The problem that we have is that most Americans don't even study American history, let alone Pinochet, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and all these guys.

In a two-year period, all my dreams came true: the birth of a son... publishing a best-selling book... launching a successful organization... joining the [Barack] Obama Administration... And then all my nightmares came true.

All the signals that the Democratic Party is a party that tolerates snobbery and bigotry against, frankly, a lot of traditional Christians, a lot of white guys who work hard every day and who don't feel that they are on top of the world, those signals are clear and it's a turn off.

Audacity is the currency for authoritarians.

That America is in the calamity is a result of a certain amount of elitism in the Democratic Party where they're tied to the sensibility of the college-educated, multicultural crowd, of which I'm a part, which has created a sense where it's OK to say, "All the red state voters are stupid, they're all dummies, they're all racist, they're all backwards mouth-breathing knuckle-dragging ..." all that stuff. And that kind of elitism, which is first of all not true, is also not fair. It's also dumb strategy.

I'm the first one in my family born with all my rights. I'm a ninth generation American.

If you look at my career over the past twenty years, I've always been trying to look around corners for low-income communities of color.