Politics & Power Quote by Barney Frank

Frank’s line is doing two jobs at once: lowering the temperature and sharpening the blade. On its face, it’s almost comically mild - of course a prominent liberal Democrat will “most of the time” side with Democrats. The point is the modifier. “Most of the time” is a pressure-release valve, a signal to skeptics that ideology doesn’t fully own him, that there’s room for argument, coalition, and the occasional apostasy. It’s a politician’s version of “I’m not a partisan, I just vote like one.”

The subtext is a defense against an era’s favorite insult: reflexive party loyalty. Frank, famous for a clipped, lawyerly style and a willingness to fight on television, frames alignment as probabilistic rather than tribal. Agreement becomes a matter of evidence and values that happen to map onto party lines - not a pledge of personal fealty. That posture matters in Washington, where credibility is currency and the accusation of being “in the tank” can be fatal with swing voters, independents, and even colleagues across the aisle.

Contextually, it fits the late-20th/early-21st-century hardening of partisan identity, when saying “I’m bipartisan” became mandatory theater. Frank sidesteps the theater without rejecting it outright. He admits the obvious, but he admits it on his terms: not as a confession of bias, but as a claim that the Republican agenda is, in his view, simply wrong often enough that disagreement is the rational default. The line’s quiet provocation is that “most of the time” is generous.