Latest Jonathan Chait Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• At best, Trumpism will be a more right-wing version of the same old Republican Party.

  Jonathan Chait

  Party, Wings, Republican

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• It's possible that the clowning and the buffoonery and the entertainment are a bigger part of what's happening than we've allowed. And that Trump is primarily an entertainer who wants ratings, and an undisciplined speaker, and it will all be less than we think. It's something that we have to consider as a possibility; we don't know.

  Jonathan Chait

  Thinking, Want, Entertainment

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• There's an element of clowning and entertainment to Trump, that makes it surreal and hard to understand to what extent he is pretending to be a fascist or an authoritarian.

  Jonathan Chait

  Elements, Entertainment, Pretending

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• Liberals tend to romanticize the past, past leaders' failures.

  Jonathan Chait

  Past, Leader

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• Liberals will only support you after you're gone.

  Jonathan Chait

  Support You, Support, Gone

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• Conservatives are much more comfortable supporting the leader who's in power than liberals.

  Jonathan Chait

  Leader, Comfortable

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• It's absolutely true that people who believed Hillary Clinton would be a decent or even strong nominee need to think why that got that wrong. Laying the entire blame at the feet of Russia and the FBI is not sufficient. The biggest reason things went wrong were her own choices and her own weaknesses.

  Jonathan Chait

  Strong, Thinking, Russia

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• I never thought Hillary Clinton was a very good politician.

  Jonathan Chait

  Politician, Clinton, Very Good

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• I don't think the Democrats need a silver bullet.

  Jonathan Chait

  Thinking, Bullets, Needs

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• In some ways, Trump is just going to continue the trend: by continuing the norm-smashing behaviour that Republicans used in opposition.

  Jonathan Chait

  Behaviour, Trends, Way

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• It's pretty clear that Hillary Clinton was a deeply, deeply flawed alternative. She had the wrong combination of the internal political chops to muscle out all the mainstream nominations from the field, leaving only Bernie Sanders, who was unacceptable to the Democrats' party establishment. But she also had a real lack of political skill that would enable her to win the general election.

  Jonathan Chait

  Real, Party, Winning

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• One of the things we've learned during the Obama era is how important norms are, because we've seen how the Republican Party behaved against Obama. So much of what they did was to smash pre-existing norms, which were nothing more than assumptions of how people would behave, which didn't have any real basis in rules or limits.

  Jonathan Chait

  Real, Party, People

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• American democracy faces a massive challenge. I don't think it is a certainty that we're headed toward Putin's Russia, as some commentariat does. But people need to mobilize and build up small-d democratic institutions to prepare against that eventuality.

  Jonathan Chait

  Thinking, Russia, People

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• I worry about the entire structure of American democracy under Trump.

  Jonathan Chait

  Worry, Democracy, Structure

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• Trump has a lot of authoritarian tendencies that need to be a serious concern.

  Jonathan Chait

  Needs, Serious, Trump

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• In the long run, however much damage we come through, Obama's vision is the one that's going to be left standing. It's a question of how much pain and suffering America has to endure in the meantime.

  Jonathan Chait

  Running, Pain, America

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• Obamaism is the future of America.

  Jonathan Chait

  America, Future Of America

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• We're not going to be living in a world of abundant coal power in a hundred years.

  Jonathan Chait

  Years, Coal, World

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• We're not going to be living in a world where white identity politics is the basis for a major political party.

  Jonathan Chait

  Party, Identity Politics, White

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• Trump's not the future; his ideas and his coalition are a dead end.

  Jonathan Chait

  Ideas, Dead Ends, Trump

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• Donald Trump will be a tragedy, a sad joke in American history.

  Jonathan Chait

  Tragedy, American History, Trump

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• I'm convinced in 100 years Obama will have an important place in the civic pantheon of American life.

  Jonathan Chait

  Years, Important, Pantheon

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• It's possible that Trump will have success by staging jobs theatre, rather than creating jobs. It's the inverse of what Obama did: saving an enormous amount of jobs without having the televised theatre to go along with it.

  Jonathan Chait

  Jobs, Creating, Theatre

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• Trump is what Obama critics think Obama is: Someone who's focused on symbolism rather than substance.

  Jonathan Chait

  Thinking, Symbolism, Substance

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• Republicans fighting back against changes Obama made means those changes are important, as with most of the major progress in American history.

  Jonathan Chait

  Mean, Fighting, Progress

  Source: www.macleans.ca