Opinion – Charles M. Blow: Stacey Abrams lost Georgia election, but has already transformed the US state

As the Bible tells, Moses frees his people from slavery to go to the “promised land”, but even with all his efforts he is not allowed to enter and has to contemplate it from a distance.

I’m afraid this is the story of Stacey Abrams. She built the massive voter registration and turnout machine that helped Joe Biden conquer Georgia in 2020 and helped the state elect its first Jewish and black senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, giving Democrats control of the Senate. If Warnock wins her runoff next month, she will have helped Democrats strengthen their grip on the House.

It would be easy to be cynical here and say that a woman did the work and now a man is benefiting from it, once again. But that obscures the fact that what Abrams gave to Georgia and the country was far greater than any dispute, including hers.

Georgia is a transformed state. Local progressives have proven their power, and there is no turning back. It is no longer a fantastic possibility, a hope and a prayer among people prisoners of their numbers disadvantage. Georgia now has proof and validation that not only could it be turned, it was turned.

Much of the credit belongs to Abrams.

So what went wrong? I wish I had a comprehensive answer and could articulate it briefly, but I don’t and I can’t.

All I know is that every time I asked people about her chances in this cycle, they would object, roll their eyes, or respond with an incredulous, worried “I don’t know.”

In fact, “worried” was a word I heard very often. It seemed contagious and self-perpetuating to me: people were worried because others said they were worried.

I just couldn’t find voters enthusiastic about Abrams in my everyday interactions. I live in downtown Atlanta, but I also wasn’t seeing many signs in backyards or posters in windows. I wasn’t seeing many TV ads.

I imagined that my news consumption had become that of many young people: I mainly watched national news or received news online, including on social networks. So I went back to my younger self and started watching more local news and listening to more radio. There were the ads!

Still, for me, this was a problem. If I had to look up her ads, a lot of people—and a lot younger than me—just weren’t listening to them. This disconcerted me. This was her moment, when she was supposed to reap the fruits of her labor, but instead it was worry that ripened.

In September, I made it clear to the campaign that I would like to interview Abrams for this column, but they didn’t make the time to do so. Everything is fine. A candidate’s time is precious. Still, I wanted to know from Abrams herself why the fire didn’t catch. She was clearly the best candidate. She had encyclopedic knowledge of the issues. And a message that should have energized progressives.

But she just didn’t get enough traction. Her message had no momentum.

This is in part because his opponent, Governor Brian Kemp, has struggled to appear more moderate than the party and what it really is.

First, he relied on the fact that he had resisted Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the Georgia results in 2020. People remembered that. Not that Kemp was pro-democracy and pro-voting — he signed the voter suppression bill that his Republican-led legislature passed after the 2020 election — but that he was pro-democracy at a time when the transfer of power hung in the balance. made a lasting impression.

Kemp was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but his attire was impeccably tailored. So much so that at one point during the campaign Atlanta rapper and organizer Killer Mike praised Kemp for “conducting an effective campaign” and reaching black voters, suggesting Abrams go “everywhere Kemp had just gone”.

This further hampered Abrams’ efforts to highlight Kemp’s extremism. People began to come to the false conclusion that he “wasn’t that bad.”

It was also beneficial that a few months before the election, he launched a $350 cash payment program for low-income people. It wasn’t exactly money for votes, but money to assuage anger. Kemp paid for the tranquility.

All of this hurt Abrams. But I’m sure that’s not the end of his story. She is relatively young, incredibly smart, and a brilliant strategist. She has a future that only she can write. But one thing is clear: it has made it possible for Georgia’s population, many of them black, to enter a reality where state power is attainable and accessible.