John Ridley Quotes

Running for office, or suggesting you might, is no longer about being a politician but being an independent opinion or sensibility entrepreneur. You're looking for an audience to identify with you. Rather than trying to convince a majority of the electorate, you're looking to cull your particular following.

The left has lost the common touch.

Everyone wants to demagogue everyone else. That may be good politics, but it's awful policy.

The Congress has historically played covert communal politics in order to create what in India we call vote banks where you pit one community against another and so on in order to secure votes.

The essence of American politics consists of the manipulation of populism by elitism.

There is constantly a war going on between the two parties for the populist vote. The populist vote is always the swing vote.

[McKinley] is on a stumping tour ... I criticized the bloody-shirt course of the canvass [campaign]. It seems to me it is bad "politics," and of no use.... An increasing number of people are interested in good relations with the South.

When the political columnists say 'Every thinking man' they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to 'Every intelligent voter' they mean everybody who is going to vote for them.

Populism is an ideology that separates society into two homogeneous and antagonist groups.

What is interesting is that, although it is framed as a war between the elites and Main Street, the Tea Party is actually really good for the elites.

There can be an energy in a populist campaign that isn't always in the best interest of the party.

If there's one epithet the Right never tires of, it's 'elitism.'

Trump might have a populist message that resonates with some voters, but the man doesn't care about any of the people he's appealing to.

With Donald J. Trump's arrival to power, many feel astonished by the growth of populism. Others analyze with extreme care the decline of companies that measure public opinion. I am saddened to watch the lack of temperament and political stability of those who 'represent' a trend or ideology.

The main threat to the future of Europe is not those who want to come here to live but our own political, economic, and intellectual elites bent on transforming Europe against the clear will of the European people.

Liberal elites and Democratic Party elders want all Hispanics to fall into a monolithic liberal agenda.

When it comes to the liberal agenda, it's more important to pigeonhole people than it is to speak the truth.

One of the left's favorite refrains is falsely caricaturing Republican candidates as 'racist' and 'xenophobic,' throwing out 'dog whistles' to fuel racial sentiments.

I got 220,000 votes from people who also voted for Donald Trump. I did not do that by pretending to be a conservative Democrat.

Rather than embracing mainstream, majority-held positions, 2020 Democratic presidential candidates have made it exceedingly clear that they will sacrifice themselves on the altar of the radical left - endorsing positions held by a select few and fueling an unstoppable tailwind behind President Trump's reelection.

What the Democrats have done is tell the poor and the middle class that the Democrats are looking out for 'em. Democrats are gonna get even with those rich people. They're gonna get there, and they're gonna have theirs taken away. They're gonna lose theirs, and you're supposed to feel good about that. You, who are poor or middle class, are supposed to feel happy, not because you have any more than you had. You're supposed to be happy because the rich that you hate have finally been screwed like you think you were screwed.

There are two forms of populism, left-wing populism and right-wing populism. Right-wing populism requires the denigration of an "Other." Left-wing populism tends to be about the haves and have-nots.

The Trump phenomenon has a lot of really good stuff in it, the anti-elitism, the concern for America's economy in the Rust Belt, the desire to see better days for the country. That's all great stuff. Some of that stuff is Bernie Sanders stuff. The problem is that it's marbled through with xenophobia and misogyny and bigotry.

Remember, politicians get votes by promising everything to everyone, always at the expense of some other invisible taxpayers.

Inequality provokes a generalized anger that finds targets where it can--immigrants, foreign countries, American elites, government in all forms--and it rewards demagogues while discrediting reformers.