Quick Take: Tales of Two Candidates
Oh, and you thought that the GOP has all the duds and weirdos…?
Candidate One: We’re not supposed to notice that Stacey Abrams is none too swift—she is, after all, the rightful governor of Georgia, a woman, and black. Well, I’m sorry but it’s getting harder and harder to overlook the obvious.
Abrams, the unsuccessful 2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate, is trying again this year. She bases her political profile and campaign strategy on claims that (1) in 2018 her Rebublican opponent, now Georgia’s governor, stole the election, and that (2) the Peach State’s new election law is a racist monstrosity akin to Jim Crow.
Abrams lost in 2018 to Brian Kemp, who was then serving as Georgia’s Secretary of State. She alleged at the time that Kemp used his position to rig the election, which he won by over 50,000 votes. And though no evidence in support of her charge has ever been produced, Abrams continues to insist that she, not Kemp, is Georgia’s rightful governor.
Trump-style election trutherism was dumb enough, but then Abrams doubled down. In 2021 the Republican-controlled Georgia legislature passed, and Governor Kemp signed, a new election law. Abrams, the Democrats and the media had an absolute hissy fit. They screamed that the law was racist, a throwback to segregation and slave days, a nefarious attempt to suppress the minority vote. Even our ridiculous president chimed in, calling the Georgia law “Jim Crow on steroids.” Abrams heartily agreed.
But all that was a lie. How do I know? Well, the early voting numbers for today’s Georgia primary election are beginning to come in. So far on the Republican side there have been 453,929 early votes and 29,220 absentee votes versus 153,264 votes and 14,795 respectively in the 2018 midterm primary. On the Democratic side the numbers are 337,245 and 31,704 versus 34,542 and 13,051 in 2018. Among minorities, the increase has been particularly marked.
Jim Crow on steroids? It’s not even Jim Crow on crutches with a neck brace and a white cane, Stacey!
But Georgia’s rightful governor was not content to look dumb times two, and over the weekend she snagged the triple crown. “I am tired of hearing about how we're the best state in the country to do business when we are the worst state in the country to live,” Abrams fumed during remarks at a Democratic Party function. Yikes! Way to connect with the electorate, Madam Rightful Governor!
Voters may be forgiven if they decide against making a bad situation worse by electing a doofus like Stacey Abrams to govern their state.
Candidate Two: This one’s just priceless. The Democratic candidate for US Senate in Pennsylvania is John Fetterman, the Keystone State’s current lieutenant governor. Fetterman is a crack-brained progressive leftie with the physical aspect of a Trump Deplorable. The guy is six feet, eight inches tall, with a shaved cranium, a scruffy growth of chin whiskers and a wardrobe straight out of the Working Person’s Store. In short, he’s one of those colorful figures who occasionally crop up in American politics, ranging from the eccentric to the demented. The political calculus involved in his candidacy is probably based on the hope that his phony working-class demeanor (actually Fetterman is the scion of a wealthy family and a Harvard grad) will obscure his Sanders/AOC positioning on the ideological spectrum.
Ah, but then there’s this. John Fetterman served as mayor of the small town of Braddock, PA, from 2006 to 2019. One day in January 2013 he chased down in his pickup truck, menaced with a shotgun and detained a black jogger. Fetterman claimed that he he’d heard gunshots in the vicinity; the jogger, Chris Miyares, claimed that it was just kids shooting off bottle rockets. Miyares also claimed that Fetterman pointed the shotgun at his chest and face; Fettermen denies this. Altogether the details of the incident remain murky. But the fact remains that a really big, scary-looking white guy, driving a pickup truck and armed with a shotgun, chased down and detained an unarmed black jogger.
Say what you will about Dr. Oz, but he’s never done anything quite that eccentric.
Now let’s suppose for a moment that I’m running for Senate as a Republican. No doubt my background would be combed through by the opposition in a search for the slightest blemish. And yeah, they’d find plenty of stuff like my unkind comments about Stacey Abrams above. And there’s no doubt at all in my mind that such commentary would be enough to get me tagged as a vile, beyond-the-pale racist of the most Confederate complexion—even though I’m from Massachusetts, do not own a shotgun or a pickup truck, and have never chased down and detained an unarmed black jogger.
John Fetterman has. And now he’s running for the Senate as a saintly and virtuous progressive Democrat. Isn’t that funny?