Carlos Watson Quotes

One strange quality of writing about political campaigns is that it's a little like writing about a baseball game inning by inning. We presume we can say something about the final result from the state of play a third of the way through. You can when a game is a colossal blowout, but you can't when it's close.

The tactics and strategy of every Presidential election campaign is most influenced by the previous Presidential election.

Obama ran a hard-edged and negative campaign against Romney, hoping to convince recession-weary voters that his rival was unworthy of the job.

I definitely learned about the inner workings of campaigns enough to know that I'm glad that I'm not in politics.

[On political campaigns:] Get an elbow, give an elbow.

I hear you're losing Ohio, but we're doing fine in Pennsylvania.

In politics, you have a one-day sale. You have every customer allowed in the store for one or two minutes on that day, and you have to sell a majority or plurality of the market or you are out of business.

A [Presidential] candidate, confident of winning or sure of losing a bare majority of a state’s popular vote has no reason to expend resources there.

Elections are won ... chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody.

I think that winning the White House is about more than just entertaining a large audience.

Presidential election campaigns offer a unique opportunity to educate the public and engage in an intelligent dialogue on issues of national importance.

When you are in election mode, you are focused only on winning.

Every four years in the presidential election, some new precedent is broken.

It seems that elections today are more popularity than they are substantial issues.

Most pundits regard an election year session as an opportunity for the two parties to frame issues and garner political advantage in advance of the approaching election.

We've had a series of major news stories that have brought in viewers who either were sampling to see what else was available or were normal news watchers. The Florida recount and the end of the election was a huge development. And then 9/11 came along.

The CIO put up half a million dollars for Roosevelt's 1936 campaign and provided him with an immense group of active labor workers who played a large part in the sweeping victory he won at the polls.

Sometimes, political campaigns make decent people act and talk like perfect buffoons.

Political parties exist to get bums on seats.

And when you start talking about the practicality of winning a race like that - you've got to remember we're not talking about winning 51 percent of the vote. We're talking about winning 36, 37, 38 percent of the vote.

It is not through any combinations of politicians that the outcome of an electoral campaign is decided.

The thing that Tea Parties have to understand, you can't govern if you don't get elected.

Campaigns fail if they waste resources courting voters who are unpersuadable or already persuaded. Their most urgent task is to find and persuade the few voters who are genuinely undecided and the larger number who are favorably disposed but need a push to actually vote.

It's rare when a president wins the campaign without winning independents.

My focus as part of the leadership is to keep talking about the independent voters, independent voters - how do we get the independent voters back?