Presidential Election Quotes

But did you know that during the past quarter century, no presidential election has been won by more than ten million ballots cast? Yet every federal election during the same time period had at least one hundred million people of voting age who did not bother to vote! ~ Andy Andrews

At a press conference yesterday NASA announced that 2005 was the hottest year on record. It is so hot, and global warming is so bad, if the presidential election were held today, Al Gore would still lose. ~ Jay Leno

We have a presidential election coming up. And I think the big problem, of course, is that someone will win. ~ Barry Crimmins

The 2016 presidential election is ripe for the emergence of a game-changing political leader who either dramatically reforms one of the existing parties or mounts an independent bid. ~ Ron Fournier

Most major domestic programs got more money this year, and they're used to reflect the priorities of the upcoming year. One good example is, the Secret Service is getting $268 extra dollars because it's a presidential election year and the agency's going to be under more demands. ~ Susan Davis

No more than two opinions or ideas on any one issue should be out there, the General said. Look at the voting system. Same concept. We had multiple parties and candidates and look at the mess we had. Here you choose the left hand or the right and that's more than enough. Two choices and look at all the drama with every presidential election. Even two choices may be one too many. One choice is enough, and no choice may be even better. Less ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen

The 2004 presidential election that saw George W. Bush win with 51 percent of the vote was the last one Republicans will ever win with the overwhelmingly white and male coalition they have now. ~ John Podhoretz

Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets. ~ Barack Obama

In votes cast, Latinos have increased to five million in the 1996 Presidential election, up from two million in the 1976 election. The number of Hispanic elected officials has not risen so fast. ~ Bill Dedman

My goal is to help elect not only the first but second woman president. That will be real progress. I believe our next presidential election will see women at the top of the ticket for both parties. ~ Barbara Lee

Well, one thing that has happened is they have had a presidential election in Egypt which has represented progress. Now, we were not happy with everything that happened with the parliamentary elections, and it was not exactly a perfect presidential election in Egypt. ~ Roger Wicker

Presidential election results in 2008 and 2012 clarified that talk radio was not, in fact, running the country. ~ Timothy Noah

In the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore got more votes than George W. Bush, but still lost the election. The Supreme Court's ruling in Florida gave Bush that pivotal state, and doomed Gore to lose the Electoral College. That odd scenario - where the candidate with the most votes loses - has happened three times in U.S. history. ~ Juan Williams

A comic book publisher says he's trying to increase voter turnout in the presidential election by publishing comic books about John McCain and Barack Obama. Yeah, the publisher said that the election comic books are targeted at first-time voters and long-time virgins. ~ Conan O'Brien

There is one catagory of advertising which is totally uncontrolled and flagrantly dishonest: the television commercials for candidates in Presidential elections. ~ David Ogilvy

It's a presidential [election] year [2016], certainly everyone is talking about it, but if the history of the show tells us anything, the Big Brother cast does not usually discuss political issues like that in the house. ~ Allison Grodner

One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law. ~ John Paul Stevens

The Clintons' geographic meandering is the stuff of political legend. Despite both Clintons being high-flyers in Arkansas, Bill Clinton failed to win the state in both of his presidential election wins in 1992 and 1996. Mrs. Clinton, not being born in, studied in, or lived in New York, was elected U.S. Senator from that state twice. ~ Donald Michaels

Political nature abhors a vacuum, which is what often exists for a year or two in a party after it loses a presidential election. ~ George Will

'Green' is likely to be a big issue in the 2008 U.S. presidential election - largely in response to George Bush's suicidal refusal to engage with environmental issues. ~ Zac Goldsmith

With a century and change between the 1880 convention and now, I'll admit I rolled my eyes at the ideological hairsplitting, wondering how a group of people who more or less agreed with one another about most issues could summon forth such stark animosity. Thankfully, we Americans have evolved, our hearts made larger, our minds more open, welcoming the negligible differences among our fellows with compassion and respect. As a Democrat who voted for Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election, an election suspiciously tipped to tragic Republican victory because of a handful of contested ballots in the state of Florida, I, for one, would never dream of complaining about the votes siphoned in that state by my fellow liberal Ralph Nader, who convinced citizens whose hopes for the country differ little from my own to vote for him, even though had those votes gone to Gore, perhaps those citizens might have spent their free time in the years to come more pleasurably pursuing leisure activities, such as researching the sacrifice of Family Garfield, instead of attending rallies and protests against wars they find objectionable, not to mention the money saved on aspirin alone considering they'll have to pop a couple every time they read the newspaper, wondering if the tap water with which they wash down the pills is safe enough to drink considering the corporate polluter lobbyists now employed at the EPA. ~ Sarah Vowell

Republican strategist Kevin Phillips is often credited for offering the most influential argument in favor of a race-based strategy for Republican political dominance in the South. He argued in The Emerging Republican Majority, published in 1969, that Nixon's successful presidential election campaign could point the way toward long-term political realignment and the building of a new Republican majority, if Republicans continued to campaign primarily on the basis of racial issues, using coded antiblack rhetoric.54 He argued that Southern white Democrats had become so angered and alienated by the Democratic Party's support for civil rights reforms, such as desegregation and busing, that those voters could be easily persuaded to switch parties if those racial resentments could be maintained. ~ Michelle Alexander

To understand what ended up happening in the 2016 presidential election, you have to understand this: When protests toppled the Ukrainian government, Putin interpreted that as the United States coming into Russia, akin to an act of war; when he launched his counterattack - annexing Crimea, creeping into eastern Ukraine - he weaponized information and showed a willingness to lie, using traditional media like television, and new media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, to spread disinformation into open, Western societies like a virus. Eventually, the Russians would come into America, as they believed we'd gone into Ukraine. They took advantage of the fact that we were worn down by decades of political polarization and the balkanization of our media. America's antibodies to the sickness of Russian disinformation were weak, if they were there at all. ~ Ben Rhodes

When contemplating General Eisenhower winning the Presidential election, Truman said, Hell sit here, and hell say, Do this! Do that! And nothing will happen. Poor Ikeit wont be a bit like the Army. Hell find it very frustrating. ~ Harry S. Truman

It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact. In fact, in every presidential election since 1950 - except Goldwater in '64 - the Republican would have won, if only the men had voted. ~ Ann Coulter

You know what's really frightening? You (Jon Stewart) actually have an influence on this presidential election. That is scary, but it's true. You've got stoned slackers watching your dopey show every night and they can vote. ~ Bill O'Reilly

You don't fight America…You get America's Democratic and Republican parties to fight each other... and destroy each other. Worst case scenario…the enemy can slip thru the back door while they are fight like third graders.
~~High Commander Mustafa ~ James Morris Robinson

[O]nce demagogy and falsehoods become routine, there isn't much for the political journalist to do except handicap the race and report on the candidate's mood. ~ George Packer

There's an ingrained distrust in our society of highly intelligent, highly trained, highly competent persons. One need only look at the last presidential election for proof of that. ~ John Brunner

The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. ~ Barack Obama

Part of the reason [Donald Trump] destroyed his Republican challengers is because they agree with him on issues. And he apparently struck a vein of entertainment among the Republican primary voters, so all they had left was kind of whining and insulting back and forth, as opposed to taking him on where I think a presidential election should. ~ Hillary Clinton

Jeb Bush announced today on the Internet that he may run for president. The next presidential election could be Bush vs. Clinton. It will be like 1992 all over again except I won't be in rehab. ~ Craig Ferguson

In 2008, Barack Obama was the electoral equivalent of the Hula Hoop; a political Pet Rock; a craze, a fad, an irrational gadget. The latest have-to-have, must-vote-for candidate. ~ Mondo Frazier

Even at the end of a presidential election campaign, we have no way to know what Mitt Romney really believes. ~ Carl Bernstein

I think the Democratic Party realizes, having lost two presidential elections, we need to do a better job of creating a farm team. ~ John Mahoney

The fundamental question pertaining to voting ethics which Christians must ask at this presidential election is this: "What are the binding principles established by God in the Bible for selecting a civil magistrate?" All other questions are secondary or irrelevant. Once this standard is determined it is our duty to wisely apply the principles and precepts to our American context and to obey. All attempts by Christians to obfuscate our duty to repair to "the standard" by sprinkling the debate with the theology of pragmatics and partisan politics is a loss to the Church because it means that we are more concerned with manipulating a political process then simply obeying the sovereign God ~ Douglas W. Phillips

On the human rights side, administration policy has been marked by indifference. When the people of Iran flooded the streets to protest the theft of their presidential election in June 2009, President Obama was silent for 11 days. ~ Elliott Abrams

You have two choices, [Plouffe] told Obama. You can stay in the Senate, enjoy your weekends at home, take regular vacations, and have a lovely time with your family. Or you can run for president, have your whole life poked at and pried into, almost never see your family, travel incessantly, bang your tin cup for donations like some street-corner beggar, lead a lonely, miserable life. ~ John Heilemann, Mark Halperin

Ever since Richard Nixon walloped George McGovern in the presidential election of 1972, political pundits have treated as a truism the proposition that liberals are out of step with the rest of the nation, and therefore all but unelectable outside the precincts of the Northeast
give or take a college town here or a ski resort there. During the course of every presidential election for the past forty years now, Republicans have sought to wield the word liberal as if it were a six-gauge shotgun. ~ Eric Alterman

People will have their excitements, and a good rousing persecution used to stir things like the burning of Chicago or a Presidential election in our day. ~ E.P. Roe

Analysts may be correct that the presidential election won't primarily turn on entitlements reform, but by choosing Paul Ryan as his running mate, Mitt Romney can, contrary to conventional wisdom, make it a winning issue and lay the foundation for a reform mandate when he wins. ~ David Limbaugh

As lawmakers, we must assure the people of America that our nation will not experience the nightmare of the 2000 presidential election. ~ Eddie Bernice Johnson

In November 2008, the day of the presidential election, Israeli military forces invaded Gaza and killed half a dozen Hamas militants. Well, that was followed by a missile exchange for a couple of weeks in both directions. ~ Noam Chomsky

Once every 12 years there is a unique opportunity to reinforce the bonds between Mexico and the United States, when our presidential election cycles coincide. ~ Enrique Pena Nieto

We took bets on what would bring him down, which is what you do when you're trying to break your own heart before your country does it for you. ~ Mira Jacob

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

Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown.
And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities. ~ Sarah Palin

People are already talking about the next presidential election. There's stories all over about who might run. At a recent speech, a prominent Democrat said that Hillary Clinton should not run because she can't win. Immediately after the speech, Hillary told her husband to shut up. ~ Conan O'Brien

I know that Khalil will be famous one day - a rock star, a basketball hero, a politician who will become the first Arab American President of the United States because he is so beautiful, and he knows suffering, and he will be cured, and I know for sure: he will live long enough to enter a presidential election, he will live long past thirty-five. ~ Miah Arnold

There are a number of Americans who shouldn't vote. The number is 57 percent, to judge by the combined total of Clinton and Perot ballots in the 1996 presidential election. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

So a Holocaust-denying, virulently anti-Semitic, aspiring genocidist, on the verge of acquiring weapons of the apocalypse, believes that the end is not only near but nearer than the next American presidential election. (Pity the Democrats. They cannot catch a break.) This kind of man would have, to put it gently, less inhibition about starting Armageddon than a normal person. ~ Charles Krauthammer

These are party-sanctioned debates. This is a presidential election, you show up at the debates. These are the rules. We have a series of unwritten rules of how campaigns are run, and everybody has followed those rules consistently over the decades. And no one has really even seriously thought about breaking them. ~ Ryan Grim

Today the Washington Post did an article; they compared the 2008 presidential election to the 1932 presidential election. They did a comparison, mainly because 1932 was the first time John McCain ran for president. ~ Conan O'Brien

In the 2004 presidential election, we saw a wonderful example of citizens making contributions. In fact, individual giving to both the Kerry and Bush campaigns was the highest in our nation's history. ~ Mark Shields

When all is said and done and the e-book is written about politics and the Internet, it is not going to be about the presidential election. It will be about the smaller elections in aggregate that have a huge effect on people's lives. ~ Joe Green

Just 158 rich families contributed nearly half of the $176 million given to candidates in the first phase of the presidential election of 2016 - $138 million to Republicans and $20 million to Democrats. ~ Arlie Russell Hochschild

The presidential election is a drama that we Americans have learned to wholly consume as entertainment, divorced completely from any expectations about concrete changes in our own lives. ~ Matt Taibbi

During the campaign, I supported and encouraged the Clinton campaign strategy, but in hindsight, I lost track of one of the core lessons of Obama's success--campaigns are about telling the American people a story--a story about where we are, where we are going, and why you are the right person, and your opponent is the wrong person, to take the country there. It's a story that needs to be compelling, but also easily understood, and then driven home by the candidate and the campaign with relentless discipline. ~ Dan Pfeiffer

The lead singer of Creed says he won't endorse President Obama. Well that settles it
Obama will not win the 1998 presidential election. ~ Stephen Colbert

100 political parties put together can never defeat the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, come 2015 presidential election. ~ Patience Jonathan

The weak economy, widening income inequality, gridlock in Congress and a presidential election: Those were perhaps the dominant economic and political themes of 2012. ~ Steven Rattner

After listening to Rick Santorum, I'm now for late-term abortions (say up to age 53). ~ Quentin R. Bufogle

Just after midnight, I text my parents who live in Florida: Please tell me you didn't help elect him.

No reply.

The next morning, New York City wakes up with a wet, gray yawn. The air is thick with mist. The city moves at a slower, muffled pace. New Yorkers rarely make eye contact; today isn't much different, except when eyes meet, they lock for a moment in shared grief. Everyone's shoulders bend forward, the world weighing heavier on them than it did yesterday.

The sidewalks and the coffee shops are quiet. Even the subway paces through its underground veins in somber silence. My husband tells me: "The city hasn't been this quiet since 9/11."

- Melissa Lirtsman ~ Erin Passons

Thirteen years after the end of the Soviet Union, the American press establishment seemed eager to turn Ukraine's protested presidential election on November 21 into a new cold war with Russia. ~ Stephen Cohen

Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that. And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit. The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. ~ Joe Biden

Justices look solemn in their formal black robes, but every so often they like to have a little fun by taking on a strange case, or overturning a presidential election, that sort of thing. ~ Christopher Buckley

You want to know whether we're better off? I've got a little bumper sticker for you: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive! Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive! ~ Joe Biden

A million dollars in the presidential election is a spit in the ocean. It's not a lot of money. ~ Kenneth Langone

The Pavlovian view of women voters - plug the words in, and they will respond - sends a chill down my spine because it sounds like an adaptation of something I have written about communication between the sexes: When a woman tells a man about a problem, she doesn't want him to fix it; she just wants him to listen and let her know he understands. But there's a difference between a private conversation and a presidential election, between what we want from our leaders. ~ Deborah Tannen

If you've got a business - you didn't build that. ~ Barack Obama

Trustworthiness is the thing that you need the most going to a presidential election. Honest and trustworthy is one of the main questions in any presidential election. ~ Dana Perino

Voters who live off taxpayers are the Democrats' ace in the hole. The Democrats created big programs and never let the recipients forget it. This gives them an initial advantage of tens of millions of votes in any presidential election. ~ Joseph Sobran

For those suggesting criticisms of drone kills should wait until the election: that'd be reasonable if he stops killing until the election. ~ Glenn Greenwald

Here is the thing, though, the real, true thing I still have trouble admitting: I can't protect you from everything...I can't protect you from spending a lifetime caught between the beautiful dream of a diverse nation and the complicated reality of one. I can't even protect you from the simple fact that sometimes, the people who love us will choose a world that doesn't. ~ Mira Jacob

In the leadup to the election of 1876, swing votes were tied to the issue of Chinese immigration in the same way that immigration was a hot topic during this election cycle. Rutherford Hayes endorsed Chinese exclusion and won the election. In the following election, James Garfield also carried the torch of anti-Chinese immigration into office. (From those days to now, every presidential election has fanned the flames of anti-immigration. This, Henry, shows that hate and fear are reliable, predictable, and effective political tools.) All of this led eventually to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred the entry of all Chinese immigrants to the United States except for those who were teachers, students, diplomats, ministers, or merchants. It also declared all Chinese totally ineligible for naturalized citizenship. This clause alone allowed the United States to join Nazi Germany and South Africa as the only nations every to withhold naturalization purely on racial grounds. ~ Lisa See

Everybody has seen what happens when an ordinary person takes on a title or an office. When a new president is inaugurated, he takes on the awe and respect of his office and begins to act like a president. Ordinary men (and I would certainly hope, one day, ordinary women)...lose their old roles and become the president. ~ Kaleel Jamison

According to Bishop, the author of The Big Sort, in 1976 less than 25% of Americans lived in places where the presidential election was a landslide. In other words, we lived next door to and attended school and worshiped with people who held different beliefs than ours. We were ideologically diverse. In contrast, in 2016, 80% of U.S. counties gave either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton a landslide victory. Most of us no longer even live near people who are all that different from us in terms of political and social beliefs. ~ Brene Brown

researchers like Dr. Eva Sapi have shown Lyme is like some other spirochetes - it has biofilms. These are very tough biofilms to defeat unless caught in the "acute stage." A tough, "mature biofilm" allows organisms to "laugh at" many antibiotics. Some medical professionals interested in Lyme often ignore the immune suppressing Bartonella bacterium, which is more common than Lyme. Ignoring coinfections may increase the risk of fatality with Babesia and possibly FL1953. These healers also may not realize that the highly genetically complex Lyme spirochete appears to have a troublesome biofilm. Performing a simple direct test at laboratory companies whose testing kits have reduced sensitivity will probably result in more negatives for tick-borne diseases. The ultimate result is anti-science and anti-truth. Searching for tick infections with one test is like writing in "Lincoln" at the next presidential election. ~ James L. Schaller

Political impotence is finished. Today is the beginning of the orgasm. All the people, I promise you, will feel the orgasm of next year's presidential election. ~ Vladimir Zhirinovsky

I got 99 Problems but Mitt ain't one. ~ Jay-Z

I will say one thing has changed dramatically which is this Supreme Court vacancy, and it will reshape the race on my side, because I'd rather lose an election than lose the Supreme Court. ~ Hugh Hewitt

I believe the doctrine of election, because I am quite sure that if God had not chosen me I should never have chosen him; and I am sure he chose me before I was born, or else he never would have chosen me afterwards; and he must have elected me for reasons unknown to me, for I never could find any reason in myself why he should have looked upon me with special love. ~ Charles Spurgeon

Everybody loved me running for president in '91 and '92 because they never knew a presidential candidate before. ~ Eileen Myles

The people "have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge- I mean of the character and conduct of their rulers." ~ John Adams

Would they not fear that citizens not less tenacious than conscious of their rights would flock from the remotest extremes of their respective states to the places of election, to overthrow their tyrants, and to substitute men who would be disposed to avenge the violated majesty of the people? ~ Alexander Hamilton

I have run a general election campaign pregnant and ran Ed Miliband's leadership campaign commuting to London with a new baby so I already have my system set up. ~ Lucy Powell

Roosevelt gazed around the library. A glint in his spectacles betrayed displeasure. Loeb came up inquiringly, and there was a whispered conversation in which the words newspapermen and sufficient room were audible. Hurrying outside, Loeb returned with two dozen delighted scribes. They proceeded to report the subsequent ceremony with a wealth of detail unmatched in the history of presidential inaugurations. ~ Edmund Morris

Popularity, I have always thought, may aptly be compared to a coquette - the more you woo her, the more apt is she to elude your embrace. ~ John Tyler

Elections are about the future. And the GOP will not win a campaign focused on the past. ~ Mark McKinnon

You can tell there's an election coming soon. People are already using the word "fundamentally" in excess. ~ Benjamin Kane Ethridge

We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees. And both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people. ~ Henry Clay

If the primary ends up being a hard hitting, bloody battle, well so be it. Let's get ready for the general election ~ Steve Lonegan

I ask particularly that those of you who are now in school will prepare yourselves to bear the burden of leadership over the next 40 years here in the United States, and make sure that the United States - which I believe almost alone has maintained watch and ward for freedom - that the United States meet its responsibility. That is a wonderful challenge for us as a people. ~ John F. Kennedy

Careerism: the self-centered philosophy of governing to win the next election above all else. ~ Tom Coburn

The idea of an election is much more interesting to me than the election itself ... The act of voting is in itself the defining moment. ~ Jeff Melvoin

A lot of television stuff is mean-spirited, and I think that's how political advertising got so mean-spirited, to where people are throwing things at the television set every time we have an election. ~ Stan Freberg

I'm married to Kevin, a photographer whose career has put him on the campaign trail with presidential candidates and sent him on assignment to far-flung places for long periods of time. It was sometimes rough when our children were small, and I was beginning to write in earnest. ~ Nancy Horan

We went back on a very similar manifesto to things I believe in. The difference is that after eighteen months to two years he did the biggest U-turn on policy of all time and started to go the wrong way. In the end, that cost us the next election. ~ Margaret Thatcher

We are going to build a wall. You're going to pay for the wall. ~ Donald J. Trump