Electoral Realignment Quotes

Federalists, Whigs, Democratic-Republicans; parties are born, parties die, and parties realign themselves to adapt to shifting demographics and attitudes.

Incumbents are safe, but party majorities are not. This fosters symbolic votes, message politics and little serious legislating in Congress.

The Democratic Party needs to look carefully at moving towards the middle, where the American people are.

Parties don't lose overnight, there is a gradual erosion of their base and electoral machine, which leads to sometimes cataclysmic defeat.

With the likely nominations of Barack Obama by the Democrats and John McCain by the Republicans, one of these two parties is headed for a 2009 crack-up that could prove as messy as any party civil war in recent history.

The world is still changing. Faster than ever. And so should the Republican Party. Or condemn itself to a smaller and smaller base of core supporters and permanent minority status.

Admittedly, no Republican can get elected statewide in California anymore, but nor can what we think of as, nationally, the Democratic Party. There are no Joe Bidens running; it is not working-class Democrats vs. liberal Democrats, or whatever their division is these days. It is Hispanic Democrats vs. Asian Democrats.

Much of the media failed to anticipate the potential Trump represented as a disruptive populist force, understand why his supporters trusted him, or offer honest reporting on the underlying trends that made his rise possible.

The president is under 50 percent approval ratings in all the battleground states. So, you could say that President Obama is defying gravity by still being in a dead heat with Mitt Romney. And one of the reasons that he is, is because the changing face of the electorate are giving him a small boost.

I think the Democratic Party has picked a lot of the wrong candidates, the kind that Middle America, or people who are more down the middle and more rational, can't side with. I think that's been the problem.

Political nature abhors a vacuum, which is what often exists for a year or two in a party after it loses a presidential election.

The political parties have lost their loyalties.

Senator Arlen Specter hasn't really switched parties; he's simply realized he cannot win the Pennsylvania Republican primary election.

I think if you look all across the country, the so-called Blue Dogs are all gone to kennel. There are no more Blue Dogs, they're called Republicans. People would rather elect consistently conservative Republicans than Blue Dogs, who are only conservative when it's convenient.

The history of the Republican Party shows why, since the Civil War, the nation has been caught in cycles of progressivism and reaction.

Romney is a classic case of re-invention. As governor of Massachusetts, he supported government-sponsored healthcare, was sympathetic to gay rights, and opposed harsh restrictions on abortion. After measuring the difference between the Massachusetts electorate and the national one to which he must now appeal, he has reversed those positions.

Major realigning events can reshape coalitions and change how large groups of people view politics, policy, and the parties.

TThe 2016 election highlighted a deep, stark divide between how the political and punditry class think - and how the American people vote.

We need independents, we need the GOP, we need Reagan Democrats.

The nature of our two main political parties has changed in the United States.

The Tea Party isolated Mitt Romney from mainstream voters, linking him to a rabid ideology that he could not shake as he desperately tried to move to the middle in the closing weeks of the campaign. Lesson: The loudest voices don't often command the votes needed to win in November.

As the Republicans run to the crazy Tea Party right, they leave behind the huge mass of genuinely moderate and independent Americans that make up the majority of voters. The ones that used to consider themselves now-extinct moderate Republicans. They're up for grabs. And the Democrats have to grab them!