Paul Wellstone
Victories should be won by people where they live, but if the victories never affect national or international centers of decision-making power, then we are still not seriously contesting for power.
There are three critical ingredients to democratic renewal and progressive change in America: good public policy, grassroots organizing and electoral politics.
Right now the whole does not equal the sum of the parts.
A politics that is not sensitive to the concerns and circumstances of people's lives, a politics that does not speak to and include people, is an intellectually arrogant politics that deserves to fail.