James Carville Quotes

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

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

The losing side is comforted, I think, by this idea of magical gurus [masterminding the opponent’s campaign], because it’s less disconcerting than the fact that people just didn’t like them very much.

Newt changed the frame of reference of all of our candidates. That's why we won so big in 1994.

The victor will be the one who gets the most voters out.

In terms of the ability to go out and win - this is why you have campaigns. You go out, and you take your issues to voters, and you put them out there, and people respond, or they don't.

I ran two campaigns for governor in a state that's 2-1 Democrat where I did not mention my opponent in print, radio, or television. I don't know if any other politician at a gubernatorial, congressional, or a senatorial level can make the claim.

Mitt Romney is a nice guy. But, we know where nice guys finish in politics.

Nobody understood better than Mr. Lincoln the obvious truth that in politics it does not suffice merely to nominate candidates. Something must also be done to elect them.

I firmly believed throughout 1971 that the major hurdle to winning the presidency was winning the Democratic nomination. I believed that any reasonable Democrat would defeat President Nixon. I now think that no one could have defeated him in 1972.

Let's not just look at it as taking votes away from Gore. Our support comes from a lot of people.

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.

Our opponents struggled manfully, desperately; but wind and tide were against them. They had campaign and other papers, good speakers, and large meetings; but we were far ahead of them in singing and electioneering emblems and mottoes which appealed to popular sympathies.

I’ve won the election.

If you can’t run against a political candidate, run against his campaign manager.

If you constantly cross your own centers of power, you lose the energy that wins elections.

During a political campaign everyone is concerned with what a candidate will do on this or that question if he is elected except the candidate; he's too busy wondering what he'll do if he isn't elected

The Republican high command thinks that Henry Wallace will take so many votes away from the Democrats, and so little from the Republicans, that it does not matter what the Republican Party does. Victory will be theirs, they assure themselves. When any political party gets this feeling, it is time for that party to beware.

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.

I've been through several of his campaigns, and I can tell you nobody can out-campaign Rick Perry.

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.

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.

Trump was doing very well on a model that made sense, but now, as the campaign has gotten to the end stages, a more traditional campaign has to take place.

John Kerry suspended his campaign for five days this week in honor of President Reagan. And right now, he's ahead in the polls. How's that make him feel? Disappears for a week and he's up in the polls. What else can he do now but go into hiding.

Spin is overrated. It is strategy, not spin, that wins elections.