Georgia Back On Our Minds

Stacey Abrams is running for governor of Georgia again.

The press, no doubt pushing a narrative to pleases their media-baron bosses with no regard to how it could threaten democracy in America, is already making Abrams the long shot in next year's gubernatorial election because she is a Democrat who will be running in a Republican year in a state where the voting laws have been tweaked to all but ensure a Republican victory.  I agree that, as of now, her election to the governor ship is highly unlikely - but not for the reasons above. Read on.

On the Republican side, Governor Brian Kemp - who rigged the last Georgia gubernatorial election in his own favor as the state's Secretary of State, the office with power over the voter registration lists - is facing a challenge from former U.S. Senator David Purdue, who has gotten himself in solid with Donald Trump while Trump is angry at Kemp because Kemp accepted Joe Biden's win of the state's electoral votes in the 2020 presidential election.  Kemp's supporters, however, point to his strong conservative record as a reason to give the governor another term.  Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan, who is not running for re-election himself, supports Kemp and says it's time for the GOP to admit that Trump lost and move on.  Georgia Democrats are counting on a big Republican bloodbath in the primary campaign before the GOP picks a nominee in the Georgia gubernatorial primary on May 24 while the Democrats get behind Abrams and present a united front throughout.

So why do I think Abrams will be unsuccessful, if it's not because of trends favoring Republicans - again, pushed by media narratives - or voter-suppression laws?  Simple  It's because there are a lot of white people in Georgia who will go through hell and high water to make sure that a black woman will never sit in the governor's chair in Atlanta.

It comes down to that simple fact.  Sorry. 

Georgia Rhythm - The (Not Really) Final Chapter

Lost in the noise made by the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol last week was the fact that Democrats managed to win not one but both of the U.S. Senate seats up for election in a pair of runoffs in Georgia.  They were given at best the chance of winning one of those seats, which would not have been enough for the Democrats to take control of the Senate, as winning both seats was (with incoming Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote).  Thanks to Stacey Abrams and her relentless drive to get voters in Georgia to the polls, however, incoming President Joe Biden now has a chance to get the most sweeping Democratic agenda since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program passed.  And Georgia couldn't have chosen two better individuals to help him.

Raphael Warnock is the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s old job.  And like Dr. King, Reverend Warnock has been committed to social justice, having demonstrated for human rights and universal health care in particular and having campaigned and protested (and gotten arrested) for his beliefs.  He is a genuinely caring and magnanimous pastor, and he will work hard for the interests of all Georgians. 

Jon Ossoff got what few Democrats who lose elections get - a second chance at public office.  Having been the nominee in a special election to fill a U.S. House seat in 2017, he lost a contest that many felt he should have won, and he was written off as a one-hit wonder, like so many other failed Democratic nominees for public office.  But Ossoff, who was an intern with the late Georgia congressman John Lewis and has worked as an investigative journalist and documentary producer exposing human rights violations around he world, was undeterred by his loss.  Using the same dogged determination that he applies to his work as a documentary filmmaker, he worked hard to get a seat in the Senate to bring his liberal values to Washington, and his relentlessness paid off.  If he works as hard for Georgia as a U.S. Senator as he did to get elected - and he will  - Georgia will be all right.

And now that the Democrats have won the Senate, all of those Democratic Senate candidates on other states who came up short can be forgiven. And forgotten.  Jamie Harrison in South Carolina turned out to be a paper tiger, and no one is going to give Cal Cunningham in North Carolina, after his "sexting" scandal, another shot at a Senate seat when the retiring Richard Burr's seat is up in 2022.  Sara Gideon in Maine, whom Democrats pinned so many of their hopes on to oust Susan Collins?  Girl, you're through.  If you can't beat Susan Collins, you need to get out of politics and find another line of work.

To think that many Democrats put more of an emphasis on Maine than Georgia.  It looks like they focused on the wrong state famous for its pine trees.  

Georgia Rhythm

How could the state that managed to successfully stage the 1996 Olympics and secretly smuggle Muhammad Ali into Atlanta to light the Olympic flame screw up a primary election?

Reports of closed polling places, voting machines either broken or missing, and lines of people waiting to vote that were interminable both in length and duration plagued the Georgia primary to the point where it was obvious that nothing in the Peach State is peachy keen.  After all the dust settles (note tense), it won't (again, note tense) matter who won what.  (Although, noted 2017 U.S. House also-ran Jon Ossoff won the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination, and a right-wing conspiracy theorist may end up winning a U.S. House nomination on the Republican side).

Top Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams has long complained about irregularity in access to voting in her state, much of it based on racism and voter suppression against blacks but also based on a lax, incompetent, disorganized approach to running elections - primary or general - and making them free and fair.  The increased reliance on mail-in balloting due to COVID-19 didn't help matters any either.  This fracas gave Abrams a see-I-told-you-so moment, and while it won't necessarily get her the 2020 vice presidential nomination, it does highlight how poorly run elections are not just in Georgia but in Wisconsin and several other states.  And that's a concern going into the November general election.

One thing we did learn about the Georgia primary: The Democrats have their work cut out for them in trying to win a state they haven't won since 1992.  Joe Biden and Donald Trump won their respective presidential primaries all right, but more Republican primary voters case a ballot for Trump than Democratic voters who cast a ballot for Biden.  And with so much political as well as racial division in Georgia - maybe more so than the country at large - are there even any independents there any more?

Anyone Can Be a Senator

But not everyone can be President.

The Democrats have fewer U.S. Senate seats to defend in 2020 than Republicans - 12 versus 22 - and the only need four seats to win back control of the chamber, but as TV producer and political activist Brian Taylor Cohen recently pointed out, the most attractive Democratic prospects for the Senate are all running for President.  Most of them have no chance of winning the White House but are so fixated on Trump that they all think that they can take out Trump in a mano-a-mano match-up.  Ironically, the reason there are more then twenty Democratic presidential candidates in the first place is because they all saw Trump get elected and decided that, well, if a politically inexperienced businessman can get elected to the highest office in the land, any one of them certainly can.

No, they can't.  And right now, there's a bunch of Democratic presidential candidates who are better suited to win a Senate seat in 2020 . . . and they're all polling in the low single digits in their presidential campaigns.  As Taylor Cohen tweeted, you have Beto O'Rourke of Texas only getting two percent in the polls, John Hickenlooper of Colorado getting one percent in the polls, Steve Bullock of Montana not getting anything in the polls and having officially declared for the Presidency just yesterday, and Stacey Abrams of Georgia not even running for President yet and already having ruled out a Senate run.  All of them, Taylor Cohen noted, could defeat the Republican incumbent senators up for re-election in 2020 - John Cornyn of Texas, Cory Gardner of Colorado, Steve Daines of Montana, and David Perdue of Georgia.  And I would add that Cory Booker of New Jersey, who's already a Democrat in the Senate and is up for re-election in 2020, is concentrating on a presidential run. 

With the possible - possible - exception of O'Rourke, these candidates are unlikely to get out of the single digits in the polls.  Defeating Trump is only part of the challenge; the Democrats also have to hold the House, but it's especially important that they take back the Senate.  Because even a post-Trump Republican Party, with a Republican Senate led by Mitch McConnell, will be as obstructionist and as illiberal as the Trump-era Republican Party has been and as the pre-Trump Republican Party was.  A Republican Senate under a Democratic President will only block judicial appointments, delay Cabinet confirmations, and stymie international treaties that the rest of the world realizes are common-sense approaches to solving global problems but American industry hates because they're bad for business.  People like Bullock, Hickenlooper, and others are so focused on the big picture of the fight against Trump that they've lost the sight of the more local political competitions necessary for the Democrats to control Washington in order to govern.  It's not that they can't see the forest for the trees; they can't see the trees for the forest.

Focusing more on the Presidency than on state and local races is the reasons Democrats declined and fell from their lofty perch in 2009 when they controlled everything, and this mass rush to run for the White House is just another example of that.  The silver lining is that there's still time for these no-shot long shots to abandon their presidential ambitions when they see that they can't win - most likely you too, Beto! - and switch to a Senate run instead.  At least Cory Booker, who, to the best of my knowledge, is the only incumbent senator up for re-election in 2020 who's also running for President, is able to hedge his bets on his own political future.  The New Jersey state legislature passed - and Governor Phil Murphy signed - a law allowing Booker to run for both offices at once.

As Caitlyn Jenner once said of athletes back when her sex was still male and his forename was still Bruce, they're all good but only one can be the best. Likewise, the twenty-odd Democratic presidential candidates may all be good, but only one of them can be the presidential nominee . . . but that hasn't stopped long shots who have a better chance at running for something else from trying to win the Presidency.  It reminds me of what H.L. Mencken said to a friend of his while at the 1936 Democratic National Convention, looking at all of the politicians in attendance . . . "Every one of them thinks that he can be President of the United States."

Hell's Broke Loose In Georgia

And Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp deals the cards.

Kemp, whose job it is in Georgia to regulate statewide elections, has been using all sorts of tricks to keep, last time I checked, 30,000 people from voting in this year's gubernatorial election - all because a few names on the rolls are spelled wrong by a letter or two.  Kemp, a Republican, is apparently afraid that there will be too many Democrats going to to the polls and voting for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams, pictured below. 

Now why would Brian Kemp be scared of a nice lady like this being elected governor of Georgia?

It's not because her name sounds Jewish, is it?

Oh, mercy me, where is my head?  It's because she's black - like 70 percent of the registered voters Kemp has purged from the rolls.  He's also dong this to strengthen the hand of the Republican gubernatorial candidate, who happens to be . . . Brian Kemp!

Abrams is promoting an agenda to make Georgia a fair, just state (note that I didn't say see was promoting and an agenda to make it "more" fair and just), and Kemp clearly believes that the worst thing Georgia could have is a black woman running the show.  I can think of something far worse - letting Brian Kemp run the show.  He makes Trump look civilized, what with his own anti-poor, anti-immigrant agenda.  He's promised to go out through Georgia and apprehend and deport illegal immigrants himself with his own pickup truck.

I must say, it took the Democrats guts to nominate a black woman for the highest office in the Peach State, but it may be paying off; early voting in Georgia has tripled over the number of voters in 2014.  Polls give Abrams a slight edge, although Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com site rates the race as a toss-up.  After having tried and failed with running Jimmy Carter's grandson Jason for governor in 2014 and running Sam Nunn's daughter Michelle for the U.S. Senate that same year, Georgia Democrats are eschewing dynasty politics and trying something different, which may enable them to do something they haven't done in a long time - win an election.  (And also bear in mind that Jon Ossoff is Not.  Running. For Anything.  Again.)  But as long as Brian Kemp is calling the shots over how elections are run in Georgia, Abrams' election is anything but a guarantee.

Though, if he rigs the vote, at least Georgia has its own Jimmy Carter to monitor the recount. ;-)   

Ain't Gonna Happen

You knew the U.S.-North Korean summit wasn't going to take place.

Donald Trump accepted Kim Jong Un's offer for a summit meeting, even setting a time (Tuesday, June 12) and a place (Singapore), before even beginning to figure out what they were going to talk about.  Kim apparently had everything figured out . . . including Donald Trump.   He hoped to use Trump's myopia to show him up in Singapore or pull out of the summit himself.  But then, he should have known better; Trump is the master of pullouts.      

Trump actually did the right thing for once.  He was so eager to achieve a diplomatic breakthrough that he misread Kim's intentions - and it took comments from national security adviser Milk Mustache Man and Vice President Mike Pence comparing hopes for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons to Libya's Muammar el-Qadaffi giving up his nuclear program to draw them out.  There was one thing wrong with that comparison - Qaddafi was overthrown and killed.  But even if the Trump White House envisioned a plan based on Libya that would allow Kim to remain the North Korean leader, Kim would never agree to anything that would require him to disarm.  But by canceling the summit before Kim had the opportunity and being nice about it, Trump actually got the North Koreans to respond with a hopeful message for future talks.  Some Democrats are even giving him creidt for his efforts at a peaceful solution.  Right now, there are rumors that the summit may be back on.  But, no, more likely that not, it's off.  It's not going to happen.

Which brings me to the subject of Stacey Abrams, a former Georgia House Democratic leader and the new Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia.  Abrams became the first black woman nominated for governor of any state by a major party, and she did it by bringing in new Democratic voters in Georgia. Asked if she would still be proud of her achievement if she loses in November, Abrams replied that she's going to win.

Yeah, right.  Ain't gonna happen.  Her Republican opponent hasn't been decided yet - the Georgia Republican Party needs to have a runoff for that - but I think it's fair to say that the mere thought of a black female governor is going drive Republican voters in Georgia to the polls in November in record numbers and cancel out any new Democratic voters Abrams brings in.  Also, Democratic candidates in past elections have had trouble getting to 50 percent because the Georgia GOP is so entrenched and there simply aren't enough independents to get the Democrats over the threshold.  I keep hearing about Georgia's changing demographics and all that, but if you want any proof that demography is not destiny, look at Texas.

If Democrats want to win back power, they should concentrate on places where they can win.  I'm sure a black woman can get elected governor of a Democratic state, but even a white man with a D next to his name can't get elected governor of Georgia, as Jimmy Carter's grandson Jason found out when he tried to run for that very office in 2014 (and became the latest in a series of Democrats banished to the Archipelago of Failed Democratic Candidates).      

Also, Hillary Clinton thought she could win Georgia in 2016.  The end.