Former President Barack Obama has shared what Democrats can do to start fighting back against Donald Trump.
According to Politico, the 44th President of the United States told freshman lawmakers to be vigilant and compared the 2024 Republican election sweep to how the Democratic Party felt in 2004. Adam Wren wrote that Obama spoke of a “similar sense of despair” felt now as there was two decades ago in 2004.
Obama said, “Because when I was — everybody remembers the Democratic National Convention in 2004 — when you were. …well, you were in elementary school. But what people don’t recall is that John Kerry lost that election.”
“And we didn’t control the House, and we did not control the Senate. And Tom Daschle, who was then the Democratic leader of the Senate, lost, which is unheard of. And Karl Rove, who was the chief architect of George Bush’s campaigns and political career was – could be found on all the TV stations, talking about the ‘permanent Republican majority’ that had been created.”
Obama went on to compare the strength of the Democratic Party in those two instances, calling on the future of the party to create the momentum for change.
He added, “And two years later, Nancy Pelosi was the first woman speaker of the House of Representatives. And four years later, somehow, I ended up being president. The reason I tell you that is not for you to, you know, feel complacent.”
“It’s to indicate that the work that you are doing right now, the investment you’re making, the focus that you’re applying, the issues that you are developing, the interactions that you’re having with your constituencies. All that is creating the momentum and the opportunity for change.”
Obama would also say he wished he had not overestimated the Republican Party’s willingness to work with his administration over two terms. He said, “We wasted a lot of time trying to engage the ideas of Republicans on a good faith basis.”
The former president has also aired his desire to “move from player to coach” within the Democratic Party. An aide close to Obama said, “His goal is to build a sustainable Democratic Party that can survive without him.”
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