John Podesta: For Hillary Clinton, a Matchup With Donald Trump ‘Works Very Well’
The chair of Hillary Clinton's campaign appeared on "This Week."
— -- Hillary Clinton's campaign chair says he's confident she will win the Democratic nomination for president, and welcomes the possibility she could face Republican Donald Trump in the general election.
"Moving forward, if he's the nominee of the Republican Party, I think that's a matchup that works very well for us," he told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on "This Week." "She's out listening to the American people, offering real solutions, talking about the fight she'll fight for them, and he's out, you know, hurling insults."
Clinton is leading her biggest rival for the Democratic nomination, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, by 31 points nationally, according to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll.
"We feel very good about where we are today in terms of winning the nomination," said Podesta, who served as chief of staff to former President Bill Clinton and as an adviser to President Barack Obama.
The three remaining Democratic candidates spoke Saturday night at the Jefferson-Jackson fundraising dinner hosted by the Iowa Democratic Party in Des Moines. Podesta said he detected a shift in Sanders' rhetoric.
"I think Bernie Sanders seemed to have a course correction in the JJ dinner from one in which he said he wasn't going to go negative to -- to obviously focusing his, you know, his fire on her," he said.
The Jefferson-Jackson dinner capped off a busy week for Clinton. On Thursday, she squared off with members of the House Select Committee on Committee during an 11-hour hearing on the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans were killed.
Clinton's performance before the committee earned her widespread praise. Former Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod said on Friday that Clinton performs best when her back is against the wall, but added that she should be cautious to "not settle back into the posture of the cautious, calculating frontrunner."
When asked about that critique, Podesta said Clinton's experiences in the 2008 campaign "convinced her that you've got to keep your nose to the grindstone every day, fight for every vote, tell people what you want to do for them, what the future could look like if they elect you."
