Popular media seem determined to make failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams into an icon — even if Democratic leadership sees her for the electoral dud she really is.
Amazon Studios just acquired the rights to a voter suppression documentary featuring Abrams, who claims without any credible basis that she was robbed of the governor’s mansion in the 2018 election.
“Raising the alarm about voter suppression is critical to the integrity of our democracy,” Abrams said of the upcoming documentary. “Justice in our criminal justice system and the sacred right to vote are not equal for all Americans, and we must find a way to change these systematic inequalities.”
The failed candidate’s collaboration on the film is “timely” and “important,” said Amazon Studios chief Jennifer Salke.
“In this critical election year,” Salke said in a statement, “Stacey’s expertise and fearless stance against voter suppression will resonate strongly with audiences everywhere and can inspire positive change in supporting all Americans’ right to cast their vote.”
The film, which still does not yet have a title, is directed by filmmakers Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortes, NBC News reports.
It will be available to stream on Amazon Prime Video “following a theatrical release,” the report adds. “Abrams is a co-producer of the film along with Garbus and Cortes.” The movie will reportedly trace the history of voter suppression in the United States from the 1960s civil rights era to modern-day America.
“It’s a monster movie where you think you’ve mortally wounded the beast, but it keeps rearing its ugly head, as last week’s primary in Georgia so painfully demonstrated. And nothing less than democracy is at stake,” the filmmakers said in a statement.
NBC, for its part, pitches in its own two cents to legitimize Abrams’s longstanding and baseless voter suppression grievances, claiming she “was the first African American woman nominated for governor by a major party when she became the Democratic nominee in Georgia’s 2018 gubernatorial election.”
“She narrowly lost to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who was accused by Abrams of mismanaging the election system through voter suppression after he refused to resign as secretary of state while campaigning at the time,” NBC reports.
I suppose “narrowly lost” is one way to describe an election in which the losing candidate was defeated by more than 54,700 votes in an election year that actually saw voter turnout in Georgia increase by an estimated 2.5 million from the previous midterm election cycle.
Also, because it is worth mentioning, Abrams’s campaign team claimed in 2018 that it could prove the Republican Party stole the election. Her staff never made good on that promise.
Yet the failed gubernatorial candidate persists nevertheless in her claim that she is a martyr for voting rights. She is so dedicated to her persona as a robbed candidate, in fact, that she founded the Fair Fight 2020 initiative, indelibly linking her name to the issue of voter suppression.
The Amazon-produced documentary is expected to be released just before the 2020 presidential election, in case it was not clear already what’s really going on.
