Howard Dean Quotes

The people we elect aren't bipartisan. The American public is bipartisan.

We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists

The only bipartisan place in D.C. is Brooks Brothers.

Despite our differences, I know that both Republicans and Democrats love America.

You see, to me, it doesn't really matter if an elected official has a D or an R behind her name, or his name. I honestly don't give a damn about who belongs to either political party.

Perhaps America works like this: Presidencies swing, as reactions to each other, like a pendulum. My optimistic belief is it is how we keep our country in balance.

I'm too fiscally conservative for the Democrats and too socially liberal for the Republicans, like 75% of the American people.

You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between left or right. Well, I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down.

In the American political system, you're only allowed to have real ideas if it's absolutely guaranteed that you can't win an election

We remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are and forever will be the United States of America.

I'm a Red American; I believe in tax cuts. But I'm a Red American with a lot of Blue stripes.

There's no reason why fiscal responsibility is a Democrat or a Republican point of view. It ought to be all of our points of view.

For a while under Donald Trump, it was possible to believe that we could go back to a more functional, less rancorous time. This desire was expressed most eloquently at John McCain's funeral services.

Republicans are being counseled to move the party to the left, but in my experience, those who advocate more liberal policies for the GOP are wrongheaded or Democrats, or both.

For all the talk about the bitterness and the partisanship in American politics, is it really that bitter and partisan? Think of American history. Think of Joseph McCarthy. Think of the New Left. Think of [George] McGovern. Think of [Ronald] Reagan. Think of George Wallace. We've had an awful lot of real extremism on both wings.

I was no party man myself, and the first wish of my heart was, if parties did exist, to reconcile them.

I think you can't demonize somebody that's on the other side of the political spectrum, or you can't generalize about them.

When activists say we need to move past the partisan divide, what they mean is: Shut up and get with my program. Have you ever heard anyone say, "We need to get past all of this partisan squabbling and name-calling. That's why I'm going to abandon all my objections and agree with you"?

When liberals' presidential nominees consistently fail to carry Kansas, liberals do not rush to read a book titled "What's the Matter With Liberals' Nominees?" No, the book they turned into a bestseller is titled "What's the Matter With Kansas?" Notice a pattern here?

I think we've had two presidents in a row that tried to unite the American people and both of them failed, quite frankly. And I think Donald Trump has decided he's going to get things done. That's going to be his measuring rod.

The truth is that America has been closely divided politically for quite some time. That was reflected in some of the challenges I had with the Republican Congress.

According to today's Los Angeles Times, Gray Davis now gets negative job ratings from white people, black people, Latinos, Republicans, Independents and even Democrats. Say what you want about the guy but he's a uniter!

I think there's going to be a tug of war in this country over who are the real patriots because at a time of national crisis, economic collapse and calamity, ecological peril and social dislocation, the American people deserve to be a partner to the American government.

The president is the president. And every American, regardless of who you voted for, if you voted for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Donald Duck, I don't really care. We should all hope that the president does a good job, that he's surrounded by wise counselors, that he advances U.S. interests.

In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, we owe it to the Democrats to show their president the exact same kind of respect and loyalty that they have shown our recent Republican president.