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.

Conventions don't nominate people anymore. Primaries do.

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

I could probably win the Presidency if I ran, but I don’t think I could win the nomination.

As far as party primaries are concerned, both Republican and Democratic Party primaries are dominated by the most zealous voters, whose views may not reflect the views of most members of their own respective parties, much less the views of those who are going to vote in the November general election. In recent times, each election year has seen each party's nominee selected - or at least subject to veto - by its most extreme wing and then forced to try to move back to the center before the general election. This can only undermine the public's confidence in the integrity of the candidates of both parties.

I am very confident that in 2008, people's votes will count. I don't think they did in 2004. I think in 2008, they will.

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

Because of our peculiar electoral law, the American government is divided between two parties. The American people are not.

I joked at our National Convention that our party was nominating a candidate for president who was charismatic, larger than life, memorable, so they wanted to balance the ticket.

In this rigged, two-party system, third parties almost never win a national election. It's obvious what our function is in this constricted oligarchy of two corporate-indentured parties - to push hitherto taboo issues onto the public stage, to build for a future, to get a young generation in, keep the progressive agenda alive, push the two parties a little bit on this issue and that.

Growing up in the 1980s, I remember when the GOP was the party of ideas. Now it's brain dead.

The Republican Party is too fixated on this fiction of electability.

A great many of us have been concerned about the presidential nomination system... whether or not we have drifted into a system that simply doesn't work so well any more.

I think people more and more are tired of the party system. People want good candidates and good people to win.

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.

There is a system in BJP as to who would be projected as a chief ministerial candidate or a prime ministerial candidate. The proper forum to take decision is only central parliamentary board.

Needed reform of the nominating procedures has been thwarted by the individual vested interests of the DNC members in maintaining the maze of primaries and caucuses.

People are sick of the political system and the players in the system - BJP, Congress, Akalis. They want a good alternative and those who can deliver.

Whether or not your candidate wins, the crucial importance is the integrity of our voting system. You have to engage in the process in order to change it.

Any country is either becoming more democratic or less democratic. I think the United States hasn't tended to its journey toward democracy in a long time.

To defeat Donald Trump, the Democrats must run a stellar cast of all-stars in their primary.

There's Lindsey Graham 1.0 and then there's Lindsey Graham 2.0. I could not beat Lindsey Graham 1.0. That was the John McCain-Lindsey Graham.

Elections come and go, people win and lose, that is part of politics. It doesn't anyway change things on the ground.

Ford O'Connell, the guy in the sound bite we just played, he's the guy who said that nominating a conservative presidential candidate would just postpone the GOP nightmare.

The Republicans initially sort of saw George W. Bush as a blank canvas, didn't they? It seems like they interviewed him when he was governor of Texas to see what kind of candidate he could be.