Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.
Interpretation
Political parties often borrow ideas from each other, leading to a lack of real choice for voters.
H. L. Mencken's quote reflects the cynical view that political parties become indistinguishable from one another as they adopt each other's ideas and rhetoric. By the time election day arrives, voters find themselves in a cycle of merely swapping one group of politicians for another without any significant change in policies or direction, leading to a sense of disillusionment regarding the democratic process.
In practice
During a political debate, one might mention this quote to illustrate the similar positions of competing candidates.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
In terms of election issues, the urgent challenges we face include securing reforms to de-escalate the nuclear arms race, end voter suppression, improve health care for all Americans and alleviate the climate crisis.
When giant companies wanted more tax loopholes, Washington got it done. When huge energy companies wanted to tear up our environment, Washington got it done. When enormous Wall Street banks wanted new regulatory loopholes, Washington got it done. No gridlock there!
Democracy and socialism are means to an end, not the end itself.
Minorities within nation-states frayed by global capitalism are naturally more resentful of hollowed-out but still heavily centralised systems of political and economic domination.
No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. But when Governor Romney and his allies in Congress tell us we can somehow lower our deficit by spending trillions more on new tax breaks for the wealthy - well, you do the math. I refuse to go along with that. And as long as I'm President, I never will.
The military destabilised my government on politically motivated charges.
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