As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to the Oval Office, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said on Wednesday that Democrats are in for "the fight of our lives."
"We're not gonna change our values," Raskin told MSNBC's "All In with Chris Hayes." "We're not gonna abandon American constitutional democracy because we lost an election by … 1 and a half percent. We're not gonna abandon the rule of law."
"We're gonna be recruiting and mobilizing hundreds of thousands and millions of more people to get out there and be leaders in this fight," he said. "What else can we do? This is not a game of volleyball or badminton where we're gonna quit the game or something. I mean, this is the fight of our lives that we're in now."
In addition to the presidency, Democrats lost control of both the House and the Senate in the 2024 elections — a fact which has shaken the party's confidence and led to soul-searching about what went wrong.
Defeat at the ballot box has sparked ongoing conversations in Democrat circles about how party candidates fared with voters, with some moderates saying the party drifted too far to the left, and some progressives saying it did not go far enough.
Raskin said Wednesday that the party has been "outflanked" by the GOP and has work to do in light of this cycle's results.
"Look, we lost an election by around 3 million votes," he said. "Joe Biden had beaten Donald Trump four years before that by more than 7 million votes. So obviously the country is closely divided, and so we're gonna alter some tactics and strategies and figure out how the right has captured a lot of the social media, and I think we have been outflanked there."
Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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