Stacey Abrams: The Grift That Keeps On Grifting

Oprah Winfrey and Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams greet a crowd gathered for a town hall conversation at the Cobb Civic Center's Jennie T. Anderson Theatre in Marietta, Ga., Thursday, Nov. 1, 2018. Winfrey visited Georgia on Thursday to canvass neighborhoods in Metro Atlanta and show her support for gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. (Alyssa Pointer /Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

Oprah Winfrey and Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams greet a crowd gathered for a town hall conversation at the Cobb Civic Center’s Jennie T. Anderson Theatre in Marietta, Ga., Thursday, Nov. 1, 2018. Winfrey visited Georgia on Thursday to canvass neighborhoods in Metro Atlanta and show her support for gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. (Alyssa Pointer /Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
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Stacey Abrams is trying very hard to stay relevant, despite the fact that she lost a gubernatorial race (but hasn’t admitted it). She is still making appearances before whatever media will talk to her and let her tell her sob story. The best part is that the media will keep having her on out of a tremendous sense of guilt they feel for ignoring her and focusing on Beto O’Rourke.

But Abrams is a particularly fascinating grifter and is especially good at making sure she stays relevant and continues to raise money. Objectively, it is something the Democrats should worry about. It’s something they should tell her to stop doing. But, as a partisan, I hope she keeps on doing what she’s doing.

Here’s Abrams’ plan: Keep relevant, keep raising money, and run for governor of Georgia in 2022. She was close last time, and I am pretty sure she thinks she can make it happen next time. Of course, Georgia governor Brian Kemp is thus far a man praised for a good many things, like teacher pay raises, including diversity in his appointments, and working in non-confrontational ways with the rest of state government. If he keeps going like this, he’ll end up being one of the most popular governors Georgia’s ever had.

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So, Abrams has to continue with this tirade about stolen elections, minority voter suppression, and the like. The problem for Democrats is that she is doing this at the most pivotal time in the national party’s existence: They are trying to raise money to fight Trump. She exists right now solely to raise money, but that money should be going to them.

None of the Democrats will dare to raise any objections to Abrams’ campaign of “Me, Myself, and I,” because they don’t want to be the ones to tell a black woman to stop being a victim and start helping the team. They will let this continue because that’s the box they as a party have trapped themselves in, and they can’t make this a team effort until the other candidates do.

And so, Abrams will keep appearing in the media to make nonsensical claims about voter suppression and lost ballot access, use cheap buzzwords meant to rile up the most rabid of the Democrats’ base – a base that should be excited for one of the three hundred or so Democrats running for president – all to raise her profile and her campaign’s bank account.

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That will be money not going to Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or any of the others. That is money that will sit for three years in a campaign’s or non-profit’s account and won’t be touched until she decides to run for governor.

I, for one, hope she keeps at it.

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