Jennifer Granholm Quotes

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

I am the Democratic Party's absolutely worst nightmare. Why is that? Well, you see, I am a black conservative Republican running against one of the most vulnerable Democrats in America in 2016.

I think the Democratic Party has picked a lot of the wrong candidates, the kind that Middle America, or people who are more down the middle and more rational, can't side with. I think that's been the problem.

As far as party primaries are concerned, both Republican and Democratic Party primaries are dominated by the most zealous voters, whose views may not reflect the views of most members of their own respective parties, much less the views of those who are going to vote in the November general election. In recent times, each election year has seen each party's nominee selected - or at least subject to veto - by its most extreme wing and then forced to try to move back to the center before the general election. This can only undermine the public's confidence in the integrity of the candidates of both parties.

At the end of the day, Democrats go out and appeal to 30 percent of the far left; Republicans go out and appeal to 30 percent of the far right. Hey, there's a big middle ground here that's not represented. I think that, Bill Weld and myself, I think the Libertarian Party really occupies that ground.

Democrats cannot win elections without capturing the votes of independent-minded swing voters. And that is where writing off the Tea Party as a bunch of racist kooks becomes self-destructive. The Tea Party outrage over health-care reform, deficit spending and entitlements run amok is no fringe concern.

There aren’t any independents anymore.

Have we come to the point where the Democratic Party needs a Republican President?

There isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between politicians of either major party.

We have this civil war at home between our own version of Shiites and Sunnis called Republicans and Democrats…

I didn't realize that running as an independent would be perceived as a threat to the Democrats.

If anything, the Democrats' salvation may lie in the fact that Republicans seem even more hell-bent on allowing their radical wing to drag the party away from the center.

Admittedly, no Republican can get elected statewide in California anymore, but nor can what we think of as, nationally, the Democratic Party. There are no Joe Bidens running; it is not working-class Democrats vs. liberal Democrats, or whatever their division is these days. It is Hispanic Democrats vs. Asian Democrats.

In the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, American voters were forced to choose between a liberal Democrat and weak establishment Republicans. Democrats won both times.

When Trump was elected, there were three parties in Washington: the Trump party, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

To some extent, the mainstream's absence means the Tea Party is the Republican Party.

Bill Clinton was a liberal who could appeal to conservative-leaning Bubba voters.

The Democratic Party is not the party of reform.

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.

Democrats believe they can win at the ballot box by obstructing, and they would rather win the next election than move America forward.

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.

Beating the tea party gang is more important than who does the beating.

Again, if I was going to call Romney and the Republicans stupid, I'm certainly not going to call the Democrats and President Obama stupid.

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

The Democratic Party needs to look carefully at moving towards the middle, where the American people are.