Joe Biden will probably pick a black woman as his running mate. Here’s hoping that it’s failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams if for no other reason than that it will finally make clear just how overrated she is.
Abrams is the national politics version of the mediocre student perpetually praised by teachers for performing the most basic tasks, like putting a simple sentence together. Abrams, whose sole accomplishment in campaign politics is winning a series of uncontested state-level House races, believes her own hype. Instead of coming from schoolteachers, though, it’s coming from the national media.
Melissa Harris-Perry, the wild former MSNBC host, profiled Abrams for Elle this week, and it serves as a perfect case study in how the media promote Abrams for apparently no other reason than that she’s black and a woman and that sounds like it would be good for Biden.
It’s enough that Harris-Perry refers to Abrams as a “political star” who has “continued to rise” despite losing the only statewide race she’s ever run, a race she has never conceded, but the quotes by Abrams herself are stunning in their capacity to induce cringe.
“I would be an excellent running mate,” she says. “I have the capacity to attract voters by motivating typically ignored communities. I have a strong history of executive and management experience in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. I’ve spent 25 years in independent study of foreign policy. I am ready to help advance an agenda of restoring America’s place in the world. If I am selected, I am prepared and excited to serve.”
Harris-Perry wrote that the declaration “betrays ambition.” No, it doesn’t. It reeks of desperation and delusion.
Elsewhere in the profile, as in past interviews, Abrams says the most confounding things that should challenge the notion that she’s as smart as the media keep insisting she is. She says that Biden has a “truly sincere sense of humor,” a description that might come to mind about someone who left no impression on you at all. Back in January, she told FiveThirtyEight that she thought she would be president by 2040, because, “That’s my plan, and I’m very pragmatic.” Does she know what the word pragmatic means? If so, what would that quality lend to such a prediction?
Despite all indications that Abrams is less qualified or prepared to be vice president than Sarah Palin ever was, the media continue campaigning for her.
A New York Times story earlier this month mentioned her as a possible pick. And then the paper printed an opinion piece on Tuesday announcing that Abrams was Biden’s “obvious” choice.
Biden has already said he’s going to pick a woman, and every Democrat knows that he can’t afford to lose black voters the way Hillary Clinton did in 2016. Please, please, let his choice be Abrams.
I think he’ll lose because of it, just as I think he’ll lose no matter who he picks. But the nation would finally be able to move on from Abrams.
