Chris Hayes Quotes

We flipped over 200 counties that President [Barack] Obama won and Donald Trump just won, you [Jennifer Palmieri] think that's because of what you just said or because people aren't ready for a woman president?

Financial regulation is the next item on the political horizon, and it doesn't have to be the deathly dull wonk-battle that it sounds like. In fact, if the Democrats do their job, it can just as easily become a platform for addressing the greatest issues of them all.

The Democrats have pretty much given up on the white working class. That would require a commitment to economic issues, and that's not their concern.

California is going to be quite good for the Democrats. But the rest of the country is a draw.

All the way back to 2010, the takeover of Congress, there is an unnerved part of the public that understands the history of Hillary Clinton. We've seen her for decades. They understand Donald Trump. There's no disclosure needed there. The sour grapes that we are experiencing isn't going to make a better tasting wine for the Democrats in the future.

Democratic strategists and operatives should not design a strategy based off today's conditions. They should be setting a strategy for where the trajectory of polling is headed.

I think this was as good a Democratic Convention [ this was my 24th convention] as I have seen since the 1976 convention, which nominated Jimmy Carter.I just thought it was a spectacularly successful convention. I don't think Hillary Clinton's speech was spectacular, but I don't think she's a spectacular speaker.

The notion that business and government are and should be partners is ubiquitous, unremarkable, and repeated like a mantra by leaders in both domains. It seems a compelling and innocuous idea - until you think about what it really means.

Stay on the path that the Democratic Party has us on, we're going to be in a mountain range of debt.

I think people cast their votes for a number of reasons. I think if you look at your polls, you'll probably find that many, many people think that our views are closer to what they believe the future of America should be. That our views are closer on economic issues. And a lot of those polls come down to demographics, to age, to how much money you are making.

If we could create the conditions that make racism difficult, or discourage it, then there would be less stress and less need for affirmative action programs. One of those conditions would be an economic policy that would create tight labor markets over long periods of time. Now does that mean that affirmative action is here only temporarily? I think the ultimate goal should be to remove it.

Hillary Clinton should get a bounce out of her convention, I mean a bounce in the polls. I think it's probably conceded that Donald Trump got about a three-point bounce out of his conventions. He's closed the gap that much.

I mean, the Ace of Spades example that Jonah Goldberg remembered here (and that made me remember it, too), is that Chris Matthews interview with [Barack] Obama, during the run-up to Obamacare. Not one question about it. And when you stop and think, there never is for the Democrat. The media never questions the substance of anything the Democrats do.

I think it's been time for a new party. I think it's time for two new parties. If you watch the Democratic convention, that has become a socialist party now.

For Democrats to win, they're going to have to address the needs of working people. They're going to have to address the needs of the middle class.

To millennials, the Democratic Party is the party of endless debt, it is the party of low-wage jobs, it is the part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it is the party of the KXL pipeline, which was only stopped because, you know, because we, the voters, you know, just worked our bones - you know, worked ourselves to the bone in order to stop it.

Political analysts say that President Bush's re-election strategy is to try and convince Americans that he's a war president. I don't get that, do you think that'll work? I mean, don't you think that if he tries to convince the American people that we need a war president, isn't he afraid that they're going to vote for the guy that was actually in a war?

The Democrats are still not being honest with themselves about what happened to them. You know, a lot of people voted for Donald Trump knowing full well what the baggage was. They didn't care. The Trump election was, in fact, about issues. It was dead-set on issues, and this is what the media refuses to understand. They know it; they just don't want to believe it, and they don't want to acknowledge it. They think that it was an election about Hillary Clinton being a rotten candidate.

What we're witnessing really is a political realignment, I mean I think we're moving from a traditional understanding of left-right politics that we've had for a long time.

The left keeps talking about impeachment. I mean, they were talking about impeachment before Donald Trump's inauguration in 2017. And, you know, I think impeaching Obama in January probably would have been a mistake.

I think it's a healthy thing for the Democratic Party to go through some reflection.

We still write too many stories that are "state of the race" stories that are informed almost solely by what the polling shows and by what we're then deducing about who's up, who's down, and I'm just not sure that's very helpful to readers, it certainly doesn't elevate the debate and, and the problem is if you, if you cover these things, and I don't think the Times is particularly culpable, I think other news organizations are worse, if you cover them in an entirely "who's up, who's down" horse race way.

I understand what's going on in people's minds, and I think the political leaders better be asking themselves 'why is it, that Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders and maybe even others are having the impact that they are having?'

[Kellyanne] Conway had just explained how they won the presidency. They flipped over 200 counties, and she explained, "Did you ever think, Jennifer [Palmieri], that maybe the problem is that people just don't like your candidate, that Hillary [Clinton] doesn't connect with people, that maybe people don't have anything in common with Hillary, that maybe they see Hillary as a man?"

There's a lot that the majority, a big majority of the American people want to see us do and I'm very excited about that work. I think the Democratic Party has a record of being better for the economy when we hold the White House.