Paul Begala Quotes

Truman will be the winner.

I was incredibly - I've never been more confident of anything in my life that Hillary Clinton was going to win and Donald Trump would lose by a very large margin.

In the final analysis this congressional race is always going to be a close race, whether there's a presidential race or governor's race or not. But is this a better year? Yes, this would probably be a better year.

Incumbent White House parties have won 10 of the last 18 presidential elections; the odds are tight, but they favor Obama in 2012. And so gloomy Democrats, check your despair; gleeful Republicans, watch the hubris.

It's rare when a president wins the campaign without winning independents.

The candidate who is successful in defining the election is usually the winner.

If the election had been held on October 27, I would be your President.

Anytime somebody loses a presidential election, there are lots of explanations.

I have never analyzed a presidential election as much as I did the Trump-Clinton race of 2016.

As a Democrat following the 2012 presidential election closely, I was happy to see that South Carolina voted overwhelmingly for Newt Gingrich, a candidate almost too easy for President Barack Obama to beat in the fall. I was not, however, surprised at the state's gaffe.

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.

If Mr. [Donald] Trump is up 10 or 15 points on Election Day and ends up losing, then, you know, maybe he can raise some questions. That doesn't seem to be the case at that moment.

One strange quality of writing about political campaigns is that it's a little like writing about a baseball game inning by inning. We presume we can say something about the final result from the state of play a third of the way through. You can when a game is a colossal blowout, but you can't when it's close.

They're saying Arnold will get 95% of the vote. At least according to his brother, Jeb Schwarzenegger.

Whether you're a Democrat or Republican, if your standard-bearer for the presidency is not doing well, it's gonna reflect on the down-ballot.

I fully appreciate the fact that George W. Bush won 49% of my district.

Let me just be very clear that the Republican Party will select a nominee that will beat Bill Clinton.

I don't think Obama will get re-elected.

Frankly, I thought we would have lost the House by now.

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

I read 'Game Change.' If you want to relive the campaign, that book is unbelievable. It's great. It's the book of that campaign. It brought all the memories back of everything with Clinton and Obama, and Sarah Palin and McCain, and choosing her, and John Edwards. It was an interesting book.

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

I think we do want a front-runner from the Republican Party who can win the general election.

And looking at the landslides, you saw how Gore beat Bush so substantially in California.

This could be a close election. I can pretty much tell which states are going to be close. If you would start two or three weeks before Election Day and saturate those critical states with [TV Advertising] spots, it could swing the election.