And if you look at these tax cuts, they got a good return for their investment. I mean, people say, "Gosh, how did Bush raise $200 million, $300 million?" I say it's peanuts compared to the tax cuts he gave. It's not even a tithe, you know? Not even 1 percent!

the press and the political opposition, were profoundly traumatized by what happened on [September 11], and we were angered and we wanted to be united. And we were collectively prepared to check our critical judgment in a deep freeze somewhere for a period of time.
And in that period, they actually had a chance to effect their realignment. But instead, they chose to use the moment to try to consolidate their power, to extend the secrecy of government and to move the country way, way to the right. And there was a slow but building reaction to it. ... And no democracy can go without debate for very long. So it was inevitable that one by one, the American people would go back to the deep freeze and get their brains back and start thinking, and that's basically what's happening now

But we shouldn't whine about that. Their job is to beat us. Our job is to beat them. If they come at us with a deal we think is a scam, we ought to be smart enough to expose it. So I'm not mad at them. That's their job

The public is operationally progressive and rhetorically conservative. The more they believe that you're careful with tax money and responsible in the way you run the programs and require responsibility from citizens, the more the public in general is willing to be liberal in the expenditure of tax money. The more the public believes the Democrats can be trusted with the national security of America, to protect and defend the country against terror and weapons of mass destruction, the more free they are emotionally to think about the other issues

TAP: Vol 14, Iss. 10. The Clinton Formula. Michael Tomasky.: "Essentially, Karl Rove's politics are a combination of efforts by the increasingly conservative Republican Party to recover from the '64 election and assume a dominant position in America -- through the advocacy of ideas and policies that were designed to have more appeal to the middle class, through the use of socially conservative issues that were designed to get people to vote for them for reasons other than economic ones"

We can't win if people think we're too liberal. But we can't get our own folks out if people think we have no convictions. So the trick is to get them both.


Well, first of all I think the Democrats ought to all pocket some of the gains I made. They ought to say, "We're the party that gave you responsible welfare reform. We're the party that gave you fiscal responsibility, low interest rates and high growth. And we're the party that gave you the weapons systems and the training programs that won in Iraq and Afghanistan." The question is, what do we do now?
[The Republicans'] argument to their base is gonna be, "We kept our promises. We promised to cut taxes as much on wealthy people as we could, and we did it. We promised to weaken environmental controls, and we did it. We promised to weaken labor regulations and put less money into workers' safety and more money into investigating unions. We promised to put right-wingers on the court, and we've done it every chance we got. We promised to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and we did it, and we promised to undo everything Bill Clinton did, and we did a lot of that." So that's their promises to their base.
if we were growing jobs and growing the economy, the government then should make extra efforts to help the poor.

Now what we should say is that they, not we, have brought class warfare back to America. You know, every time I complain about these tax cuts some conservative says I'm practicing class warfare. I am not.

I think for somebody to give me a tax cut and then turn around and say, "We've gotta have $87 billion spent in Iraq, but we're gonna kick 300,000 kids out of after-school programs, 84,000 kids out of student loans ... 25,000 uniformed police off the street? We're gonna kick a coupla thousand police off the street in New York City who put their lives on the line on September the 11th, and they're gonna give me a tax cut?" That's class warfare! And I think we ought to say that!

I don't want our side ever to treat the Republicans with the sort of personal animosity and contempt with which Hillary and I and Al were treated. I don't like that, I don't believe that, I don't think that's necessary. But we got to argue. And we got to fight hard. Otherwise they'll run right over us like they did in 2002

the government should only take your money to do those things which you need done collectively, which we have to do as a community

we ought to say, "It's your money, and it's your country. What kind of country do you want?"

there are some things that are not open to debate. One is the historic mission of America, to form a more perfect union. What does that mean? It means widening the circle of opportunity, deepening the meaning of freedom and strengthening the bonds of community

we need to use the rhetoric of passion, commitment and combat on behalf of ordinary people without ever slipping into the kind of vicious, personal, evidence-free -- to use my wife's phrase -- assaults that they're so good at.

But we've got to fight. And we gotta look like we're havin' a good time doing it.