Biography

We have given into the politics of anger - the belief that riling up the base can make up for failed attempts to broaden the electorate. These are the spasms of a dying party...We knew all of this before the last election, but quickly set it aside for the sugar high of populism, nativism and demagoguery. The crash from this sugar high will be particularly unpleasant.

I wish that we, as a party, would have stood up, for example, when the birtherism thing was going along. A lot of people did stand up but not enough.

[on President Trump] All we're doing really is approving the president's cabinet picks, justices.

[from his resignation speech] We were not made great as a country by indulging in or even exalting our worst impulses, turning against ourselves, glorifying in the things that divide us, and calling fake things true and true things fake. And we did not become the beacon of freedom in the darkest corners of the world by flouting our institutions and failing to understand just how hard-won and vulnerable they are.

[announcing his decision not to seek re-election during Donald Trump's presidency] The notion that one should stay silent - and as the norms and values that keep America strong are undermined and as the alliances and agreements that ensure the stability of the entire world are routinely threatened by the level of thought that goes into 140 characters - the notion that we should say or do nothing in the face of such mercurial behavior is ahistoric and, I believe, profoundly misguided.