Mandela's commitment to democracy was ratified not only by his election, but by his willingness to step down from power
And yes, my plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet - because climate change is not a hoax. More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They're a threat to our children's future. And in this election, you can do something about it.
You have to be involved during midterm elections, you have to care about what happens at a school board level.
Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets.
If you've got a business - you didn't build that.
In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?
I do believe, separate and apart from any particular election or movement, that we are going to have to guard against a rise in a crude sort of nationalism or ethnic identity or tribalism that is built around an us and a them.
One faction of one party, in one house of Congress, in one branch of government, doesn't get to shut down the entire government just to refight the results of an election.
You don't like a particular policy or a particular president? Then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election. Push to change it. But don't break it. Don't break what our predecessors spent over two centuries building. That's not being faithful to what this country's about.
"Undecided," while running for re-election to state Senate in 1998, in response to an Outlines questionnaire asking, "Do you favor legalizing same-sex marriage?"
If you give up on the idea that your voice can make a difference, then other voices will fill the void: lobbyists and special interests; the people with the $10 million checks who are trying to buy this election and those who are making it harder for you to vote; Washington politicians who want to decide who you can marry, or control health care choices that women should make for themselves.
I don't look at my pension. It's not as big as yours so it doesn't take as long.
Please proceed, Governor.
I think it's important to realize that I was actually black before the election.
I believe we can seize this future together, because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. [...] We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions. [...] We are and forever will be the United States of America. [...] We will continue our journey forward and remind the world just why it is that we live in the greatest nation on Earth.
We're all in this together. That's how we campaigned, and that's who we are. This happened because of you. Thank you.
Everybody knows politics is a contact sport.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words.
If everybody who voted in 2008 shows up in 2010, we will win this election. We will win this election.
For half of the world's population, roughly three billion people around the world living on less than two dollars a day, an election is at best a means, not an end; a starting point, not deliverance. These people are looking less for an "electocracy" than for the basic elements that for most of us define a decent life--food, shelter, electricity, basic health care, education for their children, and the ability to make their way through life without having to endure corruption, violence, or arbitrary power.
My expectation would be that if we can begin discussions soon, shortly after the Iranian elections, we should have a fairly good sense by the end of the year as to whether they are moving in the right direction.
We wouldn't even be where we are had it not been that 70% of Hispanics voted for President Obama, voted Democratic in the last election. That caused an epiphany in the Senate, that's for sure. So all of a sudden we have already passed comprehensive immigration reform in the Senate. That's a big victory.
What I would advise, what I advised before the election, and what I will continue to advise after the election, is that elections matter; voting matters; organizing matters; being informed on the issues matter.
Elections are always a little bit funny. People start saying things and emphasizing differences. After the election, my hope is, is that people start emphasizing what we have in common.
When you try to sow the seeds of doubt in people`s minds about the legitimacy of our election, that undermines democracy. Then you`re doing the work of our adversaries for them.
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