Eric Alterman Quotes

The problem is that the right doesn't need any ideas to govern, but the left can't govern without ideas.

Brains, you know, are suspect in the Republican Party.

Let's face it, Obama is not a hugely popular political figure in the state of Texas.

I think reconciliation is Obama's goal - but the fight with the Republicans is like a fight with pit bulls, they never let go. Even worse, now the Republicans feel they can keep pushing and he will keep giving. They have not seen a stiff resistance on his part.

If Republicans triumph in 2014, it will undoubtedly be as a result of Obamacare. In 2010, Republicans soared to historic victory because the much-maligned Tea Party spearheaded mass resistance to Obama's takeover of the healthcare industry.

Obama has seen to the passage of the most radical legislation in recent American history and so-called 'progressives' should be thanking him for it - even as many of the rest of us rear in horror from its implications.

I bring to the table core Democratic values and can articulate them very strongly. I'm not someone who tries to claim the middle.

The fact that Obama is getting criticism from the left and the right might reflect his understanding of the underlying political dynamics.

Obama is a guy who claims to be unaware that there was a Tea Party, a guy that's detached from the country.

America is exceptional: but because it yields the likes of Obama, not the likes of Bush.

Rush Limbaugh is good for the party. Drive it all the way down, take it down as low as it can go, make complete fools of themselves, because it's always darkest before the dawn, and then maybe a moderate can come in and rescue them.

Obama specializes in knocking down straw men. 'I reject the view that says our problems will simply take care of themselves,' he said, implying that's the view of Republicans. It's the view of almost no one.

I am not predicting here that Obama will fail like Jimmy Carter. What I am predicting is the Republican Party is not extinct and will after a period of time become a strong opposition party.

Collective solutions to individual problems is very seductive. It's how Obama gets elected, by the way.

My dad thinks Obama is a socialist and all these extreme views.

Mr. Obama would be a disheartening president even during a super boom, with his grim demeanor and empty rhetoric, as well as his obvious hatred of business bravado.

They plan to ride into the White House on the Sweet Talk Express. Well, think again. Bush and Cheney are not compassionate conservatives. They are ruthless reactionaries.

Obama rammed through Obamacare legislation without a single Republican vote.

There are few tribes more loathsome than the American Right, and their vicious use of the shortcomings in the NHS to attack Barack Obama's attempts at health reform are a useful reminder.

Obama, like Carter, is reacting to warning signs by seeking to split the difference between dispirited Democrats and increasingly radicalized Republicans.

The Republican game is hilariously transparent: if Obama doesn't shift to more muscular postures, he's not a patriot. If he does, he's a flip-flopper.

I can't see any difference in government between Bush and Obama apart from the color of their skin.

It would be wrong for us to offer difference from the Conservative Party at the cost of credibility, but equally it would be wrong to offer credibility at the cost of being clear that there remain very fundamental differences.

Republicans are completely befuddled by Obama's 'star power' and don't seem to have a clear or effective strategy to compete.

American presidential elections usually amount to a series of overcorrections: Clinton begat Bush, who produced Obama, whose lax border policies fueled the rise of Trump.