Earlier this week, failed 2018 Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams announced she would throw her hat into the ring once again, setting up a potential 2022 rematch with Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp assuming they both win their respective primary races.
Though it’s not an official position for this site, some of us here at RedState have taken to calling Abrams’ campaign her “reelection” campaign, since she admittedly never conceded that Kemp won the election in 2018. Indeed, within hours of polls closing, she was already talking about supposed voter suppression and how Kemp had allegedly used his Georgia Secretary of State position at the time to disenfranchise voters.
Even when the writing was on the wall over a week later, she still would not admit defeat.
“So, let’s be clear. This is not a speech of concession,” she told supporters 10 days after the election. “Because concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper. As a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede that. But my assessment is the law currently allows no further viable remedy.”
Though Abrams has spent the last three years pulling the state version of what failed 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has nationally, by way of routinely claiming the election was “stolen” from her and the voters of Georgia, she had a rather interesting spin on her actions Thursday night during an interview with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.
During the segment, Abrams told Maddow that she “did not challenge” the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election results and said she “acknowledged” Kemp “won the election”:
“I did not challenge the outcome of the election, unlike some recent folks did,” the Democrat insisted to Maddow, continuing her commentary about the night of Nov. 16.
“What I said was that the system was not fair. And leaders challenge systems. Leaders say we can do better. That is what I declared. I could not in good conscience say that, in order to protect my political future, I’m going to be silent about the political present, which is that we have a system under a leader that sought to keep people from casting their ballot, that threw the ballots out, that said that voter suppression was a viable tactic for winning elections.”
I haven’t seen a video of this segment, but presumably, Abrams was talking about a legal challenge to the results. While she’d be technically right on such matters, it is an insult to everyone’s intelligence to suggest she did not repeatedly challenge the results in the court of public opinion. She did so with relish and was treated with the utmost reverence by the same media figures and Democrats who routinely allege former President Trump “incited an insurrection” by telling the so-called “Big Lie” about the 2020 presidential election.
Exhibit A from a Washington Post Magazine profile on Abrams in 2020:
I am so sick of the media trying to create celebrity politicians. Public service should be about representing us as citizens, not creating stardom for the person in office. Nobody “deserves” to hold an office. The focus should be on policies, principles, experience, etc. https://t.co/0s8WoYtL3F
— Carol Roth (@caroljsroth) May 17, 2020
And yet it’s the likes of Hillary Clinton and Stacey Abrams who have persistently engaged in the type of “Big Lie” election antics the media proclaims are very “dangerous for our democracy.” You don’t even have to take my word for it. The receipts tell the story and they do not lie:
Stacey Abrams: The Real Big Lie. pic.twitter.com/lgwdwqyCyR
— Stephen Lawson (@StephenLawson_) December 1, 2021
And as we previously reported, Abrams was making the claim about the 2018 election being rigged as recently as October when she campaigned on behalf of failed 2021 Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe:
“I come from a state where I was not entitled to become the governor, but as an American citizen and a citizen of Georgia, I’m going to fight for every person who has the right to vote to be able to cast that vote.”
Just absolute nonsense and yes, dangerous, too. But don’t expect the so-called champions of truth in broadcasting to keep Abrams off their programs in the coming months as they have done with Trump and those in his circle who don’t believe that the 2020 presidential election was decided fairly (cc: Jake Tapper).
Instead, they’ll welcome her warmly, and with open arms and plumped pillows, proving all over again that when it comes to making allegations about electoral integrity, the media absolutely will not hesitate to play favorites as long as those claiming it are on the “correct” side of the political aisle.
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