Clinton: 'All elections are job interviews'

Clinton: "all elections are job interviews."

Editor's Note: CNN Access is a regular feature on CNN.com providing interviews with newsmakers from around the world.

(CNN) -- Former President Bill Clinton was the headliner Wednesday at the Democratic Party's biggest fund-raising extravaganza since Election 2000. The celebrity-packed program featured comedian Chris Tucker, actress Cicely Tyson, and performances by Tony Bennett, Michael Jackson, k.d. lang, Ruben Blades and others.

CNN's Judy Woodruff caught up with the former president Wednesday during a voter registration event in New York City:

WOODRUFF: How many seats are the Democrats going to win in the House? What do you think this year?

CLINTON: I don't know. I think it will be a close race. I think -- the redistricting didn't change as many ... people as we thought. So we get about -- I think we're about net down two or three in the redistricting, depending on what happens in Pennsylvania. But I think we can win somewhere between 12 to 15. I expect when this election is over, I think the House will still be quite closely divided. Even if we win, I think we have a pretty good chance to win.

WOODRUFF: Unusual for a former president to be out doing this kind of party-building activity. Why are you doing it?

CLINTON: Because I really believe that a big key to the future of the country is getting all of these young people to vote. And because America's youth population is increasingly diverse. We have a more and more -- you look out here, a lot of these young people are first generation immigrants that came here with their families.

And I think, you know, getting them to feel like they have a stake in America is really, really important. We so far have avoided the kind of wrenching cultural and racial and religious conflicts that you see, even in Europe now, in a lot of these anti-immigrant elections, and it has been a bipartisan thing. Let me say one thing, I agreed with the president on one of the best things he did after September 11 is go to a mosque and say to the Muslim leaders that our fight is with terror and not with Islam.

So if we want to avoid from now on the kind of conflicts that other countries have within them, we have to get these young people mobilized and comfortable with the idea that they share a common citizenship and they are going to exercise it.

WOODRUFF: When you talk about the past, the election of 2000, as Terry McAuliffe just did, and said we will never forget, do you run a risk there, as Democrats, focusing too much on the past and what happened in November?

CLINTON: Well, I don't think -- I think that, you know, he's the party chairman. That's his job to do that. And I think it keeps people -- keeps our activists energized, but (the) most important thing is always to have an alternative and positive vision. It is always the most important thing. In '92 I was elected president because people bought into what I said I was going to do if they hired me for the job.

And I always tell all candidates all elections are job interviews. The most important thing is for us to be out there talking about, what is our alternative vision? What will our people do that is different from what the others will do, and I think that's what this election will be about.

WOODRUFF: Are you going to keep on doing this kind of thing?

CLINTON: Well, I like these voter -- you know anything I can do to kind of encourage young people to vote, I'll do that, but I'm also trying to talk specifically. Today wasn't the time, but I also like to talk about the kind of specific things I think they should be doing because that's good for America. It is good for America for us to have all these debates about the real substantive issues that are out there.