You figure out, what is the crucial issue facing the country right now? And for Trump, it was that the global economy and the international world order were failing regular people.

The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year. . . . A year ago, the Obama supporters were the passionate ones. Now the tea party brigades have all the intensity.

One of the things I think about with Donald Trump is what are his words actually attached to? With Trump, I'm not sure the words have roots. They are emanations of his psyche, but has he thought it through? Is there an argument, is there a policy implication?

I wasn't born with a tie or with Mark Shields stapled to my left hip. I have another life.

Donald Trump is sitting on the control deck of the starship Enterprise, and he can push a lot of pretty buttons, but those buttons aren't connected to anything. And so nothing is happening.

Politics is based on social identity, and so, again, there is going to be differences between rural and urban and between left and right.

We know the 65-point policy points, to the extent that they exist, but is Hillary Clinton willing to be vulnerable, is she willing to be funny, is she willing to be both authoritative, but also real? And so less what she says than the emotional tone she sets. It takes a lot of confidence to be a vulnerable speaker on this stage. And sometimes she hasn't always projected the confidence it takes to be in some ways weak. But that's what I think people were looking for, that moment of human connection.