Electoral Strategy Quotes

Because, Bill, I think we’ve given the South away to the Republican party for as long as anyone can foresee.

To politicians, solved problems represent a dire threat - of unemployment and poverty. That's why no problem ever tackled by the government has ever been solved. What they want is lots of problems they can promise to solve, so that we'll keep electing them - or letting them keep their jobs in a bureaucracy metastasizing like cancer.

If you want to live like a Republican, vote Democratic.

The two old parties … fight only for office. Observe how utterly both parties in this respect lack program and new leadership.

President Trump's coalition clearly involves creating massive turnout in areas where he's popular.

Individuals move and shift from one party to another simply on their aspirations for office.

I don't necessarily vote a straight ticket in my own state because there are sometimes Democrats out there who are better than Republicans. It's hard to believe but it's true.

Our friends at the Republican convention were more than happy to talk about everything they think is wrong with America, but they didn't have much to say about how they'd make it right. They want your vote, but they don't want you to know their plan.

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.

Labour has to be a big tent that appeals to everyone - not just its activists.

If [the Conservatives] lose, we say, "Okay, we gotta change. We gotta improve, come back and win the next election." They [leftists] don't. When they lose and even when they win, because they know that they're in a numerical minority. But that numerical minority is a vast majority of pop culture and education environments. And so they just bully their way.

When a third party's demands become popular enough, they are appropriated by one or both of the major parties and the third party disappears. Third parties are like bees: Once they have stung, they die.

Barack Obama didn't get elected president, would never have been elected president, had he decided to run as a black candidate. In order to reach the broadest number of people you have to speak to their interests as broadly as you can.

I think Trump is a very interesting candidate in this sense: I think he has cross-party appeal.

It seemed to me to be entirely un-kosher, if that's a word, to try to put a debate about war right in front of the midterm to try to affect the midterm outcomes.

Republicans lobby; Democrats march.

When you run a campaign the idea is not to appeal to pundits but to appeal to people.

When a party sheds it principles for victory, it will inevitably end up with neither.

The next thing I am doing is moving back home to Minnesota and getting involved in politics. I'm looking at a run for Senate in 2008, but in the meantime I am focused on knitting together the progressive network in the upper Midwest.

There was only one punch. Tony Blair rang me and he said 'Are you OK?' and I said 'Yes', and he said 'Well, what happened?' and I said 'I was just carrying out your orders. You told us to connect with the electorate, so I did.

Competition for votes sends parties in a two-party system toward the center.

I think most Republicans would rather win this election than have transformation.

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.

Politics is a matter of day-to-day improvisation, and it often seems as though the major parties are guided only by the desire to stay in office and not by any philosophy that might justify their doing so.