Former state Sen. Jason Carter said he was struggling over what to tell his children about Donald Trump's victory. House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams wants to shift her focus to the upcoming legislative session after Hillary Clinton's defeat.
And Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said he was simply thankful a UPS announcement of 1,250 new jobs in the city got his mind off Tuesday's upset election.
“I was in the fetal position until about 6 p.m. yesterday,” he said on Thursday, invoking an old political joke: “I slept like a baby – sleep, get up, cry a little bit, then go back to sleep, wake up, cry a little bit.”
The laments from trio of top Georgia Democrats are familiar to the tens of millions of Trump critics wrestling over his presidency. Democrats won each of metro Atlanta's core counties, even flipping GOP-friendly Cobb and Gwinnett counties. But Clinton lost the state by 5 percentage points – and was defeated in Wisconsin, Michigan and other long-held Democratic territory.
Carter, the party’s gubernatorial nominee in 2014, said he and his family were reeling over what Trump’s victory said about “the way we treat women in this country.”
“Not only because of how Hillary Clinton was treated, but because of what people are apparently willing to tolerate with Donald Trump,” he said.
“Republicans are going to be stuck with the most unpopular president ever,” added Carter, the grandson of former President Jimmy Carter. “Do Republicans want to be the party of Donald Trump? Is that really what they want? I frankly don’t think so.”
Abrams, who along with Carter is considered a potential candidate for governor in 2018, said she prays that “the man who ran for office on a platform of racism, misogyny and religious bigotry” will govern with diversity and tolerance in mind.
And Reed, who again ruled out a run for higher office in 2018, said it's time for Democrats to buckle down. Flipping Cobb and Gwinnett, he said, "has huge ramifications" for the party's future.
“Donald Trump is going to be our president and that’s the bottom line. There’s another election in four years. There’s another election in two years,” said Reed. “So let’s get up, dust ourselves off and get back to it.”
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