Everyone knows the presidential candidates and has an opinion about them. But as you get to smaller races, that evaporates and you can win through sheer elbow grease.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I understand personally that it is frustrating to lose presidential elections by narrow margins.
One of the least appealing aspects of modern presidential candidates is that, to avoid saying anything that might prove to be an embarrassing, costly blunder, they cling to a rigid set of talking points that reveal as little as possible about what they really think and who they really are.
Sooner or later, I need to begin to do what any candidate does in a presidential race; I need to begin to win.
I must admit I found it astonishing to watch the candidates below Donald Trump beat up each other and never lay a glove on the front-runner. I mean, when I was running, everybody went after the front-runner and pointed out my weaknesses and foibles, and that's part of the normal primary process.
Voters like to fall in love with presidential candidates, at least a little bit.
Every challenger has come forward and said he's going to challenge me and win because I'm out of touch with the constituents. We run a race, the election comes, and the majority of voters disagree with them.
The 2012 presidential campaign's turn away from the classic, straight-up, American election - where the candidate who gets the most votes nationwide wins - is another sad reminder of the extreme political polarization distorting today's politics. No one talks about a 50-state strategy for winning the presidency these days.
President Obama seems to think that you win by demonstrating that you're a more reasonable person than your opponents. It didn't work too badly, I'll grant, as an electoral strategy in the 2012 election.
In terms of the ability to go out and win - this is why you have campaigns. You go out, and you take your issues to voters, and you put them out there, and people respond, or they don't.
Grassroots organizing tends to be most available to big campaigns, but it's actually most useful to small ones. You can't win a presidential campaign without going on TV, but you can win a local election simply by organizing your community. NationBuilder levels the playing field.
No opposing quotes found.