In this section of our conversation about Georgia’s new voting law, John McWhorter and I offer different perspectives on Stacey Abrams, who narrowly lost the Georgia governor’s race to Republican Brian Kemp in 2018.
I claim that if Abrams had been willing to moderate her leftwing positions just slightly, she could have won. John doesn’t exactly disagree, but he does like the idea that she could have won running as her “true self” on a platform that reflected her actual beliefs.
LOURY: Well, Stacey Abrams claims that she lost an election to Brian Kemp in Georgia for governor because of widespread voter fraud. But my understanding, and I'm not an expert, is that there were quite a few Black ballots cast in that election, more than had been previously cast.
The Black electorate was robust in Georgia. You could say to Stacey Abrams, and I have said this here at the Glenn Show before, if she had modified some of her policy positions just an epsilon, just a little bit toward the center of the electorate and had gotten a few tens of thousands more votes by not being as robustly pro-choice on the abortion issue and splitting the difference a little bit, or being a little bit more considerate of some of the cultural conservatism of the Georgia electorate than she otherwise might've been by being at the left wing of the Democratic Party—she could still be a Democrat and not be at the left wing of the Democratic Party—she'd be governor right now.
So which margin is more effective and healthier for our democracy: fiddling around with the rules about who can cast ballots when or posturing and positioning oneself in such a way as to create a robust multi-racial coalition that supports your potential election? I mean, it's the issue of the day.
And like I said, it's motherhood and apple pie. I stick my neck out even by saying as much as I've said. I'm not against Black people voting, if it needs to be said. I want Black people to vote. But I don't think there is a war on access to the ballot for Black people. Quite the contrary. Obama actually was elected. I mean, he was elected twice. Trump was defeated, and Georgia was a big part of the defeat of Donald Trump, and so on. And the number of Blacks who are in state legislatures, who are mayors of cities, who are elected to Congress and whatnot has gone through the roof during my lifetime.
So I think it's overblown. That's what I'm saying. I think it's overblown, and I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to my Republican friends who are concerned about voting laws, that they are not doing so solely or primarily out of racial motivation.
MCWHORTER: I'm lefter than you. This is a very interesting example of that. You're saying that Stacey Abrams would have been better off becoming a sort of old-school politician, very hard to pin down as to exactly what she wants because she's building coalitions. She's supposed to be this sort of, you know, whatever the politics of Dwight D. Eisenhower were. He had to thread certain lines, there are liberals and conservatives in both parties.
You kind of wonder, what did Calvin Coolidge stand for? He was kind of extreme ‘cause it was all about business, but that was about as colorful as you were allowed to get. A leftist presidential candidate was hard, and it only worked in desperate times, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt. And by our standards, he wasn't a leftist.
So you're saying that she should have this kind of facelessness, with the idea being that if there's progress, depending on what you call progress, it happens very slowly, bit by bit. She's steering this Titanic past the iceberg. Everything is very slow and careful. This is Burke here. Whereas I like the idea of a bit of FDR. Even in calmer times, my sense of progress is that there are things that need to happen that would be a leftward rather than a rightward shift.
I would have liked the idea of her being able to win being her true self rather than becoming this kind of Adlai Stevenson. But I see what you mean. Maybe your way is the only way things really happen, unless people are starving in the streets, and that was not the case when Stacey Abrams lost her election. So you're thinking she should have just calmed down and been more pragmatic and not be so strident in her Bernie Broism. I respect that view.
I'm saying, with a light touch. I'm basically saying demography needn't be destiny. It's not the only strategy. Moderation and positioning of a sort that attempts to elicit support from a broad range of the electorate is another strategy. There's a balancing act.
I'm not against Black people voting, let me say it again. The only path forward for advancement of the political interests of African Americans is not simply maximizing the headcount of Black people who turn out. "Come on, Black people, you have to register, you have to vote. You have to go vote for your candidate." I'm not against that. Let Black people register, let them vote.
But constructing coalitions that change policies, that create a political context within which the goals of advancing the interests of African Americans can be achieved? The only path to that is not simply having Black faces in high places. I mean, there's a lot of points here. When you draw those districts and you crowd all the Black voters into a relatively few congressional districts in order to get Black faces elected to the Congress, you take those Black voters out of other districts which are represented by conservatives who are more conservative in virtue of the fact that they don't have to elicit Black voters.
That's a real problem.
When you frame the issues in front of the country largely in racial terms—so mass incarceration is racist, police trying to kill Black people, structural racism is suppressing everything, so and so said something off-color that they should not have said—you make that the basis of your politics. What you're not talking about are the bread and butter issues that a lot of working class white people might be able to get behind as well.