Barbara Mikulski Quotes

I'm a growth-is-good Democrat.

We can create a new kind of politics: kinder, more respectful, but courageous, too.

We need to remake the Democratic party. We need to remake America.

The hope of a new politics does not lie in formulating a left-wing reply to the right-it lies in rejecting conventional political categories.

I've been intrigued by politics my whole life. And, yes, I am very close to the Clintons. I was a Hillary person until I was an Obama person. And she was a Hillary person, too, until she was an Obama one, evidently.

The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear.

There is no hope even that woman, with her right to vote, will ever purify politics.

I've tried to lead a progressive, activist government.

Concerns about the size and role of government are what seem to leave reformers stammering and speechless in town-hall meetings. The right wants to have a debate over fundamental principles; elected Democrats seem incapable of giving it to them.

History indicates that indiscriminately copying Western political systems is a blind alley for China.

My goal for the Arab world is to change the status quo, which is horrible politically, religiously, economically, in every way.

Sometimes in Congress I believe change is impossible …. Democrats read too many polls to change the climate. Republicans benefit from the climate too much to want to change it.

We can’t change our government unless we change the people who run it.

Political reforms, without exception, have a down side.

Political evils must be sorely felt before they can be removed.

Constant, patient reform—the only kind of reform compatible with Democratic stability—is unsatisfying.

You can reform a political culture, but it’s a big lift. First, the voters would have to convince the legislators that they’re being watched by someone other than the lobbyists. Then they’d have to press for laws that would force a change of behavior, like nonpartisan redistricting and ethics reform. Then the voters would have to follow up, year after year, until the old guard was replaced by a whole new generation who went into politics with dreams of drafting serious legislation, rather than just bringing more stuff back into the district or, at worst, shaking down some landlord at the airport for a thousand bucks.

I am not just a liberal movement. I come from the progressive Left. I am trying to refresh and counter the system.

Ultimately, Hillary and Obama are on the same side.

My father, Birch Bayh, represented Indiana in the Senate from 1963 to 1981. A progressive, he nonetheless enjoyed many friendships with moderate Republicans and Southern Democrats.

If I was such a corporate Democrat, why would the California Nurses Association, one of the leading advocates for a single-payer system, endorse me?

Imagine a progressive president fighting to fix the insane economic inequality in the country or to end the senseless drug war or, best of all, battling to get money out of politics. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

Baltimore is a city of possibility, and we've got to challenge the traditional pathways of politics and politicians who lay those paths.

I would love to work with the SDP, the Workers' Party and with all the other small parties.

The days of Democrats biding our time, biting our tongue, and triangulating at the margins are over.