Lawrence O'Donnell Quotes

Barbara Lee Speaks for Me!

If the resistance is going to bring Trump down, it will require Democrats to follow the people, not the other way around. My hope is that the Democrats will realize where their power lies, and will start taking their cues from the people on the ground and not the other way.

Keith Ellison is the future of the Democratic Party, the future of the progressive movement.

Leftism should be about the people. That's how it began.

I co-founded the DNC Veterans and Military Families Council in 2005.

Thank you for the opportunity for the Democratic Party and progressives to reclaim the votes of the sane citizens of these United States.

The people are way ahead of the Congress. They are way ahead of the administration.

Republicans lobby; Democrats march.

The Democratic Party has to be run by progressives... because we can't let another monster like Donald Trump win again... even if we seem impolite in our fight back against him.

We need to stand up to Donald Trump and the Republicans, but we also need to stand up against our own party establishment when it's on the wrong side of an issue.

I'm a member of the Michigan Democratic Party, a DSA member, member of the League of Women Voters, ACLU.

I think Millennials are more progressive, more socially progressive, much more concerned about economic issues that impact the poor and middle class, and so that basically shows me that the Democratic party will have a bright future.

If you're going to be a fighter, and you're going to fight for the future of this country and lead the Democratic Party, then you can't be ducking fights.

Sometimes things need to get really bad before they can ever get better. Really bad can become untenable if enough people get sick of it. That was a big thing about why I ended up taking part in that rally [against police brutality] and ended up voicing my opinion and declaring what side I was standing on.

The Democratic Party has become the party of Bernie Sanders, I mean they are the progressives. That's who control.

I am a member of Congress. And I do have a choice as to whether or not to continue as DNC chair and be neutral and do everything I can and put in the kind of time and hours and days on the road that I do to make sure that we can elect Democrats up and down the ballot and elect a Democrat as president. Or I could not be chair and go work for the candidate of my choice. I'm choosing to remain as chair so that I can fight like hell to make sure that the jokers on the other side of the aisle aren't able to get hold of the White House.

And let me say this as a politician I can promise you this, political leaders will never take risks if the people do not push them to take some risks. You must create the change that you want to see.

Progress in general seems to hold little interest for people who call themselves 'progressives.' What arouses them are denunciations of social failures and accusations of wrong-doing.

The most important assets we have are our bodies and our energy which can be put to good use as resources in political activism for poor and working people.

I had been friendly with people who were in the Communist party and all the rest of the Left forces, which were oriented in the direction of mass action.

So every time the Democratic Party appears to be lifting up a principled, people-powered agenda, it slaps it down and it keeps becoming more dominated by corporate money and corporatist, militarist policies.

Hillary Clinton does represent the establishment. I represent, I hope, ordinary Americans, and by the way, who are not all that enamored with the establishment, but I am very proud to have people like Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva in the House, the co-chairmen of the House Progressive Caucus.

Activism spawned by Sanders campaign is beginning to make inroads into electoral politics. Under Barack Obama, the Democratic Party pretty much collapsed at the crucial local and state levels, but it can be rebuilt and turned into a progressive force. That would mean reviving the New Deal legacy and moving well beyond, instead of abandoning, the working class and turning into Clintonite New Democrats, which more or less resemble what used to be called moderate Republicans, a category that has largely disappeared with the shift of both parties to the right during the neoliberal period.

Throughout American history, the political leaders have always exhorted the American people to be nice and quiet and leave things to them. But when very serious evils confronted the American people, they had to go beyond the Congressmen and Senators, and they had to commit civil disobedience and they had even to break the law.

I am, as many people are, inspired by Jack Layton's legacy and the way that he approached politics.