Much of what Tea Party candidates claimed about the world and the global economy during the 2010 elections would have earned their adherents a well-deserved F in any freshman economics (or earth science) class.
It will be about which candidate which of the two candidates remaining is best suited to make a positive difference in the lives of North Carolina families and I submit to each of you tonight that I am that candidate and Elizabeth Dole is not.
The news is what it is. It's going to be good it's going to be positive it's going to be negative. It's going to have all sorts of effects on candidates always.
Political consultants are pugilists masters in the dark art of negativity. Which is why it's surprising to hear Democrats such as Steve McMahon and Republicans like Rich Galen urging their presidential candidates to be more well positive.
People are fed up with the politics where candidates just rip each other apart and then the voters lose in the end because no one really knows what anybody stands for.
When I started 'CNN ' I made the decision to stay out of endorsing candidates and let the doers make up their own minds about politics that it wasn't going to come from me.
I guess you'd call me an independent since I've never identified myself with one party or another in politics. I always decide my vote by taking as careful a look as I can at the actual candidates and issues themselves no matter what the party label.
The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal - that you can gather votes like box tops - is I think the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.
For us political activists and candidates the morning after any election is a mix of emotions - the personal and the immediate the culmination of your own recent campaigning efforts and the fortunes of your party and the success or otherwise of what you stand for and believe in.
Research has shown that the perceived style of leadership is by far the most important thing to most voters in evaluating officeholders and candidates.