This is Rep. Jamie Raskin.

The most important political epiphany I ever had was on the day I
announced my first campaign for public office, when I was running for the
Maryland State Senate many years ago.

I made a speech setting forth everything I wanted to accomplish: abolish
the death penalty in our state, increase the minimum wage, decriminalize
marijuana, ban the sale of military-style assault weapons, launch the
National Popular Vote interstate compact, and pass marriage equality for
our LGBTQ community.

A woman came up to me and said, “Great speech, but one thing—take out
everything you have in there about gay marriage. It's not going to happen,
and even gay candidates don’t talk about it. It makes you sound really
extreme, like you’re not in the political center.”

I paused because I didn’t want to offend her, but my kids were with me
watching, and so I said this:

“Thank you so much for saying that to me, because it makes me realize that
it is not my ambition to be in the political center, which blows around
with the wind. It is my ambition to be in the moral center. That is why
I’m a Democrat and that is why I’m a progressive.”

“It is our job to move public opinion and bring the political center to
the moral center.”

[ [link removed] ]Can you donate $5 to help me and the PCCC build up the campaigns of
progressive congressional candidates in key races who see their job the
same way? Donate here.

I was running against a 32-year incumbent who was president pro tem of the
Maryland Senate and chair of the Montgomery County Senate delegation. A
pundit told a local newspaper that my chances of victory were considered
“impossible.”

But nine months later, after building a grassroots campaign that educated
and mobilized thousands of people, we won 67 percent of the vote. The day
after the election, the Washington Post quoted a pundit who declared that
my victory was “inevitable.”

We went from impossible to inevitable in nine months.

John -- I teach the young people in our Democracy Summer
project that, in politics, nothing is impossible and nothing is
inevitable.

Change is only possible through the democratic arts of educating people
and organizing them to create real change.

We Democrats accomplished everything that I had set out to do in the State
Senate. Now I’m in Congress fighting every day to defend American
democracy and the voting rights of the people.

Media pundits are predicting that right-wing gerrymandering, voter
suppression and the filibuster will make it impossible for Democrats to
hold the House and Senate in 2022. But with your help, we can build
grassroots majority power, defend our crucial blue majority, and prove
that organized democracy can defeat organized insurrection and corruption.

[ [link removed] ]Please join me and support my critical work!

With solidarity and nothing but high hopes for America,

-- Jamie Raskin


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