Democrats pick failed gubernatorial candidate for State of the Union response

“Three weeks ago, I called Stacey Abrams and asked her to deliver the response, I was very delighted when she agreed,” Schumer told reporters Tuesday. “If you look at her background — she knows what working people, middle-class people go through. I’m very excited that she’s agreed to be the respondent to the president.”

He also said in a note that likely explains the real reason for Abrams getting the nod, “She has led the charge for voting rights, which is at the root of just about everything else.”

That bit there about voting rights is significant. The choice of Abrams to deliver the State of the Union response suggests that Democrats plan to make the alleged “voter suppression” efforts by the GOP a key issue going into 2020.

Abrams, who is also reportedly being courted to challenge Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., in 2020, has become something of a martyr among Democrats following her loss in last year’s Georgia gubernatorial race. What a messy, bitter loss it was. Though she eventually announced that she had no path forward to victory, thus terminating her candidacy, it wasn’t until she had tried repeatedly to overturn the outcome of the race. She called for a new election, and that didn’t work. She pinned her hopes on absentee and provisional ballots triggering a runoff, and that didn’t work either.

These and similar failures left her and her acolytes with only one option, aside from graciously admitting defeat: to maintain that the race was stolen by Georgia’s then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who won 50.2 percent of the vote (compared to her 48.8 percent). They allege he abused the power of his office to suppress voter turnout.

Abrams made clear in her candidacy-ending speech that she was not conceding, implying instead that the election was illegitimate:

The media commentariat, many of whom supported failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 when she asserted that refusing to respect the results of an election is “a direct threat to our democracy,” has largely sided with Abrams in her crusade to cast the Georgia gubernatorial race as illegitimate.

Abrams’ allies in the press claim, without evidence, that Kemp is responsible for Democratic county governments choosing to consolidate their polling places (in many cases the former Georgia secretary of state is actually on the record opposing their consolidation), creating longer lines and other likely unforeseen delays for voters. The failed gubernatorial candidate’s supporters also claim, without evidence, that Kemp is personally responsible for Election Day mishaps, including a shortage of extension cords for voting machines at a polling station in Gwinnett County. (The extension cords were eventually found.)

On Tuesday, Schumer’s emphasis on Abrams’ voter rights advocacy suggests Democrats are going to go all-in on making “voter suppression” a key issue going into 2020. After spending four years suggesting that the 2016 election may be illegitimate due to Russian interference, it’d be very much on message for Democrats to keep hammering away at the idea that GOP elections are only successful when they’re stolen.

Abrams, for her part, announced on social media that she was pleased to get the gig.