Mara Liasson Quotes

In 2012, African-Americans were 13 percent of the electorate, and 93 percent of them voted for [Barack] Obama.

Many people feel he did cross a line in a way he hadn't even done before and also that Republicans had to speak out because they believe Trump poses a danger to the party.

If the Congress is going to spend its whole time hauling up regulators and bureaucrats and looking like they're focusing on tiny, trivial things, instead of jobs and the economy, it could be a problem for them.

Ted Cruz is a small-government conservative.

Donald Trump has said he wants to keep Medicare and Social Security the way they are. Congressman Price along with most Republicans are on record supporting voucherizing Medicare. So there are going to be some conflicts to resolve there.

For Democrats, anything less than 15 net pickups will be a disappointing outcome [in presidency race].

If [Hillary] Clinton can't boost African-American turnout, even with all that help, the question becomes whether she can make up for it with historic levels of support from Hispanics and suburban women.

If [Donald] Trump loses narrowly, it will make it much harder for the GOP to unify. Under that scenario, the Trumpists are likely to argue that the election was lost because the Republican establishment failed to rally around the choice their own voters made.

The [Hillary] Clinton campaign's recent travel schedule shows how seriously it takes this problem. She and her surrogates have held rallies in cities like Philadelphia, Detroit and Cleveland, trying to boost turnout among African-Americans.

Well, we had a bunch of primaries and caucuses on the Democratic side. Bernie Sanders won the Nebraska and Kansas caucuses. That keeps his campaign alive. But Hillary Clinton won Louisiana, which was the big prize of the night, so she ended up winning more delegates than he did yesterday.

The GOP establishment, in particular, is facing a pick-your-poison kind of decision. Many establishment Republicans dislike [Ted] Cruz personally. He has no Senate endorsements.

Republican candidates have won whites with college degrees in every presidential election since polling began.

Until he announced his immigration policy last week, Obama had the support of most Hispanic voters - but not the enthusiasm they had shown for him in 2008. That may be changing in part because of the decision not to deport young immigrants whose undocumented parents brought them here as children.

Even if [Donald] Trump concedes, some of his supporters have promised to take up arms against [Hillary] Clinton.

Hillary Clinton is also not a very exciting, inspiring candidate to a lot of the left-leaning Democratic base, especially in Iowa.

The Republican Party, right now, is a conservative populist party.

The Senate is the big prize. Until recently, Democrats felt confident they could get the four seats they needed to take back control if [Hillary] Clinton is in the White House and Vice President Tim Kaine held the tie-breaking vote.

There's disgust with what people called a broken political system, and they're really angry at elites, whether it's the Republican establishment or particularly the media who they feel look down on them, tell them they're bigots.

Meanwhile, there are some traditional battleground states - like Ohio and Iowa - that are becoming older, whiter and less educated. That's turning them from true battlegrounds into more reliable red states.

There was tremendous animus to President [Barack] Obama. Many of people said he was un-American, not a Christian and worse.

The winner's margin of victory also matters. If it's a squeaker, that will make the lessons learned for both parties much murkier.

While Romney has an overall deficit with women voters, his biggest disadvantage is with college educated women - wherever they work, at home, in an office, a store or a factory.

The country wants the president and the Congress focused on jobs and the economy. Any regulation that the president promulgates that isn't focused on, I think, is a risk for him, and the same is true for Congress.

If [Hillary] Clinton wins, history will also be made: She would be the first female U.S. president, of course, but also the only candidate in the modern era, other than George H.W. Bush, who managed to follow a two-term president of her own party.

Republican voters are coalescing behind [Donald] Trump, but many Republican elected officials still say they can't support him.

What does [Hillary] Clinton do if she loses? Concede? Blame the Russians? Or the FBI?

Mitt Romney got 59 percent of the white vote in 2012, considered by many to be a high-water mark with this demographic group. Can [Donald] Trump win a higher share of white voters than Romney and get more of them to turn out?

In 2012, Hispanics were 10 percent of the electorate, underperforming their share of the voting-age population. Mitt Romney got 21 percent of their vote, and [Donald] Trump has been polling much lower than that.

Michael Rubio said Trump's plan was impulsive and not well thought out. The other thing that's really annoying Republicans is that this was supposed to be their great week. The president gave a speech on terrorism that was not well received. They were working hard to tie Hillary Clinton to the president. Then along comes Donald Trump, and the story changes dramatically.

People like Ted Cruz, who has tried to position himself as the best second choice for [Donald] Trump supporters, wouldn't condemn him.

The lesson is that voters in both parties are in a very anti-establishment, populist mood. Hillary Clinton is the establishment candidate.

As one conservative intellectual said to me - he said if the choice is between [Joseph] Stalin and [Adolf] Hitler, I'd pick Stalin, meaning Ted Cruz because he's more predictable. So there's real civil war inside the Republican Party.

Donald Trump's staffing up a pretty traditional, very conservative Republican government, not a populist outsider government, at least not yet.

Obama's even keel sometimes comes across as aloof or even cold.

[Donald] Trump's path to victory depends on getting historic levels of support from white voters, and particularly large numbers of white, non-college-educated voters.

No one is predicting that the Democrats will get the 30 pickups they need to take back the House majority.

I think that's why we see this mixed reaction - Republican congressional leaders like Paul Ryan speaking out very firmly, but Republican candidates not as much, with the exception of the candidates in the single digits like Jeb Bush or Lindsey Graham, who said how to make America great again tell - Donald Trump to go to hell.

The enthusiasm for [Donald] Trump had gone up. The net result was it made people more supportive of him.

If [Hillary] Clinton can come close in those two traditionally red states, it will be because of the diverse, educated populations around Atlanta and Phoenix. And it will be a sign that Arizona and Georgia are on their way to becoming the new battleground states.

If she Hillary Clinton win just two of the three big battleground states - North Carolina, Florida and Virginia - she will have shut off Trump's path to 270 electoral votes, even if he wins the other toss-up states.

Obama has built his public image around his ability to bridge divisions - racial, ideological or generational. And that was his reputation, even at Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the 'Law Review.

A big win for [Hillary] Clinton would allow her to claim that the country rejected Trumpism, while a narrow win leaves her limping into office with the highest unfavorable ratings for any new president.

Well, it's possible that the new infusion of ad money against Donald Trump kept his margins in Kentucky and Louisiana down a bit. But we're also seeing something that we've never seen in 100 years, which is we are seeing the crackup of a major American political party.

Does Donald Trump accept the results and concede graciously, pursue legal action, or tell his followers to take to the streets?

This year [2016], however, polls show [Hillary] Clinton winning white college-educated voters by double digits.

The Democrats pulled out one of their most powerful surrogates - and no, it wasn't President [Barack] Obama. Beyoncé showed up at a GOTV rally in Cleveland, joining her husband, Jay Z, and Hillary Clinton.

The establishment is divorcing itself from its base - from voters who are choosing a candidate who says he stands for things that are anathema to the establishment.

If [Donald] Trump drags down a bunch of Senate Republicans, the post-election GOP assessment will be much more pessimistic.