Stuart Rothenberg Quotes

The environment is better and better for Democrats.

If this isn't the Fat Lady singing, it's awful close to that. If Ari seriously thought she was a contender for the presidential nomination, he would not walk away right now.

I think the White House is filled with confrontation, and is doing things to continue it. The White House and congressional Democrats think that they have the upper hand. They look at the surveys, they look at the polls, they think the Republicans are going to get blamed.

I think it's less risky for the Kerry campaign to embrace former President Clinton than it is to reject him.

The Democratic coalition has changed. It includes environmentalists and women's groups. It's a very different party. And so labor is still a part of it, but it's not the dominant part that it once was.

[on debates] Accomplished a bit more for Bush than for Gore only because there were more question marks for Bush. I think he established that he possesses at least the minimum qualifications for being president.

Republicans have to be relieved. Given all the bad news this White House has faced, at least the president's hemorrhaging has stopped.

California is going to be quite good for the Democrats. But the rest of the country is a draw.

What we're seeing early on is Democrats rallying around Al Gore, Republicans rallying around George Bush and the difficulty of anybody else to get any room in the race.

It was a very different Republican Party in 2013. And so I think particularly the House Republicans are more confrontational, less willing to compromise even than the Republican class of '94.

The worst time to take a survey is in the middle of a cataclysmic event.

I think the Republican Party has changed. I think our politics have changed. The parties have deteriorated in their strength. They decentralized. We have these new super PACs and outside organizations and the Tea Party, a libertarian movement in the Republican Party. It's very different. And I think these Republicans now are very scared.

We will be drawing down some troops. If the president wants to try to turn that into the beginning of a success, he actually, I think, has some opportunity.