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Stacey Abrams said on MSNBC Monday that President-elect Donald Trump’s victory did not indicate a “seismic shift.”
“We keep misremembering what happened in November. Yes, Donald Trump won the election, but it wasn’t a landslide,” Abrams told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.
“It was an evenly divided nation. He got more people, but this was not the seismic shift where 57, 58 percent of America said no,” the two-time failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate said.
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Soon after winning both the popular vote and electoral college, Trump vowed to lead a “golden age of America” after launching the “greatest political movement of all time.”
The incoming commander-in-chief’s second presidential victory entailed sweeping all battleground states as well as Republicans winning a majority in the House and Senate. Furthermore, Trump improved his vote share across the country, starting with conservative areas but extending into deeply Democratic states.
Vice President Kamala Harris congratulated Trump over the phone the next morning and later delivered her concession speech at her alma mater, Howard University.
The feat is determined by many to be a mandate from the American people, who are fed up with economic woes, a border crisis and a broken immigration system.
However, Abrams said, “It was less than 50 percent of the electorate who said this is what we want.”
According to the Associated Press, Trump got 49.9% of the national vote totals.
During the interview, Abrams also reflected on the late President Jimmy Carter’s legacy by discussing “decency” in politics. She implored Democrats to “expand the ambit of decency” to bring more people into the party.
“I think decency is a choice. It’s a difficult choice, but one that, when viewed authentically, has this effect of boosting confidence and boosting morale. It cannot be by itself the only offering and I think what we saw, unfortunately, with President Carter, was that when decency confronts ignominy—ignominy has a leg up because he’s willing to do things decency won’t. That doesn’t mean you abandon decency.”
She argued further, “Our responsibility is for decency to show those who stayed home, those who stayed silent that there is a place for decency and a place for them,” she told Hayes. “That’s the work that has to be done next.”
Abrams, a Democrat, made headlines after refusing to concede the 2018 gubernatorial election to Republican Brian Kemp after losing by 60,000 votes. In 2019, Abrams said “we won” despite the final tally and Kemp’s inauguration, though she has since argued that she accepted the results in 2018.
She had also suggested that Kemp, as Georgia’s secretary of state, enacted policies to suppress voters.
Abrams ran for election again for governor of Georgia and lost on November 8, 2022. Abrams, despite never officially conceding her loss to Kemp, was heralded as an election reform icon.