met another, through another volunteer, she found a job, and it's a job she still holds today. So both on the personal level and the political level, being part of this reawakening in a community was incredible.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “And this was like you could see how much she was hurting, that every step she took, every phone call she made, she was just in agony. And finally I cracked and I said, you know, you don't have to be here. And she said, no, I do have to be here because if I don't make these calls, President Omama's not going to, or Obama's not going to get elected, and I'm not going to get the health care that I need to get better. That was one of those moments where it suddenly makes it a lot easier to work 24-7 toward a goal like that when you hear someone say that. And one of the things that I thought was special for me was even though I was incredibly new to politics watching all these people come into our office and discover their own agency. I also talk in the book about somebody, I forget the pseudonym I used, but she came in to get a yard sign and said that's all I want. I don't want to do anything beyond a yard sign. I'm not a campaigner.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “Well, and I will say in the entire five months I was in Worcester, Ohio, I never told anyone to stop making calls. I was not one of the field organizers that is everybody's friend. I was very much the, you know, let's hit our general patent. Yeah, exactly.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “And it was, yeah, and one of the things that I wonder, I hope you, it seems like you did, that you kind of felt from the upper echelon of the campaign was this how strange it was, but how magical it was for those of us who were kind of discovering politics in a real way for the first time.”

    2017-10-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 179 - David Litt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source