The mainstream media and the left (but I repeat myself) are to the point of obsessive over claiming that any questions raised about alleged irregularities in the 2020 presidential election are tantamount to spreading what they call “The Big Lie” over what some view as a stolen election.
But Democrat Stacey Abrams has been perpetuating her own “Big Lie” for over three years now, the lie that says the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election was “stolen” from her by then-Republican nominee Brian Kemp, who at the time was Georgia’s Secretary of State.
And all this time, she’s been doing it against a backdrop of love, admiration, reverence, and deference shown by very same people who after November 2020 told us that it was imperative that the losers in elections be able to “concede gracefully” and move on for the “sake of our democracy” or whatever. Abrams was actually sent by Democrats to interview people about how to accept the results of elections, which was quite funny.
But since Abrams declared herself a candidate in the 2022 Georgia governor’s race a month ago, a subtle but noticeable shift has started among her supporters in the press and on the left.
It was also not mentioned in the New York Times piece that announced her candidacy that she would not concede the 2018 race. Her voter registration successes and how progressive activists considered her a liberal hero and heroine were mentioned a lot.
It was an extremely odd omission considering the MSM’s heavy emphasis over the last year on how being able to accept defeat in an election and concede with dignity was a “hallmark of our democracy” that should not be abandoned by selfish political actors.
And a little over a month after Abrams threw her hat in the ring again, we now have Democrats with large Twitter followings who are laughably claiming that Abrams did in fact “concede” the race she lost.
Check out the two tweets below from Benjamin Wittes, whose Twitter bio lists him as a “senior fellow” at the Brookings Institution and the editor in chief of the Lawfare blog.
Wittes, who has close to 412,000 followers, wrote that while Abrams “did not concede” that her race “was fair,” she “did concede” the race itself. Wittes even quoted a portion of the speech that Abrams gave in the same time to prove she had conceded.
Trumpists as well some non-Trumpists are talking about it. @staceyabrams–like Trump–did not concede the race when she ran for governor of Georgia in 2018.
This is a lie. Abrams did not concede that the race was fair, but she did concede… pic.twitter.com/5sgigkZIVn
— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) January 12, 2022
…that under the rules as they were written and understood and implemented, her opponent had prevailed and would become governor. This is significantly greater than Trump has ever admitted to, even after Jan. 6’s violence. This is something he still hasn’t said, at least not yet.
— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) January 12, 2022
Except in the very excerpt he used, Abrams literally said she “cannot concede”:
Reading is hard https://t.co/06Kk0wgkPF pic.twitter.com/o3RXKuBB6b
— Mrs. Brassenstein (@MBrassenstein) January 12, 2022
Further, she has never – not once – since her election, said any variation of the words “I concede” – because she doesn’t believe she lost.She argues that Kemp deliberately suppressed black votes and the system is rigged against them. This has been her constant battle cry.
Abrams and her supporters have never been able or willing to provide any evidence supporting her claims. Yet she’s been allowed to make the statement about a “stolen” election with little to no pushback from supposed “journalists” going back over three years. Many times, she was looked at with empathy and sadness by the same journalists who had been following her story for years.
But because the media and left have invested so much time and energy since November 2020 in proclaiming that it is an affront to democracy – akin to being an “insurrectionist,” even – to question election results, they are having to shift gears now that Abrams is back in the game.
Watching them engage in pretzel logic in an attempt to preserve their “respect democracy!” narrative while Abrams no doubt will continue to amplify her claims of a “stolen election” is going to be interesting, to say the least. The best they’ve been able to do over the last month is largely ignore her claim or sugarcoat it. Republicans must remind voters of Abrams’ statements since November 2018. She also attempted to make her race seem different than the 2020 election.
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