James Carville Quotes

A political genius is a man ... who has accidentally been on the winning side in the last campaign and is about to be on the losing side.

The lesson of the Clinton years and of Obama's win of both the nomination and the general election in 2008 is that Democrats need to be as tough as JFK was.

Don't fall in love with the map. The map doesn't win elections.

I've worked on enough campaigns to know that the most aggrieved candidate rarely emerges victorious.

Anytime James Carville, Paul Begala and David Axelrod hold hands and jump for joy, it's worth pondering how to turn their joy into tears.

I supported Bob Schaffer's three races for Congress. But we all had concerns about whether he could win statewide. Then my wife suggested that I get it.

The thing about politics is to plan 10 years ahead, and assume every year is your last.

Hillary Clinton almost got to be president. The reasons why she didn't become president had to do with bad judgments about how to handle the early caucus states, which is not a gender-specific trait.

Republican pundits always believe Republicans are going to win; Democratic pundits always believe Democrats are going to win.

The Republicans always looked bad three years out of four. But the year they look good is election year.

You have to have candidates who can actually win. The winners make policy; the losers go home.

How a candidate runs shapes how a president governs.

When a party loses a national election to someone such as President Trump, it's time to rethink everything.

Among the reasons Donald Trump is president is that he read the nation and the world better than his rivals.

The Republican leadership thinks the best way to avoid losing elections is to let the Democrats win every controversial issue.

If 2016 taught us anything, it's that President Trump's political prowess should not be discounted or underestimated.

Democrats fell in love with the idea that winning elections was a matter of talking to voters about the one issue we think impacts them, instead of our plan to move the country forward as a whole.

Over the years, Democrats have had a lot of very talented individuals, but they have lacked fighters.

I even believe [Donald Trump] won a little after - after the election rethinking, I think if we'd spent a little more time in Minnesota, we would've won Minnesota.

Democrats, if they're smart and they're not brain-dead, are doing two things right now.They're having self-deprecating humor written for them. There was no humor in Cleveland. And they are not making this a Donald Trump.

Why you won an election and why you didn't is a subject of, you know, books that get written 20 years later.

As was demonstrated back in 2012, [Barack] Obama was thought to be in big trouble after that first debate, and he wasn't, was he? That first debate didn't end up hurting Barack Obama at all, did it? I know he had incumbancy on his side, but still. He was horrible that first debate. It didn't matter because there were two more, and there are two more here.

Look at Jeb Bush, $115 million and Jeb actually stated in December 2014 that he was going to win this primary by not winning it. He was going to win it without winning base voters. They have made it clear they want nothing of their base. They're embarrassed of their base.

For the Democrats, they're trying to avoid having the [Ben] Sanders- [Hillary] Clinton debate over and over again. But, to some degree, they're sentenced to that debate.

[Donald Trump] was a better candidate; that's how he won.