"...you lose with Humph, okay, sure. Fine. Vietnam, MLK and RFK are killed, the Chicago riots during the convention, LBJ was unpopular, Nixon ran on law and order, Wallace poached the South... though let's be real, Humph wasn't winning the f**king South. McGovern, the less said the better. Great guy, smarter than he gets credit for, but too easy to paint as the hippie candidate, the scion of the New Left. But after Nixon, after Watergate, the pardon and the economy going in the crapper in '75? Sure, it recovered a *bit*, but come on? Jerry Ford's a nice guy but how do you lose that race? How do you win the popular vote by 300,000 votes but drop the ball in Ohio like that? Why are you telling f**king Playboy you've lusted after other women when the entire basis of your campaign is that you're this decent Southern Sunday school teacher, a genuine saint personally and politically, going up against the ugliness of the Nixon years? I just don't get it. Still don't. Still don't get to this day how Carter blew that race."
- James Carville Interview 1994
"...the Democratic civil war during Ford's full term in the late 70s was ugly but it was better to hash out those rivalries then, while we had both Houses of Congress, than during the 80s once we actually wielded genuine power again. I think the frustration of the McGovern-Carter one-two punch, of getting the doors blown off by the crook then it being so heartbreakingly close, the disaster in Ohio and all, against the hapless stooge who came after him, yeah, I really think that was what the party needed. I think that helped eliminate the do-gooder, managerial, New Left idealism for a lot of people. Twelve years out of the White House, I mean, that was unheard of since Hoover. It really was. People couldn't believe it. I really think we needed that time to reassess."
- Excerpt from "My American Life" by Gary Hart
"...with everything that happened in the late 70s, even as early as inauguration, some people were rolling out "Carter 80" signs, pushing for a rematch. Jimmy went back to Plains and I don't think he ever publicly indulged that speculation. For a long time it seemed like he was leaving politics forever, to go be a hermit in south Georgia and just be a footnote in history, a modern day Sam Tilden, coming oh-so-close but no cigar then fading into obscurity. Of course, thankfully for Georgia and the American body politic, he found a path where he could contribute and use his fame and cachet within the Democratic party for some good. That said, a lot of the more progressive actors in the party who never warmed up to Jimmy really cringed when talk of a rematch swirled around in the early days. He had his shot, was their stance, and honestly I think they were right. I sometimes wonder if he would have wanted to have made the leap. I don't think he loved the spotlight or what that campaign was like, personally."
- Former Georgia Governor George Busbee Interview, "Remembering '76 - A Historical Symposium on the 1976 Presidential Election"
"...there was talk about drafting me to run for President again in four years but I never really looked into it. I didn't feel the fire a second time. I had been an obscure Southern governor nearly vaulted to the White House but there were so many talented Democrats who wanted to lead us into the 1980s, after what would have been 12 years of Republican administrations. I have a few "Carter 80" items in my home, actually, but I would have actual "Carter 80" memorabilia from a very different but very important race that year anyways."
- Georgia Senator James Earl Carter Interview with The Washington Post, 1989