Kevin Drum Quotes

Why aren't Democrats voting against President [Donald] Trump's cabinet nominees en masse? Is it because they're just a bunch soft-headed Beltway lifers who don't understand that the base is pissed and wants them to fight fight fight?

If Democrats vote against everyone sight unseen, then Republicans will vote for everyone sight unseen. However, if Democrats demonstrate that they’re considering each candidate on the merits, they have at least a fighting chance of defeating one or two of Trump’s nominees.

[Donald trump] was steamed about [Hillary] Clinton's suggestion that he might not be as rich as he says. So he ditched the email stuff and instead spend a couple of minutes defending the greatness of his income, his company, his debts, his bankers, his buildings - and then sort of forgot what he was talking about and wandered off into a riff about how terrible our infrastructure is.

I don't support everything Bernie Sanders supports, but I support most of it: universal health care, reining in Wall Street, fighting climate change, reversing the growth of income inequality, and so forth. If we could accomplish all this in a couple of years, I'd be delighted. But we can't.

The WHO took care to explicitly say that processed meat didn’t rank alongside smoking when it comes to cancer risk.

So many theories. But all of them have one thing in common: They demonstrate that although Trump isn’t much of a businessman, he is rich enough to hire good tax attorneys who will hand over huge stacks of forms for him to sign blindly. That’s a helluva qualification for president, isn’t it?

The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.

[David] Muir tried four or five times to get a straight answer about [Donald] Trump's idiotic claim that 3-5 million noncitizens voted, and Trump just flatly wouldn't engage.

They [Republicans] assume that military action always shows strength, while avoiding military action always shows weakness. That's just crazy.

The younger you are, the more likely you are to have grown up in a (mostly) lead-free environment, and that means you're less likely to have committed a felony or gotten sent to prison.

You're more likely to vote Democratic if you hate Republicans than if you love Democrats, and vice versa.

Despite more than a year of spittle-flecked fury at Hillary Clinton for using a private email server, most Trump voters probably don’t even know what a private server is. Nor do they care. It was just a buzzword that somehow meant Hillary was a crook.

If Robert Heinlein is more to your taste than George Lucas: “If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for, but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against.” That’s certainly true of me. Over my lifetime, the Republican Party has done far more to repulse me than the Democratic Party has done to appeal to me. But the result in the voting booth would be about the same either way.

[Ronald]Reagan and[George W.] Bush were far more radical than other presidents.

Like it or not, war is not always the answer. The better part of wisdom is to stay out.

The fallout from the Supreme Court halfway killing Obamacare would likely be more serious than conservatives believe...Even their own base, which has been told relentlessly that Obamacare represents the end of the America they love, might start to demand a fix once it becomes clear just what they’re missing - and what all those blue states with their own exchanges are getting.

Apparently the Republican base got radicalized first, and Democrats picked up the ball later. Or something.

Donald Trump lied about criticizing Mark Zuckerberg.Ben Carson lied about Mannatech.Carli Fiorina lied about the size of the tax code.Marco Rubio flatly refused to answer a question ("discredited attacks from Democrats") that I guess he didn't think he could just lie about. This is quite a debate.

When Donald Trump disingenuously demands to know why [Hillary] Clinton never tried to close the loopholes he used, the answer is: She did. And if there had been any way to make it retroactive, she probably would have voted for that too.

The ability to focus on a single task for an extended period is a talent that’s underappreciated - especially by extroverts, who continue to exercise an unhealthy hegemony over most workplaces.

I think [Hillary] Clinton owes the press some thanks for going so far overboard on the emails and the Clinton Foundation over the past year.

The FBI released its report on [Hillary] Clinton's emails. It exonerated her almost completely, but a few days later Matt Lauer obliviously spent a full third of his interview with Clinton on the emails anyway. Lauer was widely pilloried for this.

Donald Trump says he's going to change the no-guns policy at his resorts. I can't wait to see that.

If Trump really opposed the war in Iraq, all he has to do is show us the evidence. It would take five minutes. He hasn’t done it. He’s lying.

I've long believed that having multiple official languages makes it very hard to sustain a united polity.

I hate the idea that we might lose even a few talented future leaders because they fell for Bernie Sanders's spiel and then got discouraged when it didn't pan out.

The folks who want to be left alone are the ones who actually get most of the work done, but they’re still mocked as drones or beavers or trolls. That’s bad enough, but now technology is helping the extroverts in their long twilight campaign against actually concentrating on anything.

Black crime rates fell more steeply than white crime rates, and now black incarceration is falling more steeply than white incarceration.

Ben Carson says his flat tax will be around 15 percent. And by God, if he ever shows you the details, you'll see how awesome and deficit-killing it is.

I'd like to see college debt levels drop by a lot, but I'm not quite sure what the best way to do that is.

In any case, to the extent that the media is dedicated to exposing lies and reporting the truth, it is indeed the opposition party to people like Bannon.

In America, the economy is simply nowhere near bad enough to serve as the base of any kind of serious political revolution.

We didn't create ISIS. ISIS created ISIS.

Carli Fiorina is really annoying. Hell, they're all annoying. But Fiorina doesn't even pretend to offer up policy answers. She just gives mini stump speeches about how bad everything is.

I think liberals should accept that if we want big programs that significantly reduce inequality - and we should - it's going to require higher taxes on everyone. The rich can certainly do more, especially given their stupendous income increases since the Reagan era, but they can't do it all.

If you want to make a difference in America, you need to be prepared for a very long, very frustrating slog.

The plain fact is that recent college grads aren’t in massive pain. They suffered during the Great Recession like everyone else, but all told, they probably suffered a little less than most other groups.

If you don’t want your followers to give up in disgust, your inspiration needs to be in the service of goals that are at least attainable.

Betsy DeVos, for example, has shown that she’s flatly ignorant of an astounding amount of basic education policy. It might be possible to persuade two or three Republicans to oppose her on these grounds - but only if the entire confirmation process isn’t a pure partisan battle.

If I could snap my fingers and import France's health care system today, I'd do it.

During the [Barack] Obama presidency, the Dow doubled in real terms. What's more, its growth has been remarkably steady.

Apple has never allowed ad-blocking software on the iPhone or iPad. This is one among many reasons that I ditched both. Not because I hate ads all that passionately, but because it's an example of the obsessive corporate control Apple maintains over its environment.

Democrats are awfully sensitive to losing power for a few years. I report, you decide.

My fear is that having been promised a revolution, Bernie Sanders supporters will become disgusted and cynical when Hillary Clinton and the establishment win yet again and the revolution doesn't happen.

It’s certainly true that it’s easier to be patient about change when you’re not personally suffering...

Our system is a mess, but 90 percent of America has insurance coverage.

We stiffened the penalties for fraud, we extended nationwide efforts to make sure that payments are accurate and they closed a loophole in which people were gaming the system. We didn't change eligibility requirements or reduce the level of benefits.

The reporting is fake. Look, look...You know what it is? Here's the thing. The public isn't - you know, they read newspapers, they see television, they watch. They don't know if it's true or false because they're not involved.But I'm involved. So I know when you're telling the truth or when you're not. I just see many, many untruthful things.