Frank Rich Quotes

It's not clear in the U.S. at the moment, either. We're going through another election.

So the same cultural and political issues that divided us in 1968 are still dividing us.

I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years either.

Half the Democrats in Congress get elected by running for Civil Rights and the other half gets elected by running against Civil Rights.

Democrats cluster in cities, and Republicans don't.

There are two factors in American politics that may seem strange to Europeans: race and religion.

You have to come to full realization of just how horrible things are. And this is how horrible things are: Donald Trump is almost the President of the United States.

If Hillary Clinton had been president, we'd have had a false sense of security. Trump has brought everything to the light - racism, homophobia. It's one of our darkest points, because we should know better.

Look, America was a narrowly divided country in 2000;49-49 was what Michael Barone called it. It's a 49-49 nation.

Barack Obama has come to divide, and he succeeded. This country has never been more divided. Well, throw out the Civil War, but in the modern times this country has never been more divided.

If you look at sort of how politics has divided itself here in this country, the big divide right now is between urban areas, which have become increasingly Democratic, and rural or exurban areas that feel as if they're being ignored.

Part of it is eight years of a black president, and white America still lost their [minds] about that. Part of it is a Republican politics of vicious, vicious partisan [stuff] that has completely poisoned what we would call the political rhetorical sphere. All of these things come together in a perfect storm.

The fault line in American history is now a dividing line in the election and it's changing the conversation.

America is an incredibly polarized country politically. I think ANY Republican would start out with 42 percent of the vote.

My support is particularly Bernie Sanders supporters but that's drawn many [Donald] Trump supporters to start with.

The more liked you are in Washington, the less liked you are in the rest of America, and vice versa.

Maybe that's one of the virtues of the 2016 election that we're going through is all of this racism and xenophobia and sexism and whatever else you want to say is being exposed, maybe that's a blessing. I'm trying to look at the positive side of what's been happening in our country, which is frightening.

There may not be much difference between Democrats and Republicans anymore.

How one election has exposed the true dire straits of the Democrat Party. It really is profound.

I think for the foreseeable future we have to disabuse ourselves of any ideas of unifying, or coming together, or all getting along. I don't think we're going to reconcile the America that elected the first African American president with the America that just elected a president avidly endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan - I'm not sure I even want to reconcile the two.

Since Democrats vs. Republicans has been obliterated, no real difference between parties.

Yet it seems that a final race struggle is unavoidable

Growing up as a black kid with a white father who loves you, who affirms you, who was part of your life is fundamentally different than what black people in my family were subjected to in the 19th century or the 18th century. But unfortunately, it doesn't change the old racial order. I think we need to let the old racial order just stay where it is and not seek to improve upon it. Not try to create more racial categories, because all that does is it makes a race stick around longer.

And in the racial climate of this country today, it is anybody's guess which of the 'extremes' in approach to the black man's problems might personally meet a fatal catastrophe first - 'non-violent' Dr. King, or so-called 'violent' me.

If President Obama wants to keep calling for protests, then that will be his legacy, one of division, rich versus poor, old versus young, black versus white, always dividing. That's what you get under President Obama.