Political Quotes

“I want to pick up where my colleague from Hawaii left off. There is a wonderful analogy that President Obama used after the 2016 election. As you could imagine, Democrats were pretty dejected the day after, and President Obama put it pretty simply. He said: Listen, just remember, these elections are intramural scrimmages. We put on temporary pinnies, Republicans and Democrats, but in the end, we all belong to the same team. We are all Americans. Elections and legislative fights are temporary skirmishes before we recognize and realize our greater identity, which is that we have this commonality. Clearly, that is not what the American people see here. They think our primary identity is our partisan identity, and there is a lot of days in which we give them fodder for that belief. It really is amazing, when it comes down to it, that when you think about the healthcare system, we do have the same goals in mind. There are actually lots of other issues on which we don't have the same goal. Republicans want to go left, and we want to go right. Republicans want to go right, and we want to go left. On healthcare, we actually all want to get to the same place: More people have access to health insurance, the cost of that insurance is less than it is today, and the quality of the care people get is better. It is funny because underneath that, it is just mechanics. It is not actually ideology. It is a decision as to which lever you press and which you don't.…”