Rachel Maddow Quotes

Psychology is the only necessary skill for running for president. Trump knows psychology.

The campaign for the White House is heating up with John Kerry taking heat for throwing his Vietnam medals away, getting a $1000 haircut, and wearing a 1970s wig known as 'the Leno.' There are really two sides to this story. And America can't wait for Kerry to present both of them.

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.

Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter has filed papers to run for president. But in his official filing, he misspelled the word 'president.' Political experts say it's all part of Hunter's plan to attract Bush supporters.

[Ted] Cruz may have been hoping his reversal would fly under the radar.

Anytime you have a reelection campaign against an incumbent president and you're the party out of power - on the one hand it's wide open because there's not an heir apparent - but people are also gauging how strong is that incumbent president and what are my chances.

I don't want a headline saying 'Kennedy suggests this or implies that.'

When politicians began to see that every last thing that they did in public could be broadcast to a mass audience, the fact that the stakes were so much higher now that every moment became fraught caused them to become more cautious, and the consultants very gradually but inevitably became literal reactionaries.

In the Democratic primary in 2008, the Obama team devised a strategy to use the caucuses and a complicated system of awarding delegates in the state primaries to sneak up on Hillary Clinton and establish a lead Obama never surrendered.

The media tried to destroy my parents and has taken things completely out of context, but there's not a whole lot you can do in terms of fighting back. You have to hope that it passes, which it always does. But they have to be careful. They didn't necessarily sign up for this.

Downplaying their faults is pretty much the point of campaigns. But we do count on them living with the constant terror of public rejection.

The losing side is comforted, I think, by this idea of magical gurus [masterminding the opponent’s campaign], because it’s less disconcerting than the fact that people just didn’t like them very much.

I think that people have realized it's very unwise to bet against Donald Trump.

There's no question I'm going to do everything within the normal political bounds to make sure we don't nominate Donald Trump.

Nobody understood how to use television for his own purposes better than Nixon, despite his poor showing against John F. Kennedy in the televised presidential debate.

A campaign adviser can change the outside appearance of the candidate, but the ideology and personality of the candidate remains the same.

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.

The big story today, Barack Obama was accused of insulting Sarah Palin when he criticized Republican policies by saying, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. Political experts say that if Obama keeps insulting Palin, he could lose the election and win a job at MSNBC.

If Ross Perot runs, that's good for us. If he doesn't run, it's good for us.

I saw that with Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin in 2008. I mean, I came away from the 2008 campaign feeling really icky.

I commissioned two political experts to advise me about what I could do to oppose the re-election of President Bush.

John Kerry suspended his campaign for five days this week in honor of President Reagan. And right now, he's ahead in the polls. How's that make him feel? Disappears for a week and he's up in the polls. What else can he do now but go into hiding.

The Democrats are all over this. Democratic strategists feel John Kerry's war record means he can beat Bush. They say when it comes down to it voters will always vote for a war hero over someone who tried to get out of the war. I'll be sure to mention that to Bob Dole when I see him.

Was it a risky move? Yes, but at that moment, the reason why I came out is I thought it wasn't going to be a big deal. Maybe I was naive. Maybe I thought it was 2014, and people will understand that there's gay NFL players. There's gay athletes everywhere. But I was clearly wrong. It was a huge deal.

So now the question is, basically, right now, how will the Osama Bin Laden tape affect the election? And I have a feeling that it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I'm a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, that he probably set up bin Laden to this thing.