Top 81 Quotes & Sayings by Mara Liasson

The president is under 50 percent approval ratings in all the battleground states. So, you could say that President Obama is defying gravity by still being in a dead heat with Mitt Romney. And one of the reasons that he is, is because the changing face of the electorate are giving him a small boost.

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.'

While Romney has an overall deficit with women voters, his biggest disadvantage is with college educated women - wherever they work, at home, in an office, a store or a factory.

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

Romney still enjoys the Republicans' traditional advantage among voters who are veterans, but the Obama campaign is confident it can chip away at that.

Until he announced his immigration policy last week, Obama had the support of most Hispanic voters - but not the enthusiasm they had shown for him in 2008. That may be changing in part because of the decision not to deport young immigrants whose undocumented parents brought them here as children.

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.

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.

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.

[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.

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.

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.

The establishment is divorcing itself from its base - from voters who are choosing a candidate who says he stands for things that are anathema to the establishment.

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

The enthusiasm for [Donald] Trump had gone up. The net result was it made people more supportive of him.

There's a lot of anxiety about terrorism among the country at large. There's also a feeling the country has stagnated.

Ted Cruz is a small-government conservative.

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

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

The Republican Party, right now, is a conservative populist party.

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.

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

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

There's disgust with what people called a broken political system, and they're really angry at elites, whether it's the Republican establishment or particularly the media who they feel look down on them, tell them they're bigots.

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.

The country wants the president and the Congress focused on jobs and the economy. Any regulation that the president promulgates that isn't focused on, I think, is a risk for him, and the same is true for Congress.

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.

The [Hillary] Clinton campaign's recent travel schedule shows how seriously it takes this problem. She and her surrogates have held rallies in cities like Philadelphia, Detroit and Cleveland, trying to boost turnout among African-Americans.

The winner's margin of victory also matters. If it's a squeaker, that will make the lessons learned for both parties much murkier.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Senate races have tightened along with the presidential race. Watch to see how many Republican Senate candidates outperform Donald Trump - and how many hang on to their seats in states that he loses.

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

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.

The Senate is the big prize. Until recently, Democrats felt confident they could get the four seats they needed to take back control if [Hillary] Clinton is in the White House and Vice President Tim Kaine held the tie-breaking vote.

The GOP establishment, in particular, is facing a pick-your-poison kind of decision. Many establishment Republicans dislike [Ted] Cruz personally. He has no Senate endorsements.

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.

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

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

There was another Cleveland rally [of Hillary Clinton] - this one with LeBron James.

The Democrats pulled out one of their most powerful surrogates - and no, it wasn't President [Barack] Obama. Beyoncé showed up at a GOTV rally in Cleveland, joining her husband, Jay Z, and Hillary Clinton.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

You have [Donald] Trump and [Ted] Cruz battling it out, and the moderate establishment candidates like Chris Christie or Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, John Kasich - they have formed a circular firing squad.

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.

Yes, the presidential race is very close, and some public polls show it getting closer as we go into the final hours, but in one sense it's actually been stable for months.

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.

The lesson is that voters in both parties are in a very anti-establishment, populist mood. Hillary Clinton is the establishment candidate.

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.

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

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.

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

There was tremendous animus to President [Barack] Obama. Many of people said he was un-American, not a Christian and worse.