Michael Beschloss Quotes

You have had presidential candidates over the last 30 years who would have had a very hard time getting nominated under the old system. One example is John Kennedy.

The good thing about having a Republican primary is that the voters will decide our nominee - unlike the Democrats.

I think it would be an extreme poverty indeed if there weren't more than one person willing to compete for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party.

I normally don't endorse in Democratic primaries.

It’s hard to be a front-runner in the Democratic Party. My party tends to destroy front-runners.

In the Democratic party they call the people who lost the last election losers. In the Republican party, we call them the next nominee.

… to get the Republican nomination for President, you have to be an outsider.

The party of Kennedy is also the party of Eastland. The party of Javits is also the party of Goldwater.

It was a terrible idea by the Democrats to support Hillary Clinton.

In 1984, I managed Walter Mondale's campaign for president. Mondale won the nomination after a bruising battle with Colorado Senator Gary Hart and Reverend Jesse Jackson.

So the result was that as one approached a political convention for most of the 19th century and for most of the 20th century until the 1960's, part of the drama was the fact that you didn't know ultimately who was going to be the nominee at the end of that convention week.

Far be it from me to denigrate Senator McCain's advice on vice presidential nominees.

What we're seeing early on is Democrats rallying around Al Gore, Republicans rallying around George Bush and the difficulty of anybody else to get any room in the race.

Only in Washington would the Republican operatives get the entire press corps ginned up over the notion that I'm going to be home campaigning instead of going to a bunch of worthless parties at a convention that's only being held to do something we all know is going to happen anyway.

I'm a registered Democrat.

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

I have never understood the Iowa caucus.

Now, national conventions are largely an excuse for companies and party leaders to throw parties for delegates to attend, to network and have a good time.

The Democratic Party, all the candidates from Washington, they all know each other, they all move in the same circles, and what I'm doing is breaking into the country club.

A lot of people criticize the primaries, but I think they are absolutely essential to the education of the President of the United States.

With the end of the nominating process, American politics leaves logic behind.

…the fact of the Convention was the defeat of Seward rather than the nomination of Lincoln.

Iowa caucuses have been a graveyard for hawkish Democrats.

A caucus is basically an undemocratic method of selecting a candidate.

Have we come to the point where the Democratic Party needs a Republican President?