Best 78 quotes of Mara Liasson on MyQuotes

A big win for [Hillary] Clinton would allow her to claim that the country rejected Trumpism, while a narrow win leaves her limping into office with the highest unfavorable ratings for any new president.

African-American voters are not nearly as enthusiastic about [Hillary] Clinton as they were about [Barack] Obama.

After months and months at the top of the polls, there is a real possibility that Donald Trump could be the nominee.

As one conservative intellectual said to me - he said if the choice is between [Joseph] Stalin and [Adolf] Hitler, I'd pick Stalin, meaning Ted Cruz because he's more predictable. So there's real civil war inside the Republican Party.

As one person said to me , Republicans know [Donald] Trump is a stain on their party.

As those states and others in the South and West become more diverse and educated, they will become harder for the Republican Party - in its current form - to win.

Both the Obama and Romney campaigns said they pulled all their political ads today in observance of the September 11th anniversary. But politics wasn't very far offstage. The Obama campaign sees foreign policy as an advantage this year.

Democrats came into the race with a structural advantage in the Electoral College. Their big blue wall - the states that Democrats have won in the past six presidential elections - gave [Hillary] Clinton a strong base to build on.

Does Donald Trump accept the results and concede graciously, pursue legal action, or tell his followers to take to the streets?

Donald Trump has said he wants to keep Medicare and Social Security the way they are. Congressman Price along with most Republicans are on record supporting voucherizing Medicare. So there are going to be some conflicts to resolve there.

[Donald] Trump has said he will accept the results of the election - if he wins. And he has said the only way he can lose the election is if it's stolen from him. Weeks before any votes were cast, he was predicting widespread voter fraud. So if he loses, what does he do?

Donald Trump is a candidate who divided his own party more deeply than any presidential candidate has before.

[Donald] Trump's path to victory depends on getting historic levels of support from white voters, and particularly large numbers of white, non-college-educated voters.

Donald Trump's staffing up a pretty traditional, very conservative Republican government, not a populist outsider government, at least not yet.

[Donald Trump ] would make history in so many ways because he is a candidate who eschewed the traditional arts of political campaigns, including field organization, traditional advertising, debate preparation and policy knowledge.

Even if [Donald] Trump concedes, some of his supporters have promised to take up arms against [Hillary] Clinton.

For a long time, many Republicans thought if they just took two aspirin and laid down, [Donald] Trump would go away.

For Democrats, anything less than 15 net pickups will be a disappointing outcome [in presidency race].

[Hillary] Clinton has also struggled with key groups of voters.

Hillary Clinton has had a small but persistent lead since June - anywhere from 2 to 5 points. The stock markets and the election betting pools are predicting a Clinton win.

Hillary Clinton is also not a very exciting, inspiring candidate to a lot of the left-leaning Democratic base, especially in Iowa.

If Donald Trump wins, it will be a seismic event.

If [Donald] Trump wins narrowly, Democrats can blame the loss on FBI director James Comey, who inserted himself late in the campaign in an unprecedented way.

If [Donald] Trump drags down a bunch of Senate Republicans, the post-election GOP assessment will be much more pessimistic.

If [Donald] Trump loses narrowly, it will make it much harder for the GOP to unify. Under that scenario, the Trumpists are likely to argue that the election was lost because the Republican establishment failed to rally around the choice their own voters made.

If [Hillary] Clinton can come close in those two traditionally red states, it will be because of the diverse, educated populations around Atlanta and Phoenix. And it will be a sign that Arizona and Georgia are on their way to becoming the new battleground states.

If [Hillary] Clinton can't boost African-American turnout, even with all that help, the question becomes whether she can make up for it with historic levels of support from Hispanics and suburban women.

If [Hillary] Clinton wins, history will also be made: She would be the first female U.S. president, of course, but also the only candidate in the modern era, other than George H.W. Bush, who managed to follow a two-term president of her own party.

If Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania wins, for instance, it will tell Republicans that their own brand hasn't been hurt too badly by [Donald] Trump's negatives.

If she Hillary Clinton win just two of the three big battleground states - North Carolina, Florida and Virginia - she will have shut off Trump's path to 270 electoral votes, even if he wins the other toss-up states.

If the Congress is going to spend its whole time hauling up regulators and bureaucrats and looking like they're focusing on tiny, trivial things, instead of jobs and the economy, it could be a problem for them.

If they can get 15 or higher, it will be a very bad night for House Speaker Paul Ryan. Ryan twisted himself into a pretzel by endorsing but not always supporting Donald Trump. Now, he's facing the prospect of a slimmer majority, with fewer moderates. Conservative members in the Freedom Caucus have already sent warning shots threatening Ryan's tenure as speaker.

In 2012, African-Americans were 13 percent of the electorate, and 93 percent of them voted for [Barack] Obama.

In 2012, Hispanics were 10 percent of the electorate, underperforming their share of the voting-age population. Mitt Romney got 21 percent of their vote, and [Donald] Trump has been polling much lower than that.

I think that's why we see this mixed reaction - Republican congressional leaders like Paul Ryan speaking out very firmly, but Republican candidates not as much, with the exception of the candidates in the single digits like Jeb Bush or Lindsey Graham, who said how to make America great again tell - Donald Trump to go to hell.

Jeb Bush was supposed to be the establishment candidate, but he didn't catch on. And the extraordinary thing about this Republican primary is that the establishment, moderate wing of the party has sidelined itself. They're not coalescing around one candidate as they have in the past.

Many people feel he did cross a line in a way he hadn't even done before and also that Republicans had to speak out because they believe Trump poses a danger to the party.

Meanwhile, there are some traditional battleground states - like Ohio and Iowa - that are becoming older, whiter and less educated. That's turning them from true battlegrounds into more reliable red states.

Michael Rubio said Trump's plan was impulsive and not well thought out. The other thing that's really annoying Republicans is that this was supposed to be their great week. The president gave a speech on terrorism that was not well received. They were working hard to tie Hillary Clinton to the president. Then along comes Donald Trump, and the story changes dramatically.

[Mike] Bloomberg aides says he's more likely to run if it's [Donald]Trump or [Ted] Cruz versus Sanders, then there would, presumably, be space in the middle for him. But he's less likely to go if Hillary Clinton is the nominee.

Mitt Romney got 59 percent of the white vote in 2012, considered by many to be a high-water mark with this demographic group. Can [Donald] Trump win a higher share of white voters than Romney and get more of them to turn out?

No one is predicting that the Democrats will get the 30 pickups they need to take back the House majority.

Obama has built his public image around his ability to bridge divisions - racial, ideological or generational. And that was his reputation, even at Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the 'Law Review.

Obama's even keel sometimes comes across as aloof or even cold.

On the other side, you have the conservative intelligentsia - magazines like National Review, which has a big anti-Trump issue; Weekly Standard editor, conservative talk show hosts - they're mounting a big anti-Trump effort, pro-Cruz effort because they think [Donald] Trump is dangerous and he's not qualified to be commander in chief.

People like Ted Cruz, who has tried to position himself as the best second choice for [Donald] Trump supporters, wouldn't condemn him.

Republican candidates have won whites with college degrees in every presidential election since polling began.

Republicans like Trent Lott, saying [Donald] Trump would be more flexible [then Ted Cruz].

Republicans think that [Ted] Cruz would be like Barry Goldwater. He'd lose in a landslide and pull the party down with him. They'd lose Senate and House seats.

Republican voters are coalescing behind [Donald] Trump, but many Republican elected officials still say they can't support him.