Democratic Party (United States)

[T]he liberal principles embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, and sanctioned in the Constitution, which makes ours the land of liberty, and the asylum of the oppressed of every nation, have ever been cardinal principles in the Democratic faith, and every attempt to abridge the present privilege of becoming citizens and the owners of soil among us, ought to be resisted with the same spirit which swept the alien and sedition laws from our statute book.

Resolved, That the Democratic party are in favor of the acquisition of the island of Cuba, on such terms as shall be honorable to ourselves and just to Spain, at the earliest practicable moment.

Resolved, That the Democratic party recognizes the great importance, in a political and commercial point of view, of a safe and speedy communication, by military and postal roads, through our own territory, between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of this Union, and that it is the duty of the Federal Government to exercise promptly all its constitutional power to the attainment of that object, thereby binding the Union of these States in indissoluble bonds, and opening to the rich commerce of Asia an overland transit from the Pacific to the Mississippi River, and the great lakes of the North.

Resolved, That the Democratic party recognizes the great importance, in a political and commercial point of view, of a safe and speedy communication, by military and postal roads, through our own territory, between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of this Union, and that it is the duty of the Federal Government to exercise promptly all its constitutional power to the attainment of that object, thereby binding the Union of these States in indissoluble bonds, and opening to the rich commerce of Asia an overland transit from the Pacific to the Mississippi River, and the great lakes of the North.

Resolved, That the Democratic party recognizes the great importance, in a political and commercial point of view, of a safe and speedy communication, by military and postal roads, through our own territory, between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of this Union, and that it is the duty of the Federal Government to exercise promptly all its constitutional power to the attainment of that object, thereby binding the Union of these States in indissoluble bonds, and opening to the rich commerce of Asia an overland transit from the Pacific to the Mississippi River, and the great lakes of the North.

[T]he liberal principles embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, and sanctioned in the Constitution, which makes ours the land of liberty, and the asylum of the oppressed of every nation, have ever been cardinal principles in the Democratic faith, and every attempt to abridge the present privilege of becoming citizens and the owners of soil among us, ought to be resisted with the same spirit which swept the alien and sedition laws from our statute book.

[T]he liberal principles embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, and sanctioned in the Constitution, which makes ours the land of liberty, and the asylum of the oppressed of every nation, have ever been cardinal principles in the Democratic faith, and every attempt to abridge the present privilege of becoming citizens and the owners of soil among us, ought to be resisted with the same spirit which swept the alien and sedition laws from our statute book.

You say you are conservative, eminently conservative, while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?

We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live;" while you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting something new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be. You are divided on new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the fathers...

You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it, and what is your proof? Harper's Ferry? John Brown? John Brown was no Republican, and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper's Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the proof. You need to be told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply malicious slander. Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper's Ferry affair... The Democrats cry John Brown invasion. We are guiltless of it, but our denial does not satisfy them. Nothing will satisfy them but disinfecting the atmosphere entirely of all opposition to slavery. They have not demanded of us to yield the guards of liberty in our state constitutions, but it will naturally come to that after a while. If we give up to them, we cannot refuse even their utmost request. If slavery is right, it ought to be extended; if not, it ought to be restricted, there is no middle ground. Wrong as we think it, we can afford to let it alone where it of necessity now exists; but we cannot afford to extend it into free territory and around our own homes. Let us stand against it!

I appeal to all, to Democrats as well as others, are you really willing that the Declaration shall be thus frittered away? Thus left no more at most, than an interesting memorial of the dead past? Thus shorn of its vitality, and practical value; and left without the germ or even the suggestion of the individual rights of man in it?

The Republicans inculcate, with whatever of ability they can, that the negro is a man; that his bondage is cruelly wrong, and that the field of his oppression ought not to be enlarged. The Democrats deny his manhood; deny, or dwarf to insignificance, the wrong of his bondage; so far as possible, crush all sympathy for him, and cultivate and excite hatred and disgust against him; compliment themselves as Union-savers for doing so; and call the indefinite outspreading of his bondage "a sacred right of self-government".

The Judge has alluded to the Declaration of Independence, and insisted that negroes are not included in that Declaration; and that it is a slander upon the framers of that instrument, to suppose that negroes were meant therein; and he asks you: Is it possible to believe that Mister Jefferson, who penned the immortal paper, could have supposed himself applying the language of that instrument to the negro race, and yet held a portion of that race in slavery? Would he not at once have freed them? I only have to remark upon this part of the Judge's speech, and that, too, very briefly, for I shall not detain myself, or you, upon that point for any great length of time, that I believe the entire records of the world, from the date of the *Declaration of Independence* up to within three years ago, may be searched in vain for one single affirmation, from one single man, that the negro was not included in *the Declaration of Independence* ; I think I may defy Judge Douglas to show that he ever said so, that Washington ever said so, that any President ever said so, that any member of Congress ever said so, or that any living man upon the whole earth ever said so, until the necessities of the present policy of the Democratic Party, in regard to slavery, had to invent that affirmation.

You say you are conservative — eminently conservative — while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live;" while you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting something new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be. You are divided on new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the fathers... Do you really feel yourselves justified to break up this government unless such a court decision as yours is, shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action? But you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union, and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, 'Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!' To be sure, what the robber demanded of me, my money, was my own, and I had a clear right to keep it, but it was no more my own than my vote is my own, and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle... The Democrats cry John Brown invasion. We are guiltless of it, but our denial does not satisfy them. Nothing will satisfy them but disinfecting the atmosphere entirely of all opposition to slavery. They have not demanded of us to yield the guards of liberty in our state constitutions, but it will naturally come to that after a while. If we give up to them, we cannot refuse even their utmost request. If slavery is right, it ought to be extended; if not, it ought to be restricted, there is no middle ground. Wrong as we think it, we can afford to let it alone where it of necessity now exists; but we cannot afford to extend it into free territory and around our own homes. Let us stand against it!

At the battle of Waterloo, when Napoleon's cavalry had charged again and again upon the unbroken squares of British infantry, at last they were giving up the attempt, and going off in disorder, when some of the officers in mere vexation and complete despair fired their pistols at those solid squares. The Democrats are in that sort of extreme desperation; it is nothing else.

if women who are Republicans simply help the Republican Party, and if women who are Democrats help the Democratic Party, women’s votes will not count for much. But if the political Parties see before them a group of independent women voters who are standing together to use their vote to promote Suffrage, it will make Suffrage an issue — the women voters at once become a group which counts; whose votes are wanted.

Many participants in the anti-war movement, people who went to rallies or gave money or were involved in some other way, were Democrats, and once they saw Democrats in power they felt the job was done, and that a Democratic-led government would end the war without such a need for outside pressure...

Many leaders of the anti-war movement were Democrats and were not well positioned or strongly inclined to battle with those Democrats in government who were continuing the war...

The anti-war movement was too closely tied to the Democratic Party and that it would've been better to have more of an independent identity.

I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic."

When each of us arrived here in the Senate, we took this oath to support and defend the constitution and as it says against all enemies foreign and domestic. I think it's interesting that the framers concede that there might be domestic enemies to the constitution. Our oath was not to the Republican Party, not to the Democratic Party, not to Joe Biden, not to Donald Trump, but our oath was to defend the constitution.

And right now — right now literally at this moment that constitution is under the most direct and consequential assault in our nation's history. An assault not on a particular provision but on the essential structure of the document itself. It's hard to grasp what is happening because of all the events that are swirling around us over the last several weeks. It's coming from so many different quarters and so many different actors. It's hard to get a picture of what's really happening fundamentally.

But this is an assault, and how we respond to it will define our life's work, our place in history, and the future of our country. None of us will ever face a greater challenge.

Democrats and Republicans are far apart on a lot of issues. And I recognize there are folks on the other side who think that my policies are misguided. That's putting it mildly. That's OK. That's democracy. That's how it works. We can debate those differences vigorously, passionately, in good faith, through the normal democratic process. And sometimes we'll be just too far apart to forge an agreement. But that should not hold back our efforts in areas where we do agree. We shouldn't fail to act on areas that we do agree or could agree just because we don't think it's good politics, just because the extremes in our party don't like the word "compromise." I will look for willing partners wherever I can to get important work done. And there's no good reason why we can't govern responsibly, despite our differences, without lurching from manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis.

We are now, probably for the first time in our history, entering a new aspect of national politics.

For the first time in the history of the country, a political party organized on the express doctrine, and with the avowed purpose, of overthrowing the Government, in the event of their being unable to control it through the ballot-box.

It is asserted here by gentlemen on the other side—by one portion of them—that if a Republican President shall be elected, they will resist his inauguration forcibly. That is one proposition made on the other side of the House, by the Democratic Party.

I take it for granted there can be no controversy about what that resistance amounts to. It can only be done by levying war against the United States. The thing threatened is treason against the United States. There can be no controversy about that.

Another portion say that, if a Republican President is elected, they will secede from the confederacy, and organize a separate and independent Confederacy of their own.

Whether that constitutes treason or not, is a matter of opinion, and may be a matter of controversy; but it is, nevertheless, equally fatal to the perpetuity of the existing Government and the existing institutions of the country.

We will rule this country, or we will ruin it. We will overturn this Government if we are not allowed to administer it ourselves."

That is the naked, undisguised proposition of the Democratic Party in the year of grace 186

Republicanism means Negro equality, while the Democratic Party means that the white man is supreme.

**Republicanism means Negro equality, while the Democratic Party means that the white man is supreme. That is why we [white] Southerners are all Democrats...

History has no record of Negro rule. The situation is grave, and calls for wisdom and all manner of statesmanship. If we had our say, the Negro could never vote. I believe that God made the white man out of better clay than that which the Negro was made from**... We don't need another race to help us at this time. In some of the states, the Negro holds the vote of control... In Chicago, the Republicans needed the Negro vote to elect their whole ticket, so a nigger was nominated for judge and elected.

We reorganized the Democratic Party with one plank and only one plank, namely, that this is a white man's country and the white men must govern it.

Donald Trump’s presidency represents an unprecedented crisis for our country. His campaign, and now his White House, seek to divide us using racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia and xenophobia.

His economic agenda is the agenda of the billionaire class. He wants more tax breaks for the rich, while cutting education, nutrition, affordable housing and other programs desperately needed by working families. And his refusal to acknowledge the great danger of climate change is a threat to the entire planet.

There is nothing, nothing more important than defeating Donald Trump and his extreme right-wing agenda. But this will not happen without an effective opposition party.

Victories in Virginia, New Jersey, Washington, Maine and other states around the country on Tuesday are an important first step in pushing back against Trump’s radical agenda.

It was especially gratifying to see thousands of working people and young people jump into the political process, volunteering, knocking on doors and winning elections to state legislatures, city councils and school boards.

But the longer-term trend for the Democratic Party is worrisome. Since 2009, it has lost more than 1,000 seats in state legislatures across the country. Republicans now control the White House and 34 (soon to be 33) out of 50 governorships, as well as the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. In 26 states, Republicans control the governor's mansion along with the entirety of the state legislature.

This is not just in so-called deep red states. It is true in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Florida and New Hampshire, all of which will be critical to defeating Trump in 2020, and in drawing congressional districts following that year’s Census.

What is especially absurd about this situation is that the American people strongly oppose almost all elements of the Trump-Republican agenda. Fewer than one-third of Americans support the Trump and Republican tax cuts for the wealthy, and just 12 percent supported their plan to throw tens of millions of people off of their health care. The majority of Americans understand that climate change is real.

Donna Brazile’s recent book makes it abundantly clear how important it is to bring fundamental reforms to the Democratic Party. The party cannot remain an institution largely dominated by the wealthy and inside-the-Beltway consultants. It must open its doors and welcome into its ranks millions of working people and young people who desperately want to be involved in determining the future of our nation.

Last year, Secretary Hillary Clinton and I agreed upon the need for a Unity Reform Commission to move the party in a new and more democratic direction. In a few weeks, this group will have its final meeting in Washington, D.C., and will decide if we are going to move forward in an inclusive way or continue with the current failed approach.

This is not some abstract, insular debate. The future of Democratic Party institutions has everything to do with whether or not Democrats have the grass-roots energy to effectively take on Trump, the Republican Party and their reactionary agenda—or whether we remain in the minority.

What are some of the reforms that are desperately needed?

First, it is absurd that the Democratic Party now gives over 700 superdelegates—almost one-third the number a presidential candidate needs to win the nomination—the power to control the nominating process and ignore the will of voters.

Second, in contrast to Republicans, Democrats believe in making voting easier, not harder. We believe in universal and same-day voter registration and ending antiquated, arbitrary and discriminatory voter registration laws. These same principles must apply to our primaries. Our job must be to reach out to independents and to young people and bring them into the Democratic Party process. Independent voters are critical to general election victories. Locking them out of primaries is a pathway to failure. In that regard, it is absurd that New Yorkers must change their party registration six months before the Democratic primary in order to participate. Other states have similar, if not as onerous provisions.

Third, in states that use caucuses, we must make it easier for working people and students to participate. While there is much to be said for bringing people together, face to face to discuss why they support the candidate of their choice, not everybody is able to participate because of work, child care or other obligations. A process must be developed that gives everyone the right to cast a vote even if they are not physically able to attend a caucus.

Finally, if we are to succeed, we must fully appreciate Brazile’s revelations and understand the need for far more transparency in the financial and policy workings of the Democratic Party. Hundreds of millions of dollars flow in and out of the Democratic National Committee with little to no accountability. That simply is not acceptable.

At a moment in history when the leadership of the Republican party is undermining democracy, ignoring the climate crisis, trying to overturn Roe v Wade, opposing a minimum wage increase, embracing more tax breaks for the rich and the growth of oligarchy, and stopping us from passing serious gun safety legislation, it would be a disaster for this rightwing extremist party to gain control of the US House and US Senate.

Unfortunately, it appears that the current strategy of the Democratic party is allowing that to happen. According to numerous polls, the Republicans stand an excellent chance of winning this coming November. The main reason: while the Democratic party has, over the years, been hemorrhaging support from the white working class, it is now losing support from Latino, Black and Asian workers as well.

Further, in terms of the 2022 elections, the enthusiasm level within the Democratic base is extremely low. It is not only working-class support that is fading away but it is also that young people, who helped elect Biden and other Democrats in 2020, are becoming increasingly demoralized and are not likely to vote in large numbers in this coming election.

The Republican Party is working overtime to suppress the vote and undermine American democracy. It is a party which ignores climate change, the existential threat to our planet and represents the interests of the wealthy and the powerful while turning its back on struggling working-class families. The GOP is the party that gives tax breaks to billionaires while pushing for cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs desperately needed by ordinary Americans.

And yet, despite the outrageous behavior of leading Republicans and their reactionary and unpopular agenda, recent polling suggests that Republicans stand a strong chance to gain control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate and pick up additional seats in state legislatures throughout the country. Why is this happening? Why, despite the horrendous Republican record, are Democrats losing support among Latinos, young people and African Americans? How does it happen that a party that is supposed to stand for working families was rejected by over 75% of White voters without college degrees in the most recent gubernatorial race in Virginia? Democrats cannot ignore these realities and continue traveling down a failed road which will only lead to disaster.

When Van Jones called the Republicans assholes, he was paying them a compliment. He was talking about how they can get things done even when they're in the minority, as opposed to the Democrats, who can't seem to get anything done even when they control both houses of Congress, the presidency, and Bruce Springsteen.

The Democrats have moved to the right, and the Republicans have moved to a mental hospital.

People of America: the world is following your news in regards to your invasion of Iraq, for people have recently come to know that, after several years of tragedies of this war, the vast majority of you want it stopped. Thus, you elected the Democratic Party for this purpose, but the Democrats haven't made a move worth mentioning.

A major role of the Democratic Party is “corralling” and “domesticating” dissent.

Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers.

We need a President who will fight to give every child a world-class education. And Barack Obama has been fighting for children since he was a community organizer more than 20 years ago.

We need a President who will restore our commitment to civil rights and equality. And Barack Obama has brought the Bill of Rights alive as a civil rights lawyer and by teaching constitutional law.

We need a President who will end the war in Iraq. And Barack Obama is the person to do it because he had the courage and judgment to oppose this war from Day One.

So when the Democratic Party holds its convention here in Denver this summer, I hope we'll nominate the candidate who stands for the future of our party and the future of this country - Barack Obama.

Our captured institutions, subservient to the rich and the powerful, are capitulating to Trump’s authoritarianism. All we have left is sustained non-violent, disruptive civil disobedience. Mass movements. Radical politics. Rebellion. A socialist vision that counters the poison of unfettered capitalism. This alone can thwart Trump’s police state and rid us of the feckless liberal class that sustains it.

The steady march towards heavy handed state censorship was accelerated by the Obama administration that charged ten government employees and contractors, eight under the Espionage Act, for disclosing classified information to the press. The Obama administration in 2013 also seized the phone records of 20 Associated Press reporters to uncover who leaked the information about a foiled al-Qaida terrorist plot. This ongoing assault by the Democratic Party has been accompanied by the disappearing on social media platforms of several luminaries on the far right, including Donald Trump and Alex Jones, who were removed from Facebook, Apple, YouTube. Content that is true but damaging to the Democratic Party, including the revelations from Hunter Biden’s laptop, have been blocked by digital platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Algorithms have since at least 2017 marginalized left-wing content, including my own. The legal precedent set in this atmosphere by the sentencing of Assange means that anyone who possesses classified material, or anyone who leaks it, will be guilty of a criminal offense.

The sentencing of Assange will signal the end of all investigative inquiries into the inner workings of power. The pandering by press and human rights organizations, tasked with being sentinels of freedom, to the Democratic Party, only contributes to the steady tightening of the vice of press censorship. There is no lesser evil in this fight. It is all evil. Left unchecked, it will result in an American species of China’s totalitarianism capitalism.

The Democratic Party has exploited black leadership.

The entrapment of black voters in the Democratic party has been a disaster, and it’s one of the reasons that progress on racial equality has been infinitesimal or at best incremental since the Civil Rights movement.

Since Jesse Jackson ran for president, and perhaps up until the Black Lives Matter movement, the Democratic Party has dominated and used black leadership.

Competing branches of the US government still engage in Third World proxy wars, in which the Defense Department and its political allies and satellites (the Republican Party, the arms and energy industry, Israel) face off against the State Department and its allies and satellites (the Democratic Party, the NGOs and universities, Europe, Palestine).

The true nature of these conflicts, which would end instantly if the US was under unitary leadership, or even if both American factions could agree to cut off all "aid" to all their foreign satellites, is admitted by no one. It is considered entirely normal that the US often arms, and always talks with, both sides of these bizarre, incurable pseudo-wars.

One way to elect a new people is to import them, of course. For example, to put it bluntly, the Democratic Party has captured California, once a Republican stronghold, by importing arbitrary numbers of Mexicans.

Indeed the Third World is stocked with literally billions of potential Democrats, just waiting to come to America so that Washington can buy their votes.

Democrats, strong in the cotton region, generally agreed on a low-tariff policy but on little else. Hard-money ‘Bourbon’ Democrats in the Grover Cleveland mold clashed with inflationists whose perennial champion was William Jennings Bryan, ‘Boy Orator of the Platte,’ the ‘Great Commoner’ whose affected rusticity symbolized the economic and cultural gulf that separated Main Street from Wall Street. Self-made men like James Michael Curley of Boston or Al Smith and Robert Wagner of New York, champions of labor who had scrambled up out of immigrant ghettoes like Roxbury or Hell’s Kitchen, sat uneasily in party councils with cotton-South barons like Mississippi’s Senator Pat Harrison or rural Texans like John Nance Garner, men who saw in cheap, nonunion labor their region’s major economic resource. Cerebral reformers like Harvard law professor Felix Frankfurter barely coexisted in the same party with antic populist demagogues like Louisiana’s Huey Long. Cultural differences, too, cleaved the party along the lines that separated Catholics and Jews from old-stock Protestants, divided anti-Prohibition ‘wets’ from fundamentalist ‘drys,’ and distanced urban immigrants from rural Klansmen. These conflicting forces had locked in such irreconcilable conflict at the Democrats’ presidential nominating convention of 1924 in New York that only after 103 ballots did the weary and sweltering delegates settle on a compromise ticket. It had corporation lawyer John W. Davis at its head and Nebraska governor Charles W. Bryan, brother of the Great Commoner, in the vice-presidential slot. Davis’s crushing defeat by Calvin Coolidge seemed to confirm the suspicions of many pundits that the roiling, fractionated mob known as the Democratic Party could never be fashioned into a coherent instrument of governance. ‘I don’t belong to an organized political party,’ quipped America’s favorite humorist, Will Rogers. ‘I’m a Democrat.’

We are stronger, we are better, but while we are building a great future, the radical left Democrats in Washington are trying to burn it all down. They have spent the last three years, and I can even go further than that, three years since the election, but we go before the election, working to erase your ballots and overthrow our democracy.

But with your help, we have exposed the far left’s corruption and defeated their sinister schemes and let’s see what happens in the coming months. Let’s watch. Let’s just watch. Very dishonest people.

Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that right? Coronavirus, they’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, “How’s President Trump doing?” They go, “Oh, not good, not good.” They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa. They can’t even count. No, they can’t. They can’t count their votes.

3 Republicans and 48 Democrats let the American people down. As I said from the beginning, let ObamaCare implode, then deal. Watch!

You've got half the room going totally crazy, wild, they loved everything, they wanna do something great for our country, and you have the other side, even on positive news, really positive news, like that, they were like death, and un-American, un-American. Somebody said treasonous, I mean, yeah I guess, why not? Can we call that treason, why not?

I think a lot of progress was made yesterday, but we have to make a lot of progress. Mexico has been making, for many, many years, hundreds of billions of dollars. And then, they've been making an absolute fortune on the United States. They have to step up, and they have to step up to the plate, and perhaps they will. We're going to see. They can solve the problem.

The Democrats—Congress has been a disaster. They won't change. They won't do anything. They want free immigration—immigration to pour into our country. They don't care who it is. They don't care what kind of a record they have. It doesn't make any difference. They're not going to be changing anything. We go to them, we say, "Let's fix the immigration laws." They just want it to do badly. The worse it does, the happier they are.

So that's the way it is, and I guess that's the way it will be until after the election. It's just a disgrace. Because, frankly, we could solve this problem so easy if the Democrats in Congress were willing to make some changes, but they're not. And that's the way it is. They want to just ride it out. They want to have a real bad time. They don't care about crime. They don't care about drugs pouring into our country. They couldn't care less. It's all politics. It's a vicious business.

So that's the way it is. But we're having a great talk with Mexico. We'll see what happens. But something pretty dramatic could happen. We've told Mexico the tariffs go on. And I mean it too. And I'm very happy with it. And lot of people, Senators included, they have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to tariffs. They have no—absolutely no idea.

When you have the money, when you have the product, when you have the thing that everybody wants, you're in a position to do very well with tariffs, and that's where we are. We're the piggybank. The United States is the piggybank. It has all the money that others want to take from us, but they're not taking it so easy anymore. It's a lot different. Our talks with China—a lot of interesting things are happening. We'll see what happens.

These people [Democrats] are clowns

It is absolutely true that I have served in two Democratic administrations. You can tell something from me and my political views from that.

The Democratic power elite on some level feels delegitimized by its working-class, black and female constituencies. What it wants are the "legitimate" votes of suburban, white, middle-class, affluent males. Even liberal voters and organizations tend on some tacit level to accept the idea that they are not the "real" Americans the Democrats must pursue.

In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all those who desired the restoration of white supremacy.

The Democratic Party, whatever that is, lacks a vision or an ideology. But many people have said this. Why? That is because it is a conglomeration of mutually exclusive parts. It contains a large part of the American working class, which has suffered greatly since the Great Recession began. But it also contains a lot of Wall Street people and well-to-do people, and new technologists. What policies is going to unite these people? It’s hard to find a unifying theme among them, other than they don’t want the Republicans in power. Now, that often gets you fairly far, but it doesn't allow you to govern very effectively.

Voting rights activists also challenged the Democratic Party in Mississippi when Fannie Lou Hamer, Bob Moses, and Ella Baker founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) in 1964.

As was the case throughout most of the South, the Democratic Party in Mississippi was dominated by white segregationists.

The MFDP elected delegates to attend the 1964 Democratic National Convention and demanded to be seated in place of the segregationist Democratic delegates. Hamer and other MFDP delegates made their case to the convention’s credentials committee, which offered the MFDP only two at-large delegates to be seated. The MFDP refused this compromise and left the convention.

National media coverage of MFDP delegates’ testimony and of the racial violence in Mississippi and Alabama, along with pressure by civil rights groups, led to Congress passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which prohibited the unequal application of voting laws) and the Voting Rights Act.

No, sir, th' dimmycratic party ain't on speakin' terms with itsilf. Whin ye see two men with white neckties go into a sthreet car an' set in opposite corners while wan mutthers Thraiter an' th' other hisses Miscreent ye can bet they're two dimmycratic leaders thryin' to reunite th' gran' ol' party.

For a dozen years and more the Republican Party has seemed in a measure paralyzed in the presence of high-handed fraud and brutal violence toward its newly-made citizens. The question now is, will it regain its former health, activity, and power? Will it be as true to its friends in the South as the Democratic Party has been to its friends in that section, or will it sacrifice its friends to conciliate its enemies? ...

Not only the negro but all honest men, north and south, must hold the Republican Party in contempt if it fails to do its whole duty at this point. The Republican Party has made the colored man free, and the Republican Party must make him secure in his freedom, or abandon its pretensions.

It is not true that the Republican party has not endeavored to protect the negro in his right to vote. The whole moral power of the party has been, from first to last, on the side of justice to the negro; and it has only been baffled, in its efforts to protect the negro in his vote, by the Democratic party.

I knew that however bad the Republican party was, the Democratic party was much worse. The elements of which the Republican party was composed gave better ground for the ultimate hope of the success of the colored man's cause than those of the Democratic party.

Each colored voter of the state should say in scripture phrase, "may my hand forget its cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth" if ever I raise my voice or give my vote to the nominee of the Democratic Party.

the Republican party is the deck, all outside is the sea.

The pit of hell is said to be bottomless. Principles which we all thought to have been firmly and permanently settled by the late war, have been boldly assaulted and overthrown by the defeated party. Rebel rule is now nearly complete in many States and it is gradually capturing the nation's Congress.

The cause lost in the war, is the cause regained in peace, and the cause gained in war, is the cause lost in peace.

The Democratic Party then, as now, was in open alliance with slavery, in a conspiracy against the Constitution and the peace of the country.

The party which is humorously called the Douglas Democracy no more recognizes the rights declared by the Declaration of Independence to be inalienable than does the party of the administration. Its leader repudiates the theory that the Constitution establishes slavery, but he does not perceive in it, or in the circumstances of its adoption, or in the expressed sentiments and actions of its framers, any reason to suppose that it favors liberty more than slavery. He leaves all human rights at the mercy of a majority, and insists that the Constitution does the same.

It's so ironic they [the Democratic Party] spent four years claiming they are fighting fascism and authoritarianism, and what are they trying to do now? They're trying to harness corporate and monopoly power to silence everyone who disagrees with them, the very hallmark, the epitome of the fascism they claim to be

[T]he Democratic Party, which now controls the House, the Senate and the White House genuinely believes they have a monopoly on objective truth. They believe they're the party of science and rationality, and that the only way to disagree with them is if you're either a deranged conspiracy theorist or a seditionist, somebody who is engaged in criminal conduct or terrorism.

And therefore, they genuinely believe, it's not a show. It's not a pretext. They all have convinced one another through this echo chamber that they've created, essentially, the entire media except this network, which is why they want to shut it down, that if you disagree with their orthodoxies and their consensus, you are a threat and a danger.

And it's so ironic they [the Democratic Party] spent four years claiming they are fighting fascism and

I'd also like to thank my Democratic opponent, Linda Haney. We all know that a Democrat is gonna have a struggle in a countywide race in Knox County, but she did step up to the plate and she put fourth a good effort, and I think that is admirable. Democracy works when everyone has a voice and we can hear everyone's ideas.

A Democrat who has infiltrated the Republican Party.

We have to understand that politicians don't want to reduce government. And it isn't because they think the spending cuts would hurt too many people. It's because they know it would hurt them. No matter what they say, neither Democrats nor Republicans want to give up the power that allows them to bestow favors and exemptions on friends.

I've seen it happen time after time. When the Democratic candidate allows himself to be put on the defensive and starts apologizing for the New Deal and the Fair Deal, and says he really doesn't believe in them, he is sure to lose. The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don't want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign.

Douglas was a radical expansionist. Both parts of the Democratic Party in 1860 called for the annexation of Cuba. And there were 100,000 slaves in Cuba, and Cuba was the place that slaves were still being brought from Africa and then resold in the United States. So under a Douglas presidency, we would have taken over the rest of Mexico and Central America whenever we had the resources and the appetite to take to do so.

Pro-slavery impulse still governs the Democratic Party, the party of government sinecures. It is the party that wants to use political power to tax us not for any common good, but to eat while we work.

The wealthy slaveholders who controlled the federal government. Democrats acting on their behalf insisted that America's primary principle was the constitution's protection of property, and they pushed legislation to let planters monopolize the country's resources at the expense of the working.

It was disheartening to imagine the next two years with a Republican-controlled House and Senate. The political battles would be even harder, and the Administration would be on the defensive to keep intact the gains already made for the country. With Republican leadership calling the shots, the Congress would likely demonstrate the accuracy of Lyndon Johnson’s aphorism: “Democrats legislate; Republicans investigate.

Our country's motto is E Pluribus Unum, out of many we are one. Will we stay true to that motto?

Well, we heard Donald Trump's answer last week at his convention. He wants to divide us from the rest of the world and from each other. He's betting that the perils of today's world will blind us to its unlimited promise. He's taken the Republican Party a long way, from morning in America to midnight in America. He wants us to fear the future and fear each other.

Well, you know, a great Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt came up with the perfect rebuke to Trump more than 80 years ago during a much more perilous time: The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!

My friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil and political rights|civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late. To those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on States' rights|states’ rights, I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights. People -- human beings -- this is the issue of the 20th century. People of all kinds -- all sorts of people -- and these people are looking to America for leadership, and they’re looking to America for precept and example.

I knew this much — that everybody voted Democrat down my way. If you were poor, you voted Democrat and if you were rich you voted Republican.

It is a sad place, young man, for you to put your young life into. It is to me far more like a graveyard than like a camp for the living. Look at it! It is billowed all over with the graves of dead issues, of buried opinions, of exploded theories, of disgraced doctrines...

There towers to the sky a monument of four million pairs of human fetters taken from the arms of slaves, and I read on its little headstone this: Sacred to the memory of Human Slavery. For forty years of its infamous life the Democratic Party taught that it was divine; God's institution. They defended it, they stood around it, they followed it to its grave as a mourner. But here it lies, dead by the hand of Abraham Lincoln; dead by the power of the Republican Party, dead by the justice of Almighty God.

Don't camp there, young man. That is no place in which to put your young life. Come out, and come over into this camp of liberty, of order, of law, of justice, of freedom, of all that is glorious under these night stars.

The House has today resolved to enter upon a revolution against the Constitution and Government of the United States... [N]othing less than the total subversion of this government.

Then your leaders, though holding a majority in the other branch of Congress, were heroic enough to withdraw from their seats and fling down the gage of mortal battle. We called it rebellion; but we recognized it as courageous and manly to avow your purpose, take all the risks, and fight it out in the open field.

Notwithstanding your utmost efforts to destroy it, the government was saved. Year by year, since the war ended, those who resisted you have come to believe that you have finally renounced your purpose to destroy, and are willing to maintain the government. In that belief you have been permitted to return to power in the two Houses.

Today, after eighteen years of defeat, the book of your domination is again opened, and your first act awakens every unhappy memory, and threatens to destroy the confidence which your professions of patriotism inspired. You turned down a leaf of the history that recorded your last act of power in 1861, and you have now signalized your return to power by beginning a second chapter at the same page, not this time by a heroic act that declares war on the battlefield, but you say, if all the legislative powers of the government do not consent to let you tear certain laws out of the statute-book, you will not shoot our government to death as you tried to do in the first chapter, but you declare that if we do not consent against our will, if you cannot coerce an independent branch of this government, against its will, to allow you to tear from the statute-books some laws put there by “there by the will of the people, you will starve the government to death.

It is a sad place, young man, for you to put your young life into. It is to me far more like a graveyard than like a camp for the living. Look at it! It is billowed all over with the graves of dead issues, of buried opinions, of exploded theories, of disgraced doctrines.

The last act of Democratic domination in this Capitol, eighteen years ago, was striking and dramatic, perhaps heroic. Then the Democratic Party said to the Republicans, 'If you elect the man of your choice as President of the United States we will shoot your government to death'; but the people of this country, refusing to be coerced by threats or violence, voted as they pleased, and lawfully elected Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States.

There towers to the sky a monument of four million pairs of human fetters taken from the arms of slaves, and I read on its little headstone this, 'Sacred to the memory of Human Slavery'.

For forty years of its infamous life the Democratic Party taught that it was divine; God's institution. They defended it, they stood around it, they followed it to its grave as a mourner. But here it lies, dead by the hand of Abraham Lincoln; dead by the power of the Republican Party, dead by the justice of Almighty God.

Don't camp there, young man. That is no place in which to put your young life. Come out, and come over into this camp of liberty, of order, of law, of justice, of freedom, of all that is glorious under these night stars.

I never use the words Democrats and Republicans. It's liberals and Americans.

In the nineteenth century, the Democratic Party was the party of overt white supremacy and even called itself 'The White Man's Party' into the 1920s... White Democrats opposed Reconstruction not because it was a failure, but because it was working. Today almost all historians of Reconstruction hold that view.

Over the last 24 hrs I have gone through lots of emotions. Scared, Anger, Heartache, Compassion and many others. I truely dont understand why a person would want to take the life of another. Something has changed in this country and in this world lately that is scary to see. This world is becoming the kind of place i am afraid to raise my children in.

At the end of the day we arent Democrats or Republicans, Whites or Blacks, Men or Women. We are all humans and we are all Americans and its time to start acting like it and stand together as ONE! That is the only way we will ever get this Country to be better than it has ever been, but we have a long way to go and we have to start now.

My heart aches for the Victims and their families of this Senseless act. I am so sorry for the hurt and pain everyone is feeling right now and there are no words i can say.

We are still, at our core, a democracy. And yet history tells us that blind loyalty to a single leader and a willingness to engage in political violence is fatal to democracy. For a long time, we’ve told ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed, but it’s not. We have to defend it, protect it, stand up for it — each and every one of us.

That’s why tonight I’m asking our nation to come together, unite behind the single purpose of defending our democracy regardless of your ideology. We’re all called, by duty and conscience, to confront extremists who will put their own pursuit of power above all else. Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans: We must be stronger, more determined, and more committed to saving American democracy than MAGA Republicans are to — to destroying American democracy. We, the people, will not let anyone or anything tear us apart. Today, there are dangers around us we cannot allow to prevail.

I think the Democratic Party could stand a liberal George Wallace—someone who's not afraid to stand up and offend people, someone who wouldn't pander but would say what the American people know in their gut is right.

I voted for a fence, I voted, unlike most Democrats — and some of you won't like it — I voted for 700 miles of fence...

And the reason why I add that parenthetically, why I believe the fence is needed does not have anything to do with immigration as much as drugs. And let me tell you something folks, people are driving across that border with tons, tons, hear me, tons of everything from byproducts for methamphetamine to cocaine to heroin and it's all coming up through corrupt Mexico.

Trump spoke with Xi Jinping by phone on June 18, ahead of 2019's Osaka G20 summit, when they would next meet. Trump began by telling Xi he missed him and then said that the most popular thing he had ever been involved with was making a trade deal with China, which would be a big plus politically. They agreed their economic teams could continue meeting.

The G20 bilateral arrived, and during the usual media mayhem at the start, Trump said, "we've become friends. My trip to Beijing with my family was one of the most incredible of my life."

With the press gone, Xi said this is the most important bilateral relationship in the world. He said that some (unnamed) political figures in the United States were making erroneous judgments by calling for a new cold war, this time between China and the United States. Whether Xi meant to finger the Democrats, or some of us sitting on the US side of the table, I don't know, but Trump immediately assumed Xi meant the Democrats. Trump said approvingly that there was great hostility among the Democrats. He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming US presidential election, alluding to China's economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he'd win. He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump's exact words, but the government's prepublication review process has decided otherwise.

We would, if the thing were possible, exclude the word Democracy altogether as unnecessary, and apt to mislead. 'We committed a great mistake,' said JOHN C. CALHOUN to us in 1840, 'when we dropped the name Republican and suffered ourselves to be called Democrats; names are things, and by adopting the name Democrat, we are led to substitute Democracy for the Constitutionalism founded by our fathers.'

The Jeffersonian party, in JEFFERSON's days, never went by the name of the Democratic party, and to call, in our younger days, a member of that party a Democrat, was regarded as an insult. The party called itself officially Republican, and never assumed generally the name Democratic till the reelection of ANDREW JACKSON in 1832, when an effort was made to assimilate the American Republican party to the Democratic party of Europe.

I would suggest that the Republican Party get to work demanding an apology by the Democratic Party to the descendants of the slaves and to all the descendants of all those Republican congressmen who voted for the slew of anti-lynching laws blocked by Democratic senatorial filibusters.

The year 1896 marked the beginning of the left’s control of the national Democratic Party, a control which would slip in 1904 and in 1924, but only somewhat and only for a short time. Never again would the Democrats be the more conservative of the major parties as they had been during the Cleveland years.

Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance.

As we've been a good friend to other countries in moments of shared perils, so we have good reason to expect their solidarity with us in this struggle. That is what the President believes.

And, thanks to his efforts we have received valuable assistance from many good friends around the globe, even if we have, at times, been disappointed with the reactions of some. I don't doubt the sincerity of my Democratic friends. And they should not doubt ours.

The tragedy of the Democratic Party through much of its history was an unwillingness to stand strong against its Southern wing and to clearly align itself with the cause of social and economic justice.

The tragedy of the Republican Party is that when Democrats began to do the right thing, key figures in the GOP welcomed Thurmond into its fold and began to craft not just a “Southern strategy” but a politics of reaction.

I'm a free-marketeer. I believe in free markets, but... sometimes you have things that look like free markets but aren't because of artificial reasons. I'm not very happy with the current state of what calls itself free market economy in the world because you've got all these grotesque monopolies that are able to game the system in a way that's to their advantage by virtue of their power, and that's not a free market.

A real free market has some kind of countervailing influence from the government to keep a monopoly in check, but this government... it's not about free marketing principles, it's about greed pure and simple. And this government wants to assure that the other people that they went to college with get just as rich as they do. This country is going to make Mexico look like Sweden inside of ten years in terms of wealth distribution, because there are no countervailing forces. They've eliminated tax basically for the ultra-rich, they've eliminated any control over monopolies, the greedy have free reign and its just going to be the super rich and the peasants.

I was always raised to think that Republicans were about limited government, about individual liberty, about fiscal responsibility, about balanced budgets, about a wariness of military adventures abroad, about responsible encouragement to business.

There's a whole list of things I thought the Republican Party was all about, and these guys that presently occupy the White House, are categorically against every single one of those things. So if they're Republicans, I'm not. But I'm really not a very comfortable Democrat. I mean the Democrats in the last elections proved themselves to be a bunch of dithering pussies... and it was pathetic.

So I'm just waiting until one party or the other actually gets a moral compass and a backbone.

If the Negroes, numbering one-eighth of the population of these United States, would only cast their votes in the interest of the Democratic Party, all open measures against them would be immediately suspended and their rights as American citizens recognized. But as to the real results of such a state of affairs, and speaking in behalf of those with whom I am conversant, I can only say that we love freedom more, vastly more, than slavery. Consequently, we hope to keep clear of the Democrats! I say to the entire membership of the Democratic Party, that upon your hands rests the blood of the loyal men of the south. Disclaim it as you will; the stain is there to prove your criminality before God and the world in the day of retribution.

The suggestions of the shrewdest Democratic papers have proved unavailing in controlling the votes of the loyal whites and blacks of the south. Their innuendoes have been evaded. The people emphatically decline to dispose of their rights for a mess of pottage. In this particular the Democracy of the North found themselves foiled and their money needless.

But with a spirit more demon-like than that of a Nero or a Caligula, there has been concocted another plan, destructive, ay, diabolical in its character, worthy only of hearts without regard for god or man, fit for such deeds as those deserving the name of men would shudder to perform. Is it asked, what are those deeds? Let those who liberally contributed to the supply of arms and ammunition in the late rebellious States answer the question. Soon after the close of the war there had grown up in the south a very widely-spread willingness to comply with the requirements of the law. But as the clemency and magnanimity of the general government became manifest once again did the monster rebellion lift its hydra head in renewed defiance, cruel and cowardly, fearing the light of day, hiding itself under the shadow of the night as more befitting its bloody and accursed work.

It has been asserted on this floor that the Republican Party is answerable for the existing state of affairs in the south. I am here to deny this, and to illustrate, I will say that in the State of South Carolina there is no disturbance of an alarming character in any one of the counties in which the Republicans have a majority. The troubles are usually in those sections in which the Democrats have a predominance in power, and, not content with this, desire to be supreme.

Republicans, who have consistently been the party group least in favor of same-sex marriage, show majority support in 2021 for the first time (55%). The latest increase in support among all Americans is driven largely by changes in Republicans' views.

Democrats have consistently been among the biggest supporters of legal same-sex marriage. The current 83% among Democrats is on par with the level of support Gallup has recorded over the past few years. This could suggest that support for gay marriage has reached a ceiling for this group, at least for now. Meanwhile, support among political independents, now at 73%, is slightly higher than the 68% to 71% range recorded from 2017 to 2020.

The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans.

The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.

President Abraham Lincoln died more than 150 years ago. The "Solid South" was so enraged at him for beating them in the Civil War and at his party for ending slavery that they voted Democrat for the next 100 years.

Then the Democrats started supporting civil rights for people of colour. The Republicans saw the opportunity, courted them and flipped them. The Solid South is now theirs.

It has been a long time since the Republican Party has been "the party of Lincoln". Let us put that aside. Is the GOP still the "party of Reagan"? Oh, very much so. And I was recently reminded exactly how much while re-reading a book I wrote during his presidency back in the 1980s: "You Get What You Pay For". As I flipped through the pages, I found myself saying, over and over again, "that's just like Trump".

Race has never been less significant a factor in American success, but it has never been more significant a factor for the Democratic party's success.

I argue the left is the problem. They don't want to hear thoughtful disagreement whether its about climate change, whether its about racism, whether its about what the welfare state has done to the family. [...]

So I urge my friends on the left to look into the mirror and ask yourself: Do you really want to have a conversation or do you really want to just denounce the other side?

Bacall: I'm a total Democrat. I'm anti-Republican. And it's only fair that you know it. Even though...

King: Wait a minute. Are you a liberal?

Bacall: I'm a liberal. The "L" word!

King: Egads!

Bacall: … I love it. Being a liberal is the best thing on earth you can be. You are welcoming to everyone when you're a liberal. You do not have a small mind... I'm total, total, total liberal and proud of it. And I think it's outrageous to say "The L word". I mean, excuse me. They should be damn lucky that they were liberals here. Liberals gave more to the population of the United States than any other group.

Will the constant bickering between the Democrat and Republican parties result in an internal struggle? Or is it just a game to distract us all from the real issues?

Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders received the most votes in the first three primary elections. After centrist Joe Biden scored his first primary win, the DNC consolidated the Democratic Party establishment around him....

The party bosses likely wanted to ensure that Sanders would not upend the corporate order... At the March 15 debate with Biden, Sanders asked the rhetorical question: Where is the power in America? He then answered, “Who owns the media? Who owns the economy? Who owns the legislative process? Why do we give tax breaks to billionaires and not raise the minimum wage? Why do we pump up the oil industry while a half a million people are homeless in America?”...

When he defines himself as a democratic socialist, Sanders said, he means “Economic rights are human rights.” The core of his Medicare for All plan is, “Health care is a human right.

disturbing behavior that seems to keep raring it's ugly heads. Child Sex, Satanism, and the Occult all associated with the Democratic Party.

How stupid they [Democrats] are. They don’t even realize they’re helping me. I’m pretty amazed at how dumb they are.

I think Republicans need to get back to who they are, and they need to stop talking and actually doing. And Kevin McCarthy and all these leaders, the leadership, and everyone is proving that they are all talk and not about action, and they’re just all about doing business as usual in Washington.

And so, what’s the difference between them and the Democrats? There isn’t a difference

Democrats want Republicans dead. They've already started the killings.

The White House needs to learn how sarcasm works. My comments were making fun of Joe Biden and the Democrats, who have continuously made me a political target since January 6th.

Half of black Democrats don't realize they are slaves and don't know who their masters are. The other half don't care.

These men so often have a high blood pressure of words and an anemia of deeds.

Every Democrat must be on the alert on the day of Election to see that negroes under age do not vote and that those who are properly entitled to vote do not repeat, and if they should discover that squads should leave the precincts and go in the direction of another precinct, they must follow them and challenge their vote at the next precinct...

Every Democrat must feel honor bound to control the vote of at least one Negro, by intimidation, purchase, keeping him away, or as each individual may determine.

Americans remain largely mistrustful of the mass media as 41% currently have "a great deal" or "fair amount" of trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news "fully, accurately and fairly." This latest reading represents a four-percentage-point dip since last year and marks the end of improvements in back-to-back years after hitting an all-time low.

Although trust in the media has edged down this year, it is well above the record low of 32% in 2016 when Republicans' trust dropped precipitously and drove the overall trust reading down during the divisive presidential campaign. Republicans' trust is still at a very low level and a wide gap in views of the media among partisans persists as 69% of Democrats say they have trust and confidence in it, while 15% of Republicans and 36% of independents agree.

Republicans became increasingly mistrustful of the media in 2016 when Trump was campaigning for president and was sharply critical of the media's coverage of him. Between 2015 and 2016, Republican trust in the mass media fell 18 points to its historical low of 14%, where it remained in 2017. Following a seven-point boost last year, it has returned to 15%.

For their part, Democrats have consistently been more trusting of the media than Republicans but rallied around the press and became even more trusting when Trump took office in 2017.

In response to criticism from Democratic mayoral candidates for appearing at a 2004 event for the Independence Party: "To all the critics who are rushing out to criticize me tonight, criticize me for being here tonight, let me point out that this night is about the one million New Yorkers who are denied the most basic rights by the two major political parties.

Now, I know this is a bitter pill to swallow. Iraq was going to be your great legacy. Now, it's just your legacy. It didn't have to end up this way.

This week, when Republicans and conservative Democrats started jumping ship, you lashed out at them. You thought the most damning thing you could say to them was that they were "endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic party." I mean, is that the best you can do to persuade them to stick with you — compare them to me? You gotta come up with a better villain. For heaven's sakes, you had a hundred-plus million other Americans who think the same way I do — and you could have picked on any one of them! But hey, why not cut out the name-calling and the smearing and just do the obvious thing: Come join the majority! Be one of us, your fellow Americans! Is it really that hard? Is there really any other choice? George, take a walk on the wild side!

Democrats are not about getting even. Democrats are about helping the American people get ahead, and that’s what our agenda is about. So while some people are excited about prospects that they have in terms of their priorities, they are not our priorities. I have said, and I say again, that impeachment is off the table

Election night was not a good night for Democrats

It is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression, and Democrats reject that allegation vigorously. With all due respect to former President Carter, he does not speak for the Democratic Party on Israel.

Democrats are not about getting even... I have said, and I say again, that impeachment is off the table

I am opposed to it under any and all circumstances, and in our convention urged our party not to commit themselves at all upon the subject.

On MSNBC, Stephanie Ruhle confidently declared that democratic socialists make “no call for communal ownership of production.” According to Ruhle, the excitement around the emerging socialist movement is much ado about nothing: democratic socialists want good things like free college and public libraries — and that’s pretty much it.

While we definitely support good library systems, democratic socialists’ vision of a better society and how to achieve it goes much further. The world we live in now is called a democracy; the United States is the wealthiest country in all of human history, and ...is defined not by freedom and abundance, but exploitation and oppression. A tiny number of rich and powerful families lives off of the profits they make from trashing the environment and underpaying, overworking, and cheating the vast majority of society — the working class. They get richer precisely because the poor and working class get poorer. This capitalist class turns workplaces into mini-authoritarian regimes, where bosses have the power to harass and abuse workers. And they protect their power in all corners of society by fanning the flames of racial, national, and gender conflict and prejudice in order to divide working people and stop us from organizing. Democratic socialists want to end all of that.

We know not everyone on the progressive left agrees with us yet that... building a better society will take the far-reaching changes that we think are necessary. And many have not come to the same conclusion we have that the leadership of the Democratic Party is in the pocket of big business and criminally incompetent...

In the short term, then, the task of democratic socialists in elections is to support campaigns that fight to improve the lives of working people and build working-class power... what all of our candidates have in common is support for Medicare for All, labor rights, a higher minimum wage, environmental protections, stopping deportations, and ending mass incarceration...

Our goal is to get millions of people who have given up on politics to join the struggle, test the limits of what concessions can be won in the here and now, and to persuade our co-fighters on the progressive left that a more ambitious, socialist strategy is needed to build the kind of world we all want to live in.

The United States effectively has a one-party system, the business party, with two factions, Republicans and Democrats.

The leaders who are now managing the Democratic Party in this state are the men who at the regular session of the legislature in 1861, declared that, if an army went from Indiana to assist in puting down the rebellion, it must first pass over their dead bodies.

Every unregenerate rebel lately in arms against his government calls himself a Democrat. Every bounty jumper, every deserter, every sneak who ran away from the draft calls himself a Democrat.

Every man who labored for the rebellion in the field, who murdered Union prisoners by cruelty and starvation, who conspired to bring about civil war in the loyal states, who invented dangerous compounds to burn steamboats and northern cities,, who contrived hellish schemes to introduce into northern cities the wasting pestilence of yellow fever, calls himself a Democrat.

Every dishonest contractor who has been convicted of defrauding the government, every dishonest paymaster or disbursing officer who has been convicted of squandering the public money at the gaming table or in gold gambling operations, every officer in the army who was dismissed fur cowardice or disloyalty, calls himself a Democrat.

Every wolf in sheep's clothing, who pretends to preach the gospel, but proclaims the righteousness of man-selling and slavery—everyone who shoots down negroes in the streets, burns negro school-houses and meeting-houses, and murders women and children by the light of their own flaming dwellings, calls himself a Democrat.

Every New York rioter in 1863, who burned up little children in colored asylums—who robbed, ravished and murdered indiscriminately in the midst of a blazing city for three days and nights, called himself a Democrat.

In short, the Democratic Party may be described as a common sewer and loathsome receptacle into which is emptied every element of treason, North and South, every element of inhumanity and barbarism which has dishonored the age.

Every unregenerate rebel lately in arms against his government calls himself a Democrat. Every bounty jumper, every deserter, every sneak who ran away from the draft calls himself a Democrat...

Every man who labored for the rebellion in the field, who murdered Union prisoners by cruelty and starvation, who conspired to bring about civil war in the loyal states, who invented dangerous compounds to burn steamboats and northern cities,, who contrived hellish schemes to introduce into northern cities the wasting pestilence of yellow fever, calls himself a Democrat. Every dishonest contractor who has been convicted of defrauding the government, every dishonest paymaster or disbursing officer who has been convicted of squandering the public money at the gaming table or in gold gambling operations, every officer in the army who was dismissed fur cowardice or disloyalty, calls himself a Democrat. Every wolf in sheep’s clothing, who pretends to preach the gospel, but proclaims the righteousness of man-selling and slavery—everyone who shoots down negroes in the streets, burns negro school-houses and meeting-houses, and murders women and children by the light of their own flaming dwellings, calls himself a Democrat. Every New York rioter in 1863, who burned up little children in colored asylums—who robbed, ravished and murdered indiscriminately in the midst of a blazing city for three days and nights, called himself a Democrat. In short, the Democratic Party may be described as a common sewer and loathsome receptacle into which is emptied every element of treason, North and South, every element of inhumanity and barbarism which has dishonored the age.

The difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is that the Democrats let the poor be corrupt, too.

Now, what about this negro equality of which we hear so much, in and out of Congress?

It is claimed by the Democrats of today, that Jefferson has uttered an untruth in the declaration of principles which underlie our government. I still abide by the democracy of Jefferson, and avow my belief that all men are created equal. Equal how? Not in physical strength, not in symmetry of form and proportion, not in graceful of motion, or loveliness of feature, not in mental endowment, moral susceptibility, and emotional power. Not socially equal, not of necessity politically equal. Not this, but every human being equally entitled to his life, his liberty, and the fruit of his toil. The Democratic Party deny this fundamental doctrine of our government, and say that there is a certain class of human beings which have no rights. If you maliciously kill them, it is no murder. If you take away their liberty, it is no crime. If you deprive them of their earnings, it is no theft. No rights which another is bound to regard. Was there ever so much diabolism compressed into one sentence? Why do the Democrats come to us with their complaints about the negroes? I for one feel no responsibility in the matter. I did not create them; was not consulted.

The principle of enslaving human beings because they are inferior, is this. If a man is a cripple, trip him up; if he is old and weak, and bowed with the weight of years, strike him, for he cannot strike back; if idiotic, take advantage of him; and if a child, deceive him. This, sir, this is the doctrine of Democrats and the doctrine of devils as well, and there is no place in the universe outside the five points of hell and the Democratic Party where the practice and prevalence of such doctrines would not be a disgrace.

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it.

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it.

The most important political task facing the out-of-power party— the Democrats for now— is creating a villain to run against. It's certainly easier than developing some grand new ideas or policies on which to campaign.

The military/security complex has resurrected its Cold War enemy so necessary for its outsized budget and power and intends to keep Russia as The Enemy. The Democrats have an interest in the villification of Russia as “Russiagate” explains Hillary’s loss of the 2016 Presidential election and gives Democrats hope of removing President Trump from office. The media lacks independence, knowledge, and integrity and is the tool used by the military/security complex to control explanations...

As strategic and Russian studies are largely funded by the military/security complex, the universities are also complicit in the march toward nuclear war. Republicans are as dependent as Democrats on funding from the military/security complex and the Israel Lobby.

All of this self-serving is driving America and its vassals to war with Russia, which might also mean with China. The war would be nuclear and be the end of the West, an act of self-genocide. The US national security establishment is so crazed that Trump’s efforts to get off the war track and onto a peace track are characterized as treason and a threat to US national security.

The Russians are aware that the accusations and demonization that they experience are fabrications. They no longer see the problem as one of misunderstandings that diplomacy can overcome. What they see now is the West preparing its populations for war. It is this perception for which the West is solely responsible that makes the situation today far more dangerous than it ever was during the

It is outrageous. I am embarrassed for those Democrats who voted to censure their own colleague. Who voted against free speech. It is an embarrassment.

The second reason I focus on capitalism is that the responses to today's economic collapse by Trump, the GOP and most Democrats carefully avoid any criticism of capitalism. They all debate the virus, China, foreigners, other politicians, but never the system they all serve. When Trump and others press people to return to churches and jobs—despite risking their and others' lives—they place reviving a collapsed capitalism ahead of public health.

Who is the fascist? Individualism and the political philosophy of limited government is not only inconsistent with but is the exact opposite of fascism and Nazism. Under Fascism fascism and Nazism, the state reigns supreme with absolute power over everyone and all forms of property.

It can well be asked: who is the fascist, when the president of the United States and many Democrats and Republicans in congress call for expanded authority for the FBI and other federal security agencies to intrude into the lives of the American citizenry? Who is the fascist, when the call is made for increased power for the FBI to undertake 'roving wiretapping' or have easier access to the telephone and credit-card records of the general population? Who is the fascist, when the proposal is made to make it easier for the FBI to investigate and infiltrate any political organization or association because the government views it as a potential terrorist danger?

Unfortunately, people in California would vote for a bowl of shit if it had “D” next to it.

I do interviews everyday. Everyone who asks gets to interview me. Sometimes I do 10 a day. President Trump also does many interviews. How could the Democrat Party choose a candidate who refuses to do an interview?

Roe was a shock to me because even at 16 or 17 years old I understood that abortion was killing an unborn baby. I mean it was simple and straightforward and indeed it is simple and straightforward. We try to make this complicated, but it's simple and straightforward. You've got a new human life developing in the mother's womb and abortion is the business of killing that baby.

Now, the Planned Parenthood videos have made that very graphic but you didn't actually need the videos, uh, at least I didn't need to the videos to know that. But even then we didn't think of abortion as something Democrats were for and Republicans were against. The division of the parties into a pro-abortion party and an anti-abortion party came a little later.

I found that it was all right to have Martians saying things Democrats and Republicans could never say.

What would happen to the Democratic Party if they were to lose the election this year? The same thing that happened to it the last time it lost. It would sit in the wings until the Republican Party wiped itself out again.

The Democratic Party's favorite hobbies are winning, Texas and exhaustion.

All that they seem to say is 'nigger, nigger, nigger'.

Well, Peter, I think that there are some Democrats that refuse to recognize the important milestone achieved by the formation of a national unity government. And there is an effort simply to distract attention away from the real progress that is being made by misrepresenting and distorting the past. And that really does nothing to help advance our goal of achieving victory in Iraq.

No, see, this is -- this is a way that --

Sure it does.

Now, Peter, Democrats have tried to raise this issue, and, like I said, misrepresenting and distorting the past --

-- which is what they're doing, does nothing to advance the goal of victory in Iraq.

Well, I think the focus ought to be on achieving victory in Iraq and the progress that's being made, and that's where it is. And you know exactly the Democrats are trying to distort the past.

Next question.

We're on the way to accomplishing the mission and achieving victory.

You don't understand the class structure of American society," or you would not ask such a question. "In the United States, the working class are Democrats. The middle class are Republicans. The upper class are Communists.

The Grant administration disproved the Democratic assertion in the 1868 United States presidential election that 'This is a white man's country'.

Any empirical evaluation of the relationship between Trump and the white working class would reveal that one adjective in that phrase is doing more work than the other.

In 2016, Trump enjoyed majority or plurality support among every economic branch of whites. It is true that his strongest support among whites came from those making $50,000 to $99,999. This would be something more than working-class in many nonwhite neighborhoods, but even if one accepts that branch as the working class, the difference between how various groups in this income bracket voted is revealing. Sixty-one percent of whites in this "working class" supported Trump. Only 24 percent of Hispanics and 11 percent of blacks did. Indeed, the plurality of all voters making less than $100,000 and the majority making less than $50,000 voted for the Democratic candidate.

So when Packer laments [in the New Yorker] the fact that "Democrats can no longer really claim to be the party of working people—not white ones, anyway," he commits a kind of category error. The real problem is that Democrats aren't the party of white people—working or otherwise. White workers are not divided by the fact of labor from other white demographics; they are divided from all other laborers by the fact of their whiteness.

And to all those overburdened by an unfair tax structure, let us provide new hope for real tax reform.

Instead of shutting down classrooms, let us shut off tax shelters. Instead of cutting out school lunches, let us cut off tax subsidies for expensive business lunches that are nothing more than food stamps for the rich.

The tax cut of our Republican opponents takes the name of tax reform in vain. It is a wonderfully Republican idea that would redistribute income in the wrong direction.

It's good news for any of you with incomes over 200,000 dollars a year. For the few of you, it offers a pot of gold worth 14,000 dollars.

But the Republican tax cut is bad news for the middle income families. For the many of you, they plan a pittance of 200 dollars a year, and that is not what the Democratic Party means when we say tax reform.

The vast majority of Americans cannot afford this panacea from a Republican nominee who has denounced the progressive income tax as the invention of Karl Marx. I am afraid he has confused Karl Marx with Theodore Roosevelt -- that obscure Republican president who sought and fought for a tax system based on ability to pay.

Theodore Roosevelt was not Karl Marx, and the Republican tax scheme is not tax reform.

They do not object to negroes voting on account of ignorance, but on account of color... If every negro in Mississippi was a class graduate of Harvard, and had been elected class orator ... he would not be as well fitted to exercise the rights of suffrage as the Anglo-Saxon farm laborer.

Conservatives on the Supreme Court have repeatedly gutted provisions of the 1974 amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), most famously in 2010 with their notorious Citizens United decision.

With that stroke, over the loud objections of the four “liberals” on the Court, corporations were absolutely deemed as “persons” with full constitutional rights, and billionaires or corporations pouring massive amounts of money into campaign coffers was changed from “bribery and political corruption” to an exercise of the constitutionally-protected “right of free speech.”...

Increasingly, because of the Supreme Court’s betrayal of American values, it’s become impossible for people... to rise from social worker to the United States Senate without big money behind them. Our media is absolutely unwilling to call this what even Andrew Jackson would have labeled it: political corruption. But that’s what it is and it’s eating away at our republic like a metastasized cancer...

While the naked corruption of Sinema and Joe Manchin is a source of outrage for Democrats across America, what’s far more important is that it reveals how deep the rot of money in American politics has gone, thanks entirely to a corrupted Supreme Court.

Under the Roosevelt administration, the Democratic tradition of Jefferson, Jackson and Wilson were still being practiced, while the opposition was all of the same kidney – whether you called them Federalists, Whigs or Republicans. The Federalists sponsored the Sedition Act of 1798, which made it a felony to “write, print, utter or publish ... any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent ... to bring them ... into contempt or disrepute.” The Whigs were the high-tariff boys and their successors, the Republicans, were champions of big business and the trickle-down theory of economics-which claimed that when the rich get richer, some of their wealth rubs off on the poor.

A final factor in the 1952 election was the dissatisfaction of many southern Democrats. They were anti-Truman because of the Tidelands Bill, his civil-rights program and because of the long tenure of the party in office. Forgotten for the moment was the record of a political party that had returned the nation from the valley of despair into which it had fallen in the great depression. Forgotten was the great increase in living standards for all groups. Forgotten too was the inspiring leadership that had piloted our nation in its war for survival and which had provided the spark for moral international leadership.

We had occupied the presidency for a longer period of time in our history than the combined terms of all our opponents – the Federalists, Whigs and Republicans – put together. Why? Because the American people believe in the fundamental principles of the Democratic Party as originally enunciated by Thomas Jefferson, and later by his followers, including Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Cleveland, Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. Underlying their philosophy was a basic concern for the advancement of the freedom, security and living standards of all Americans. In coming elections, the Democratic Party must vigorously lay before the country its fundamental principles as well as its great recent record. It must also be alert to the misdoings and unfulfilled “common-man” promises of the Republicans, as well as partisan reversals of sound Democratic measures heretofore enacted. These are the rallying points about which we Democrats must unite in order to restore our party to rule.