The failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate is not-so-quietly lobbying for the job.
Stacey Abrams graduated with honors from Spelman College in 1995 and went on with her education with a Masters Degree in Public Affairs from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, and a law degree from Yale. Abrams spent several years as a tax attorney, wrote a bestselling book on financial advice aimed at minorities, and then was elected to the Georgia General Assembly in 2007. She remained there for 10 years. In 2017, her ambition led her to run for governor against Brian Kemp, who was Georgia’s Secretary of State at the time.
And we all know what happened. She lost and she just couldn’t deal and overnight became a Darling of the Media(D). (Going door-to-door campaigning with Oprah along with the backing of former President Obama surely helped with that.)
We’ve been subjected to her ever since. And she appears to want a more prominent position.
According to Politico, Stacey Abrams has been “privately lobbying” to be Biden’s running mate.
Stacey Abrams, a former Georgia lawmaker and unsuccessful candidate for governor, has been privately calling Democratic powerbrokers, asking them to tell Biden campaign officials that she should be vice president, according to multiple labor leaders familiar with the discussions…
Privately? You’ve got to be kidding me!
She’s about as subtle as an air horn.
In an interview with Elle magazine, Abrams was touting her strong points as a possible Vice President.
Experienced politicians know there is a right way to answer questions about pursuing higher office. Be demure. Redirect. Convey vague interest while insisting never to have given it serious consideration. But Stacey Abrams does not give the expected answer when I ask if she would accept an offer from former vice president Joe Biden to serve as his 2020 running mate. “Yes. I would be honored,” Abrams says. “I would be an excellent running mate. I have the capacity to attract voters by motivating typically ignored communities. I have a strong history of executive and management experience in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. I’ve spent 25 years in independent study of foreign policy. I am ready to help advance an agenda of restoring America’s place in the world. If I am selected, I am prepared and excited to serve.”
Source: Elle
It’s rather off-putting. Especially with someone who lost their race for a high office and is now looking at an even higher one. Is it just me, or does this remind you of Beto O’Rourke’s “I was born to run for President” article in Vanity Fair?
Abrams has been making a grab for the limelight lately with interviews anywhere she can manage it. She somehow clinched one with The Atlantic where she again said that Biden’s best bet was to pick her. She is his ticket to beat Donald J. Trump.
Stacey Abrams has a theory about how Joe Biden can beat Donald Trump: Pick her as his running mate.
“We have to win the election. And I would point out that I ran the most successful campaign to engage the communities we need to build the broadest coalition necessary in 2020, because what we are going to see on the ground is that this is going to be a campaign unlike anything that’s been run before,” Abrams told me.
Source: The Atlantic
Except… she lost.
Overt campaigning for the vice presidency has traditionally been frowned upon, weakening those who appear overly eager or insufficiently deferential to the nominee. And with the exception of Abrams — who has said “I would be an excellent running mate” — most top-shelf candidates this year have been guarded about their ambitions, even as they position themselves for a potential selection.
Source: Politico
Abrams has some real problems.
First, there is the politics behind picking a running mate–sure the Democrats want it to all just be about gender and race, but there are also other things to consider. Normally, a running mate was chosen for competency as well as their ability to bring in voters from that are hesitant, and in this case, it might not be the ethnic vote, but the disgruntled Bernie Bros that feel like the system is rigged. Abrams, for all her leftisms, has worked on bipartisan bills in her brief time as a state rep, and in this divisive era, that could actually hurt her chances as Biden’s potential Veep.
Second, Abrams lost the gubernatorial race by over 54,723 votes (1.4% of the roughly 4 million votes cast) and refused to concede. (Wasn’t this what the Democrats were concerned that Trump would do in 2016 after Hillary won her inevitable presidential victory?)
Sure, it was close, but it wasn’t that close. She blamed her loss on “voter suppression” presuming that the majority of the allegedly suppressed votes would have gone to her. So, she filed a federal lawsuit demanding large-scale reforms to Georgia’s electoral system.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigated the election results and found that “no evidence emerged of systematic malfeasance – or of enough tainted votes to force a runoff election between Republican Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams.”
Abrams then claimed that an ethics investigation into her campaign was politically motived because of her lawsuit.
She’s very big on the identity politics popular on the left. During her campaign, she said that “undocumented” voters were part of the 2018 “Blue Wave”. She has said that it could be a real problem if Biden doesn’t choose a woman of color, which, rather conveniently, she just so happens to be.
Abrams made it clear recently on The View that not only is it important for Joe to pick a woman of color for his running mate, but it should really be a black woman. (Is that a dig at Kamala Harris who is half Southeast Asian?)
Stacey Abrams tells @TheView she thinks that Vice President Biden is “going to make a smart choice” in picking a running mate, but adds that she does have “concerns” about Biden “not picking a woman of color.” https://t.co/53N8arecl2 pic.twitter.com/KNpe5yNBx3
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) April 22, 2020
Of all the contenders, Abrams has been the most assertive on the issue of race, telling ABC’s “The View” that it would be a “concern” if Biden did not choose a woman of color.
“As a young black woman, growing up in Mississippi, I learned that if you don’t raise your hand, people won’t see you, and they won’t give you attention,” she recently told CNN.
But navigating the Biden campaign’s internal politics may be tricky for Abrams given Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’ close relationships with Biden brass. Lance Bottoms has long been an Abrams rival, declining to endorse her in the 2018 gubernatorial primary and speaking positively about her opponent, Stacey Evans.
Source: Politico
And if all that isn’t enough, she’s vying against three former presidential candidates–Liz Warren who has a juggernaut small-dollar fundraising machine; Amy Klobuchar who is not completely insane; and Kamala Harris who (for some reason) is well-liked by many Democrats. Not only that, Michigan Governor Gretchen “What Is The Bill Of Rights” Whitmer is also in the running. They are all stronger candidates than she is–even Whitmer who has clamped down on Michiganders’ freedoms with her smiley-faced authoritarianism during the COVID lockdown.
But the most difficult thing that Abrams will have to navigate is the thing that any Democrat woman who joins Biden’s team in the wake of Tara Reade’s “credible” accusation of sexual assault in the #MeToo era… her own words.
Abrams was firmly in the Believe All Women camp when Christine Blasey Ford accused Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, of pushing her down on a bed and trying to grope her at a house party when they were teens. Back in September 2018 at the height of the Kavanaugh confirmation circus, she told Marie Claire, the women’s magazine, “It is incumbent upon our leaders to treat sexual assault prevention and building a culture of consent as a public health issue, and to ensure that survivors who wish to come forward can do so safely, and be believed.” (Emphasis added)
Strangely, Abrams hasn’t said the same about Tara Reade despite her story being much more serious, and frankly, more credible than Professor Blasey Ford’s account. Blasey Ford had no witnesses or corroborating evidence–on the contrary the witnesses she named all denied that there was a party at all, let alone that the incident occurred. Meanwhile, Reade has had several witnesses come forward corroborating her story, there is now a weird video clip from a 1993 Larry King Live episode with a phone call from Reade’s mother, and we know that Reade was a Senate aid when the incident occurred.
It’ll be interesting to see how any woman would handle this mess of their own creation. Perhaps they’ll suddenly discover due process like Alyssa Milano did. But we shouldn’t let them cop-out like that.
I think that we should hold them to their own standard, and call them hypocrites when they don’t.
When in a battle, it’s unwise to unilaterally disarm, and that’s what it would be if we let any of them–even the ridiculous loser Stacey Abrams–not hold Joe Biden to the same standard that they held Brett Kavanaugh to.
They wanted those rules, then they can’t change them.
