Charlie Pierce Quotes

A political convention is not a place where you can come away with any trace of faith in human nature.

Then you get to the last half of the 20th century, Americans are getting very skeptical about their leaders and their institutions, and another place that is affected is parties and conventions.

Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country-and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.

In rural communities, people are upset with the government, upset with what they see as business as usual. They saw Obama as a change agent, and they saw Donald Trump as a change agent.

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

Most Americans will let liberals and conservatives play their games because most Americans don't pay attention.

The characteristic political attitude of today is not one of positive belief, but of despair.

I've voted Libertarian as long as I can remember, but I don't really remember much before the Clintons and the Bushes. Those clans made a lot of us bugnutty.

The pure unadulterated disgust of Washington seems to me to be a really good thing.

I mean, it's pretty disillusioning for all of us right now, and we feel pretty helpless when Congress, their approval rating is thirteen percent, and across the board, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, you sort of want to walk in and fire everybody.

When you have a party leadership that is out of touch with the rest of the country, then that's a real problem for the entire party.

We do have our challenges. Some things don't always work right in Washington, and the anger you see from the electorate, I think, is a reflection of what's not working right.

In their political careers, Obama and Biden faced down lobbyists, Tea Party carpetbaggers, and Washington gridlock.

People don't trust party leaders.

People are sick of the false choice between the established political parties who take voters for granted.

People are very upset with Washington. They're upset with Democrats. They're upset with Republicans. They're upset with the establishment.

People hate politicians. And I can understand why.

For eight years Republicans worked around the clock to delegitimize Bill Clinton. For the next eight years, Democrats tried to delegitimize Bush. Now Barack Obama is enduring the rage of his conservative opposition.

When New Labour came to power, we got a Right-wing Conservative government. I came to realise that voting Labour wasn't in Scotland's interests any more. Any doubt I had about that was cast aside for ever when I saw Gordon Brown cosying up to Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street.

I am not predicting here that Obama will fail like Jimmy Carter. What I am predicting is the Republican Party is not extinct and will after a period of time become a strong opposition party.

President Obama and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi represent what mainstream America is rejecting about Washington, D.C. And that is this out of touch with the people.

I do vote but I don't think that any political party represents my point of view.

I've never been disappointed by politicians. I've never invested that much in them in the first place.

People don't like politicians.

I think people are rapidly losing confidence in the political class, and I don't blame them.