Mark Mellman Quotes (17 Quotes)

If the first impression George Bush makes is that he is outside the mainstream of America, he's going to have a hard time playing catch-up over the next four years.

People don't look at the economy in absolute terms they compare how they're doing this year to last. There's no question we're growing slower. If the election was held last year, Al Gore would be doing a lot better.

With huge majorities opposing the president's proposal to sell control of U.S. ports to Dubai and the failure of the president's Iraq policy, Republicans' once-yawning advantage on security issues has been largely neutralized.

What Democrats need to do is make clear that we favor a strong, aggressive posture toward going after terrorists, going after terrorist networks, breaking up terrorists before they strike, hunting them down and killing them.

This is an issue that should be raised often because it is a central preoccupation of very large numbers of Americans and because people now look at the Republican program, the Bush program, as being a disaster.

Normally, the last couple of weeks is essentially a victory lap for one candidate and an exercise in self-delusion for the other. For the first time in a long time, these last two weeks really count.

He's loved by Democrats and by the base voters in the party--he can rev them up like few people can. In all the key battleground states, the president can do a lot to excite and mobilize the base.

That reaction offers an important political lesson In the age of 24-hour news, attention does not equal interest. Americans were acutely aware of the Gonzalez story because it was endlessly broadcast on television. But, as it turned out, for most people that's all the story was television. They watched it as they would an engaging soap opera. In the end, it had no more intimate connection to their lives than that. The truth is, ... while the story was gripping, it was not involving. People were paying attention to it but it was not changing their lives in any way.

Given the skepticism and cynicism that exists today, everybody seeks that sort of third-party validation, ... You don't get that without providing some level of specificity.

There's no question that in all these places, Republicans are swimming upstream because of George Bush. He's creating a powerful current against which every Republican candidate has to struggle.

There are polls out there that have us even. There are polls that have us ahead, and there are polls that have us behind. And the two things that all the polls agree on are that John Kerry is ahead in battleground states -- and that people who have yet to make a decision are very negative about the president and very negative about the current direction of the country.

People look at two oil men in the White House, and gasoline prices through the roof, and they likely assume that the president and the vice president are on the side of oil companies, not on the side of ordinary people.

Kerry had an opportunity in the debates to show the American people his strength and conviction and to lay out his plans, and people have responded very positively to that. So we see trends nationally moving in our direction and trends in battleground states moving towards us as well.

There is a clear view that families that are here, that are working, paying taxes and contributing to society, ought to be able to get regularized status. On the other hand, there is a view about not rewarding illegal behavior.

Democrats see a real problem with the way this administration has handled Katrina, and see real needs that have to be addressed. Everybody is trying to do the best they can to help these victims.

I understand that people are conflicted and clearly see this as a vote of conscience, but from a purely political point of view, the Democrat activist base has long been concerned that our party is too accommodating with Bush.

But the political calculation is different for the vice president. With a big Electoral College base in New York, California and the Northeast, Democrats don't have to have a solid South to win the White House, ... We just need to be able to make some places competitive. And it's quite clear we're doing that.