The Stacy Abrams saga refuses to go away. In the most recent installment of the madness, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts, proclaimed Abrams lost last year’s Georgia gubernatorial race to Governor Brian Kemp because America is racist.
Moulton made his outrageous comments during a CNN town hall event on June 2, 2019. According to The Blaze, someone in the audience inquired of Moulton what he would do to end systemic racism if he claimed the White House. The audience member specifically requested the Representative provide an answer that went beyond criminal justice reform.
Moulton responded, “We have a problem with racism in America today. If this country wasn’t racist, Stacey Abrams would be governor. Because people of color are being systemically denied the most basic right in a democracy, which is the right to vote. That’s why we need a new Voting Rights Act in America.”
On the day of the town hall event, Moulton tweeted, “We need a New Voting Rights Act in America. That means:- Automatic voter registration – Abolishing the electoral college – Ending gerrymandering – Statehood for DC and Puerto Rico.”
So, why are people, primarily Democrats, still bemoaning the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial contest, a race in which Kemp won by a hefty margin of 54,723 votes? The answer lies in Abrams’ persistence in proclaiming she won despite clear evidence to the contrary. Abrams has repeatedly maintained that “Kemp only earned more votes due to voter suppression by way of purging voters, rejecting ballots with minor errors, or forcing voters to use provisional ballots.” Kemp served as Georgia’s secretary of state before moving into the Governor’s Mansion.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Karl Rove aptly maintained that Abrams remained silent about the measure utilized by Kemp when he was secretary of state and she was in Georgia’s state legislature to “purge” the rolls of inactive voters.
“There’s Georgia’s ‘use it or lose it’ law,” Rove points out. “Passed by a Democratic Legislature and signed by a Democratic governor in 1997, it says that if a voter hasn’t shown up at the polls or had contact with election authorities (say, by signing a petition or updating an address) in three years, the state must notify him that he’s at risk of becoming ‘inactive.’ If he then doesn’t return a postage-paid card or participate in either of the next two federal elections, he’s purged from the rolls. It’s at least a six-year process.”
“Mr. Kemp’s office removed 1.4 million names from the rolls starting in 2012, erasing a backlog he inherited,” Rove added. “Still, active registrations grew from 5,033,307 when he was elected in 2010 to 6,428,581 last fall, a 27.7% increase. Much of this bump came after Mr. Kemp implemented automatic voter registration for Georgians who update or apply for their driver’s licenses…For her part, Ms. Abrams never worked to repeal the use-it-or-lose-it or exact-match law during her decade in the Georgia legislature. In fact, while she criticizes Mr. Kemp for reducing opportunities for early voting, she not only voted to require him to rein in early voting, but co-sponsored the 2011 law.”
Since her very real defeat, Abrams has mulled a 2020 U.S. Senate run, and even a 2020 presidential run. In a recent piece, Hot Air revealed how it would be intriguing to see how her Democratic primary competitors would treat Abrams due to the delicacy of her position as a high-profile victim of racism if she entered the presidential race.
According to Hot Air, “If she jumped in, one wonders how, and whether, the rest of the field would dare attack her. The fact that they’ve uniformly endorsed the crankish idea that she’s the ‘real’ winner of the Georgia race shows how terrified they are of being seen as racially insensitive. To defeat her would be to re-victimize the party’s most well-known victim. Amends must be made for the debacle in Georgia; nominating her might be the only way.”
While it could be amusing to watch her fellow Democratic presidential contenders treat her with kid gloves, Abrams’ extreme progressive values will not “Make America Great Again.”
~ Conservative Zone
