I think of myself as a democratic capitalist, although I think the word 'socialism' loses its meaning every time that it is used to describe literally any policy left of far right by the current Republicans.

I am a Democrat because I believe in protecting freedom, fairness, families, and the future.

So much of politics is about people's relationships with themselves. You do better if you make people feel secure in who they are.

I think people are just puzzled by why people where I'm from make the political choices sometimes that they do.

Building a wall won't solve our border security challenges.

I hope that teachings about inclusion and love win out over what I personally consider to be a handful of scriptures that reflect the moral expectations of the era in which they were recorded.

Safety and security are the most basic job of government. I understand that - both as a mayor who works every day to secure public safety and reduce crime, and also as someone who deployed in uniform to Afghanistan because I believed joining the military was part of my duty to help keep my country safe.

I think that policy matters. I'm a policy guy.

You can't just let companies self-regulate, and I've gotta think they get that, too.

A lot of these so-called left positions are actually centrist by the standards of the American people, just not by members of the American Congress.

I get the urge people will have after Trump. 'Look at the chaos and the exhaustion: Wouldn't it be better to go back to something more stable with somebody we know?' But there's no going back to a pre-Trump universe. We can't be saying the system will be fine again just like it was. Because that's not true; it wasn't fine.

Our right to practice our faith freely is respected up to the point where doing so involves harming others.

We can't look for greatness in the past.

Presidents going live from the Oval Office have used that platform to inform the American public, and also to do one of the most important parts of their job: to inspire the best in us.

In many ways, Trump appeals to people's smallness, their fears, whatever part of them wants to look backward.

You're not free if you can't marry the person you love because a county clerk is imposing his or her interpretation of religion on you.

I think for those of us who think that our morality is something that needs to be in touch with our religious faith personally, then it's really important to explain that no one party has a monopoly on faith.

So much of what Christ's teachings are about have to do with the way that we take care of the least among us.

You can't understand America without understanding the Puritans. In many ways, we're still living out their legacy in ways that are good and bad.

The world is changing, but it is not changing on its own.

Being the mayor of your hometown is the best job in America, partly because it's relatively nonpartisan - we focus on results, not ideology.

What's worse: a president who is very faithful to an ideology that you find extreme, or a president who is very cynical and appears to have no ideology at all? Neither one of those things is great.

One of the reasons we set up this country, one of the things we celebrate in freedom and democracy of the United States is you can criticize your president. You can criticize the ways in which the country falls short of its values.

There's this romantic idea that's built up around war. But the pragmatic view is there are tons of people of my generation who have lost their lives, lost their marriages, or lost their health as a consequence of being sent to wars which could have been avoided.