Joe Lieberman Quotes

You've got to attract interest in your candidate. The problem when you're running far behind is that you've got to move through those positive phases very quickly. Then, you have to draw attention to the other guy. You've got to create interest in why you differ from him and you've got to create a desire to remove him.

If you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things.

If you don't have a record to run on, you paint your opponent as someone to run from.

Democrats are afraid of polls. Republicans aren't afraid of polls. Republicans make polls. Democrats run from polls.

President Obama is now losing to 'Republican Nominee' in polls - no name needed.

Political consultants are pugilists, masters in the dark art of negativity. Which is why it's surprising to hear Democrats such as Steve McMahon and Republicans like Rich Galen urging their presidential candidates to be more, well, positive.

How can you work with someone if you went into their state to campaign against them?

I've got a really hard election. If you had a really hard election and it was after Labor Day would you go to North Carolina to a bunch of parties and glad-handing or would you stay home and work as hard as you know how to convince Missourians they should rehire you?

There's a basic law, Klein's second, or third, or fourth law of politics in the TV age, which is warm always beats cold, with the exception of Richard Nixon. The nicer guy usually wins.

Democrats tend to think of elections as cycles. Republicans don't: It's ongoing and constant.

I mean, people need to remember without the grassroots, Ronald Reagan probably doesn't become president of the United States of America and he worked the grassroots on a regular basis during his political career and especially between the years of 1976 and 1980 after the loss in Kansas City.

If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls compete with a President fresh from a war victory.

The first thing you've got to do in any kind of election campaign is be flexible.

It sounds good to say you're going to campaign everywhere, but ultimately you have to make choices.

In politics, familiarity doesn't breed contempt. It breeds votes.

Joe Biden stands out from other Democratic candidates not just by taking on President Trump directly but also by seeking to separate Trump from the rest of the Republican Party.

I've had four presidential candidates visit me in the tents, and they all lost. I tried to get Hillary down here, but she's too smart. She won't come to the tents.

A traditional presidential campaign has a media bus with the candidate's name on it and an itinerary days in advance. Trump has a plane with his name on it (that we aren't invited on) and an itinerary that often mutates daily, along with his talking points.

I think the president's quite comfortable being the underdog. I think he's happy to run this race from - as if he were behind the whole time.

I was young. I was 23 or 24. I just wasn't a fan of the politics of campaigning - of going into that environment and competing and trying to get into the good graces of the writers.

If you're running because you want a job that's prestigious or because you have this vague knowledge that you're better than everybody else, you're easier to beat.

President Obama is going to have to run against himself. In tough times, nobody can defeat himself.

Any Democrat who squirms on the tax-cut issue in the primaries has no chance ' zero ' to win the nomination. Each will have to take the “pledge” to oppose the Bush tax cuts. Thus, Bush will have succeeded in creating a situation where anyone who can win the nomination can't win the election. Democrats are not about to nominate anyone who backs the tax cut, and Americans are not going to elect anyone who favors a tax increase.

When I am the candidate, I run the campaign.

Here's why Sarah Palin says she won't be running for president. She says she can be more effective at getting others elected by not running. And I thought, well, that's true, because in 2008 she got Obama elected.