Sarcastic Quote by Lyn Nofziger

The line lands like a backhanded compliment with a strategist's smirk: Al Gore is "the best thing going for us" precisely because Nofziger assumes Gore is unelectable. It is partisan confidence dressed up as disbelief, a rhetorical move that flatters the speaker's side (we are so obviously right) while insulting the electorate (you people are capable of anything).

Nofziger's real subject isn't Gore, though; it's the unreliability of American political "common sense". He frames past elections as acts of near-surreal mass behavior, invoking Carter, Clinton, and especially Clinton's 1996 reelection as evidence that voters routinely defy what insiders consider rational. The punchline is the pivot: "On the other hand..". This is where the cynicism sharpens. The earlier claim of incomprehension isn't sincere confusion, it's a performative shrug that signals hard-earned operatives' wisdom: stop predicting outcomes based on merit or character, because elections are not morality plays.

Context matters. Nofziger was a Republican operative associated with the Reagan era, a world where politics is messaging, coalition math, and timing. Read that way, the quote doubles as psychological warfare. Call your opponent unelectable and you energize your own side; simultaneously, you plant complacency in the other camp ("they can't possibly win") and cast any eventual loss as a kind of national lapse rather than strategic failure.

The subtext is almost nihilistic: democracy is less a deliberative system than a recurring shock, and the professional class keeps score by treating the public as the unpredictable variable.