Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explored the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. A lot of news has happened since
Speaker 1: I was last in your feed. On January sixth, a mob,
Speaker 1: encouraged by Donald Trump some would say incited, stormed the
Speaker 1: Capitol Much later that night, Congress finally certified Joe Biden's
Speaker 1: presidential victory. Democrats almost immediately began work on impeaching the
Speaker 1: president for a second time. All this has almost overshadowed
Speaker 1: huge news out of Georgia. On January fifth, the day
Speaker 1: before the instance on Capitol Hill, two Democrats flipped Senate seat,
Speaker 1: giving the Democratic Party control over the upper chamber of
Speaker 1: Congress fifty fifty, with a tiebreaker going to Vice President
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris. On that historic day, a lot of people
Speaker 1: were talking about one woman, Stacy Abrams. Stacy is a
Speaker 1: politician and activist whose organizing efforts in Georgia played a
Speaker 1: key role, first in helping Joe Biden win the state
Speaker 1: and then in delivering the two Senate flips. Now, Stacy
Speaker 1: Abrams is a household name. In fact, I think she
Speaker 1: is now the most important activist strategist in US politics
Speaker 1: since Karl Rove, and she may turn out to be
Speaker 1: much more important than Rove in the long term. Stacy
Speaker 1: has been working steadily for years on turning Georgia blue
Speaker 1: through creating and leading organizations like the New Georgia Project
Speaker 1: aimed at registering in new voters and Fair Fight aimed
Speaker 1: at fighting voter suppression. Her reproach is going to become
Speaker 1: a new paradigm for Democrats all over the country. They're
Speaker 1: going to focus on registering new voters, on resisting voter suppression,
Speaker 1: and on getting out the vote, particularly for voters of color, who,
Speaker 1: for various complicated reasons, have not always turned out in
Speaker 1: past elections. I spoke to Stacy about a year ago
Speaker 1: when the presidential race was just heating up, and I'm
Speaker 1: excited to re share that conversation with you today. It
Speaker 1: feels like the right time for it. Some background on
Speaker 1: Stacy Abrahams. In twenty eighteen, she ran for governor of
Speaker 1: Georgia and very narrowly lost to Brian Kemp, a Republican
Speaker 1: who was Secretary of State of Georgia at the time,
Speaker 1: meaning he was the one in charge of overseeing the
Speaker 1: election Stacy never conceded the race because she said that
Speaker 1: Kemp had suppressed votes. That experience helped spur her work
Speaker 1: on voting rights and getting every vote counted. I reached
Speaker 1: her last October by phone. Hi, this is Stacey Abrams. Hi, Stacey,
Speaker 1: it's no Effeldman. How are you? I am well? How
Speaker 1: are you? I'm great? Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: If it's okay with you, we'll just dive right in.
Speaker 1: Sounds good. So I want to begin by asking you
Speaker 1: about two organizations that you've founded, Fair Fight, which is
Speaker 1: devoted to fighting voter suppression, and fair count, which is
Speaker 1: devoted to making sure the census is fair. The fairness
Speaker 1: theme emerge is very powerfully here, and I just want
Speaker 1: to begin by asking you, given your long career in
Speaker 1: public service and as a lawyer, as an entrepreneur, what
Speaker 1: makes you think that fairness is achievable. I'd like to
Speaker 1: begin by a thinking about the fact I grew up
Speaker 1: in the Deep South. I am the daughter of two
Speaker 1: people who are civil rights activist as teenagers, and my
Speaker 1: grandparents and all of those who preceded me either live
Speaker 1: through Jim Crow or the Black Codes, or slavery and
Speaker 1: so I think of fairness as a continuum. Our responsibility
Speaker 1: is to constantly move towards the promise of equality. And
Speaker 1: in each generation of my family's life, progress has been made.
Speaker 1: It has been slow and plotting and painful and violent,
Speaker 1: but it has been achievable. And so my responsibility is
Speaker 1: not simply to see the difficulties that we face, but
Speaker 1: to remember that in each generation, and opportunity to fight
Speaker 1: back against these difficulties has been a critical responsibility. And
Speaker 1: the ultimate goal is not that we will have every
Speaker 1: scene we desire. The goal is that we will have fairness,
Speaker 1: and that is my core belief. That's a moving and
Speaker 1: it's actually even an inspiring answer. You're a lawyer, and
Speaker 1: I don't say that as a bad word. I'm a
Speaker 1: lawyer too. You know, I went to this same law
Speaker 1: school and that you did. People may hold that against us,
Speaker 1: but I don't. But I want to ask about the
Speaker 1: balance between law and more direct social activism because I
Speaker 1: sometimes worry, I mean, I even teach law students for
Speaker 1: a living, and I sometimes worry that I fall too
Speaker 1: far into the category of telling them, Look, this social
Speaker 1: movement generated legal change, and so that's how you know
Speaker 1: that it's a successful social movement in real time, and
Speaker 1: then they sort of look at me, at least when
Speaker 1: they start law school a little skeptically and say, isn't
Speaker 1: it the other way around? I mean, shouldn't the measure
Speaker 1: of a law be whether it produced social change rather
Speaker 1: than the measure of a social movement being whether it
Speaker 1: generated some some legal outcomes. And I'm wondering how you
Speaker 1: see the balance. Obviously we need both, but when you
Speaker 1: think about which comes first, or which needs to be
Speaker 1: more powerful, or where the emphasis should be, where do
Speaker 1: you come down. I think they're inherently intertwined. And I
Speaker 1: think your students are asking smart questions. But I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say unfair. But it's a more complicated question if you
Speaker 1: look at my election, For example, my decision on November
Speaker 1: sixteenth to acknowledge the legal sufficiency of the outcome, recognize
Speaker 1: that there are laws in place that have created the
Speaker 1: very process that was used to thwart voters, that those
Speaker 1: laws have been deemed appropriate by lawmakers. But my refusal
Speaker 1: to concede the election was that I take exception to
Speaker 1: the actual laws themselves, that the very presence of those
Speaker 1: rules that permitted that behavior raises the need to question
Speaker 1: and in our case overturn those laws and reconstruct those laws.
Speaker 1: Social movements give voice and power and face to what
Speaker 1: needs to change. The law gives structure and to the
Speaker 1: extent possible permanence to the existence of that change. And
Speaker 1: for me, I've never seen I understand there's a tension,
Speaker 1: but I've never seen a dichotomy or an order of
Speaker 1: priority to my participation. My response facility is to be
Speaker 1: engaged in the social action that we are pursuing through
Speaker 1: fair fight and fair count. But I am also someone
Speaker 1: who believes that I need to be part of the
Speaker 1: lawmaking process because social movements without a voice in the
Speaker 1: law do not have the longstanding and deep, deeply needed
Speaker 1: of sex if there isn't something implicated into law that
Speaker 1: makes it harder to undo or to thwart the intention.
Speaker 1: I'm really glad you brought up your non concession after
Speaker 1: the twenty eighteen Georgia governor's race, and I want to
Speaker 1: use that as you just raised it to try to
Speaker 1: ask you about a sort of a skeptical question that
Speaker 1: someone from the outside might ask, and they might say,
Speaker 1: you know, it comes down to can the system be
Speaker 1: trusted to change enough to make a difference. So as
Speaker 1: you say, you recognize the legal sufficiency of the outcome
Speaker 1: in the sense that you didn't walk into the governor's
Speaker 1: office and say I'm the governor and ask the Georgia
Speaker 1: State Police to put you in office. But you didn't
Speaker 1: conceive because you didn't want to say I lost in
Speaker 1: a fair fight, because it wasn't a fair fight. And
Speaker 1: so in that sense, you didn't want to say the
Speaker 1: words I lost because you didn't lose in some fairness sense.
Speaker 1: And I guess what I'm wondering is, couldn't someone say, look,
Speaker 1: that suggests the system is just rigged in a way
Speaker 1: where it's not going to change, and if that's the case,
Speaker 1: we need to go outside the system and engage in
Speaker 1: civil disobedience or other more radical forms of efforts to
Speaker 1: not just tweak the system through laws and improvements and
Speaker 1: social activism, but something more fundamental. I would say they're
Speaker 1: absolutely right, But for me, I have always internalized that
Speaker 1: it cannot be one or the other, that it must
Speaker 1: always be this collaboration of challenging the laws as they stand,
Speaker 1: creating better laws and fighting bad laws, and also engaging
Speaker 1: people to press the system for the change that needs
Speaker 1: to happen. Let me ask you about your own personal
Speaker 1: version of this fight. I mean, you wrote a fantastic
Speaker 1: autobiography which huge numbers of people all over read. You
Speaker 1: did a very public response to the state of the Union,
Speaker 1: which is ordinarily something that a senior legislative figure would
Speaker 1: have done at the national level. If the New York
Speaker 1: Times quoted you correctly, they said you were open to
Speaker 1: serving as vice president if asked for any Democratic nominee.
Speaker 1: These are big national within the system undertakings. What do
Speaker 1: you think is the probability that that's where you're going
Speaker 1: to end up going in the next phase of your
Speaker 1: pretty extraordinary story. Thank you again. I do not see
Speaker 1: these as conflicting spaces to operate in. I've always seen
Speaker 1: them as collaborative. When I was a state legislator, when
Speaker 1: I became Democratic leader in the House minority leader of
Speaker 1: our party, one of the challenges we faced was that
Speaker 1: we had eight hundred thousand people of color who were
Speaker 1: not registered to vote in Georgia who were eligible. Those
Speaker 1: who have been in the legislature long before I got
Speaker 1: there had been bemo owning these massive numbers three years.
Speaker 1: My approach was to start the New Georgia Project. So,
Speaker 1: while as sitting legislator and while the leader of my caucus,
Speaker 1: I was also an outside agitator who started an organization
Speaker 1: that it's registered more than four hundred thousand people of
Speaker 1: color in the state of George. As Democratic leader, I
Speaker 1: did not see a conflict between those two responsibilities. There
Speaker 1: were legal issues that I had to be very cognizantve
Speaker 1: and ways that had to manage my responsibilities, but I
Speaker 1: do not see being in elected office as a deterrent
Speaker 1: to being part of a public space. Well it shouldn't
Speaker 1: be a deterrent, but as a pragmatic matter, just to
Speaker 1: be we don't have to be super realistic, but we
Speaker 1: can be mildly realistic. You know, if you listen to
Speaker 1: all the Democratic presidential candidates now, even those who self
Speaker 1: conceive as critics of the existing system, their criticism, though
Speaker 1: in many cases sharp, still comes with a strong aspiration
Speaker 1: to be at the center of power, you know, to
Speaker 1: be sitting in the White House and leading crucial national decisions.
Speaker 1: It's I think it's just the nature running for president.
Speaker 1: You end up talking like you're in the system, that
Speaker 1: you're committed to the system, and then although you want
Speaker 1: to change it, the system basically doesn't need to be
Speaker 1: fundamentally you're structured. I think that that is not inaccurate,
Speaker 1: but I think it ignores, or can ignore, the multiple
Speaker 1: ways you can affect the system before you have that job.
Speaker 1: And so my approach has been this, I attempt to
Speaker 1: leverage whichever you know, sort of the commentary about Atlas.
Speaker 1: You give me a place to stand, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to try my best to shift the world a little bit,
Speaker 1: a terrible reduction of it, but that's how I operate.
Speaker 1: And so for me, the issue has always been you
Speaker 1: have to create external pathways to making change, because systems
Speaker 1: are not going to change themselves without external pressure, and
Speaker 1: so I attempt to create those external pressures. The New
Speaker 1: Georgia Project did so by rich Strain thousands of voters
Speaker 1: who had a very dramatic impact on the outcome of elections.
Speaker 1: Fair Fight and Fair Account will do so by affecting
Speaker 1: voter protection agencies and attempts to make certain that votes
Speaker 1: cannot be stolen afforded. And in each of those instances,
Speaker 1: I've set up organizations where I'm not in charge. I
Speaker 1: am the chair of the board, I am the chief fundraiser.
Speaker 1: I participate in strategy, but I'm not the person who
Speaker 1: does the daily work because I am inside the system
Speaker 1: and there is a conflict that happens. It's very difficult
Speaker 1: to dismantle a system that you are deeply embedded in,
Speaker 1: and so part of my responsibility is to use my
Speaker 1: inside knowledge to create outside forces and then to populate
Speaker 1: those forces so that if I move back inside, they
Speaker 1: can still operate without me. The New Georgia Project is
Speaker 1: entirely independent now. Fair fight and fair account. Should I
Speaker 1: stand for another public office, will also quickly erase me
Speaker 1: from their boards. And that's my job. My job is
Speaker 1: to be aware enough to know that when you are
Speaker 1: inside the system, it is disingenuous to say that you're
Speaker 1: going to wholly deconstruct it. But it is also an
Speaker 1: opportunity to use what you learn from inside the system
Speaker 1: to arm the populace to challenge and improve a system
Speaker 1: from the outside. It's a little daunting to imagine the
Speaker 1: huge number of different jobs that you actually have created
Speaker 1: for yourself. We haven't even gotten to author of romance novels,
Speaker 1: which I promised will come to before the end of
Speaker 1: our conversation. But when you wake up in the morning,
Speaker 1: how do you know what you're literally I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean it's the most prosaic level, like how do you
Speaker 1: know what you're going to do next? Do you look
Speaker 1: at your calendar? Do you how do you know which
Speaker 1: of these many responsibilities is the one that you should
Speaker 1: start working on that morning? It's order of urgency. Typically, again,
Speaker 1: I do my best to make certain that there are
Speaker 1: teams of people who can help me determine where my
Speaker 1: best value add is. And so my wife is basically
Speaker 1: at the mercy of a bunch of millennials and a
Speaker 1: huge en xers who organize my day. So just to
Speaker 1: get a picture of this, you're kind of the chairman
Speaker 1: and CEO of Stacy Abram's Social Justice, Inc. And you
Speaker 1: you know you've got it's a conglomerate with lots of
Speaker 1: little subparts. And in there are your your millennials, in
Speaker 1: your handful of gen xers, and they're they're each running
Speaker 1: their own effectively startups which you started. In each case
Speaker 1: it's your socialist or political seed capital, and you're weighing
Speaker 1: in to try to make sure they're all keeping it
Speaker 1: in order or something like that. Is that am I
Speaker 1: getting the picture. That's exactly it. And I think it's
Speaker 1: important because often in social justice movements, culti personality tends
Speaker 1: to organize around the founder, and the founder serves not
Speaker 1: only as the creator but also the full crom around
Speaker 1: which everything circulates, and that, to me is a dangerous position.
Speaker 1: I am in politics, I am also incredibly human and
Speaker 1: thus flawed. And anytime a social movement has to adopt
Speaker 1: or rely on the personality or the foibles of their founder,
Speaker 1: you're setting yourself up for trouble. So part of my
Speaker 1: responsibility is to work as assiduously as possible to make
Speaker 1: myself irrelevant to the long term success of the organization.
Speaker 1: Can I just say, I mean, you want to run
Speaker 1: for national office, you want to be have your maximal impact.
Speaker 1: Cultive personality is what it's all about. I mean, what
Speaker 1: I'm wondering is when you go out there, as you're
Speaker 1: doing now, building your I don't want to call it
Speaker 1: a brand, because I had to test that terminology for
Speaker 1: public servants, but building the message connected to you and
Speaker 1: the things that you want to be known for and
Speaker 1: known for doing. What's your brief description of how you
Speaker 1: want to be seen by the broader world? Not by
Speaker 1: your constituents in Georgia who know you well, but by
Speaker 1: the country. I am an architect of social justice, and
Speaker 1: that means standing in the spaces where I can be
Speaker 1: most effective and doing the work that is most needed,
Speaker 1: where I'm the right person to do the work and
Speaker 1: it's the right time for that work to be done.
Speaker 1: So architect of social justice. And is that, you know,
Speaker 1: not apical consultant. But is that a teeny bit abstract
Speaker 1: for a factory worker who's lost his job or a
Speaker 1: mother who's working several jobs and trying to go to
Speaker 1: night school at the same time. Is architect of social
Speaker 1: justice concrete enough? The way you have a conversation with
Speaker 1: a potential constituent begins with meeting them where they are.
Speaker 1: And so I wouldn't start by saying who I am.
Speaker 1: I would start by asking what they need and talk
Speaker 1: then about how my skills, how my architecture skills, how
Speaker 1: my management skills help me deliver that. But to your point,
Speaker 1: one of the most difficult parts of running for office
Speaker 1: is trying to come up with something reductive enough to
Speaker 1: be a sound bite, but meaningful enough to actually convey
Speaker 1: your intention. And that's really hard. I don't try. I
Speaker 1: was slightly a conoclastic in my campaign in part because
Speaker 1: I do not look like or operate in the way
Speaker 1: that most traditional politicians do, and that of itself became
Speaker 1: my brand, which is that I'm much more like you
Speaker 1: than like them. You do things differently. Yeah, I did,
Speaker 1: but I also have experienced many of these things. I
Speaker 1: can talk about criminal justice reform because I have a
Speaker 1: younger brother who is in and out of jail. I
Speaker 1: can talk about mental health issues because one of the
Speaker 1: reasons he finds himself in and out of jail is
Speaker 1: that he had an undiagnosed mental health disorder and he
Speaker 1: cannot receive healthcare for it because of his ex offender
Speaker 1: status and because of the challenges with Southern healthcare delivery.
Speaker 1: I can talk about debt because I've been in it
Speaker 1: and I know what it means. And so part of
Speaker 1: my part of what I think resonates is that I
Speaker 1: don't attempt to create this reductive line that makes me
Speaker 1: palatable and acceptable to all people, because the minute you've
Speaker 1: done that, it is so benign that has no meaning
Speaker 1: at all. So I think what I hear you saying
Speaker 1: is that it helps to be a real person, and
Speaker 1: you're not ashamed of actually being a real person, not
Speaker 1: at all my whole life. Yeah, and you've been able
Speaker 1: to speak directly and honestly to people about that, and
Speaker 1: that is really that has really resonated. And I do
Speaker 1: think that's hugely important because the approach you described, where
Speaker 1: you start by meeting the voter, that can work incredibly
Speaker 1: well at a smaller scale when you can actually meet
Speaker 1: the voters, but when the scale becomes national, that just
Speaker 1: becomes extraordinarily difficult. And I think here of someone who's
Speaker 1: you know, our rough contemporary, a friend of mine and
Speaker 1: probably a friend of yours too, Corey Booker, who's an
Speaker 1: extremely successful politician at the one on one or one
Speaker 1: on small group level. You know, when one meets Corey,
Speaker 1: one is blown away by his enthusiasm and his charisma
Speaker 1: and his capacity to connect. And on the national scale,
Speaker 1: he's had a hard time translating that. I think, really,
Speaker 1: you know, one in a million kind of personality into
Speaker 1: something that resonates on the broader level. And it's not
Speaker 1: for any lack of sincerity. It's just that the medium
Speaker 1: of trying to reach people all over the country via
Speaker 1: a television set or a social media account is just
Speaker 1: really different than being a human being looking somebody in
Speaker 1: the eyes and interacting with them. I would say that
Speaker 1: this is a very specific moment in our political history,
Speaker 1: and we're this a normative election where we were simply
Speaker 1: arguing about the margins and the shift from one leader
Speaker 1: on the margins to the next. I would say that
Speaker 1: Corey would his resonance would be much sharper because we
Speaker 1: are in this moment of panic and existential fear. I
Speaker 1: think there's a retrenchment that is happening that doesn't allow
Speaker 1: for newness and for his brand of personal engagement in
Speaker 1: this moment. I do not think it's just positive of
Speaker 1: his long term capacity to demonstrate him. So I think
Speaker 1: it's less than medium than that moment. That's quite interesting.
Speaker 1: It is. Yeah, if you watch how people react, how
Speaker 1: they say they want to react, and how they are
Speaker 1: telling posters they will react, which are often very different
Speaker 1: in this moment, It's what I kept hearing, Oh, I
Speaker 1: like you a lot. I think you're wonderful, but I'm
Speaker 1: not sure you can be the one to do it.
Speaker 1: And so there's a lot of i'm not sure happening.
Speaker 1: And when that is the case, people tend to return
Speaker 1: to what is the most familiar and most comfortable, and
Speaker 1: in America, ninety nine point nine percent of the time,
Speaker 1: that's a white man. I was about to ask you
Speaker 1: if you think there's some implicit or maybe not so
Speaker 1: implicit racism in that formulation, and I would also you know, note,
Speaker 1: I mean Joe Biden's situation as we speak is it's
Speaker 1: a little it's a little shaky, and Elizabeth Warren has
Speaker 1: made substantial gains, still white though a woman. I wonder
Speaker 1: if what you're describing really is essentially somebody saying, well,
Speaker 1: sure Barack Obama got elected, but right now the only
Speaker 1: way to beat the white man in the White House
Speaker 1: is with another white person. I think there's a degree
Speaker 1: of that. I think there's also just a degree of familiarity.
Speaker 1: If you have two weapons available to fight back against
Speaker 1: the beast attacking you, are you going to go with
Speaker 1: the one that you've tried one or the one that
Speaker 1: you've tried forty four times? So? Can I then ask you,
Speaker 1: somewhat undiplomatically, and because sometimes you're willing to be undiplomatic too,
Speaker 1: what is the answer for the Democratic Party in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty if it's not to go with the tools that
Speaker 1: we are familiar with. I mean, what would work the best.
Speaker 1: And I'm not asking you to name a particular candidate,
Speaker 1: but I'm asking as a general approach matter, what's the
Speaker 1: message that you think will work beyond you know, the
Speaker 1: current president has terrible views on nearly every topic, which
Speaker 1: is going to be part of any Democrats message. I
Speaker 1: do not subscribe to the notion that we need to
Speaker 1: talk about Trump that often. He's going to talk about
Speaker 1: himself enough, and typically his performance is much stronger than
Speaker 1: any characterization we could offer to those who are willing
Speaker 1: to listen. True, there is a group of people for
Speaker 1: whom he is, he cannot be defeated. And let's acknowledge
Speaker 1: that we lost because we did not turn out the
Speaker 1: people who could have elected our person. And the solution
Speaker 1: is that we have to have a candidate who is
Speaker 1: clear about their values. You don't have to agree with
Speaker 1: all of them, but we need to know what they are,
Speaker 1: who is willing to invest in the actual work of
Speaker 1: winning elections. And that's the place where I think we
Speaker 1: have the weakest performance historically but the greatest opportunity when
Speaker 1: we invest in hard to reach communities. When we invest
Speaker 1: early and broadly in canvassing, in the mechanics of winning
Speaker 1: an election, not the ease of television and not the
Speaker 1: wizardry of digital, but in the hardcore effort of turning
Speaker 1: out voters, we win and we have to broaden our field.
Speaker 1: So that's a good argument for Stacey Abrams for vice president,
Speaker 1: right because whoever the presidential candidate, it is none of them,
Speaker 1: I will say, is super great at that. You are
Speaker 1: great at that. So that's an argument that this is
Speaker 1: an election that can be won in the trenches by turnout.
Speaker 1: And here you are. You are you know, you are
Speaker 1: the the social justice architect of turnout. I've been practicing
Speaker 1: a lot. I don't want I want to be respectful
Speaker 1: of your time, but I also don't want to let
Speaker 1: you go without asking you about Selena Montgomery, your alter
Speaker 1: ego and pen name. How do you, I mean, how
Speaker 1: do you decide you're going to change the mood, walk
Speaker 1: away from social justice and start writing romance? And I
Speaker 1: will say just from a quick plans, not romance that
Speaker 1: is without some spice. Well, it's a part and parcels
Speaker 1: who I am. I love writing, I love storytelling, and
Speaker 1: you know all of my novels sit into the romance genre,
Speaker 1: but I kill a lot of people. I write about
Speaker 1: ethnobotanists and cognitive scientists and chemical physicists, so I get
Speaker 1: to explore all the other things I would have been
Speaker 1: had I not followed whatever pasta is. I'm on. But
Speaker 1: I also enjoy just creating universes and worlds where people
Speaker 1: can lose themselves and learn something and emerge a little
Speaker 1: happy because two people found each other and tell them love. Well.
Speaker 1: I hope that Selena Montgomery becomes the fictional vice president
Speaker 1: and that Stacey Abrahams becomes the actual real world social
Speaker 1: justice architect of vice presidential candidate. I'm super grateful to
Speaker 1: you for your time, and thank you so much for
Speaker 1: such a thoughtful and deep conversation. Well, no, I will
Speaker 1: say this, this has been delightful. You were one of
Speaker 1: the three else who's really nice to me as a
Speaker 1: one l and you have no reason to remember this,
Speaker 1: but you were very kind to me one day at
Speaker 1: at Yale, and I remember that fondly and was happy
Speaker 1: to do this. That's super nice to be you to say,
Speaker 1: I really I appreciate that tremendously. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Listening again to my conversation with Stacy, a little more
Speaker 1: than a year after we originally had it, I couldn't
Speaker 1: help but think that although January sixth, twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: was a shocking day, a dark day in the history
Speaker 1: of American democracy, the day when the Capitol was stormed,
Speaker 1: January fifth, twenty twenty one was an extraordinary, indeed wonderful
Speaker 1: day for American democracy, a day in which Stacy Abrams's
Speaker 1: strategy fully paid off, and in which the Democrats flipped
Speaker 1: two Senate seats in joy having previously won Georgia for
Speaker 1: Joe Biden in the twenty twenty presidential election. The reason
Speaker 1: January fifth, twenty twenty one is so historically significant is
Speaker 1: that it's long been the case that if African Americans
Speaker 1: in Georgia, who are overwhelmingly Democrats, turned out to vote
Speaker 1: in large numbers, that constituency would effectively guarantee the election
Speaker 1: of Democrats to statewide office in that frequently Republican leaning state.
Speaker 1: The reason that that turnout had historically been lower is
Speaker 1: a very complicated story, one that inevitably begins in the
Speaker 1: history of segregation, disenfranchisement, and voters. Segregation and then evolved
Speaker 1: slowly into more modern forms of the same. Coupled with
Speaker 1: insufficient ground efforts by Democrats to make sure that African
Speaker 1: Americans understood that their voices were valued and heard, and
Speaker 1: turned out to vote more than any other single person.
Speaker 1: Stacy Abrams was central to shifting democratic efforts in Georgia
Speaker 1: and to developing a brand new strategy. What this means
Speaker 1: for the Democratic Party and for American politics is potentially
Speaker 1: truly profound. Everywhere across the country, African American voters tend
Speaker 1: to turn out in lower numbers than they might turn
Speaker 1: out if efforts like those in Georgia were used, and
Speaker 1: everywhere that that is true, the presence of larger turnout
Speaker 1: by African American voters could substantially transform the way democratic
Speaker 1: politics works in the United States. Political strategy always involves imitation,
Speaker 1: the sincerest form of flattery. Now that Stacy's strategy worked
Speaker 1: so spectacularly both in the presidential race and the Senate
Speaker 1: races in Georgia, it is going to be copied. Just
Speaker 1: a few days after the historic Georgia victory, I read
Speaker 1: a newspaper article describing how the Stacey Abraham's approach was
Speaker 1: going to be used for the Boston, Massachusetts mayoral race.
Speaker 1: Now Boston, Massachusetts is already an overwhelmingly democratic city, but
Speaker 1: what the people who were speaking in the article meant
Speaker 1: was that the same approach to getting every vote out
Speaker 1: and getting every vote counted, especially the votes of voters
Speaker 1: of color, was going to become the key to winning
Speaker 1: that race in a city very far from Georgia. We're
Speaker 1: going to see similar efforts by Democrats across the South,
Speaker 1: across the Midwest, and potentially even beyond that. Stacy is
Speaker 1: going to become the go to person to explain how
Speaker 1: she did it, a process that she described herself to
Speaker 1: us in the interview. Sure, Stacy started in the trenches
Speaker 1: founding these organizations that she runs and subsequently running for office.
Speaker 1: But simultaneously, she also did not treat herself as though
Speaker 1: she was the only person who could do the work.
Speaker 1: She created institutions that were self sustaining and put herself
Speaker 1: much more in the founder chairperson role than in the
Speaker 1: day to day CEO role. She was the theorist, and indeed,
Speaker 1: to use the phrase that Stacy herself used, she was
Speaker 1: the architect. Listening to my conversation with Stacy, I notice
Speaker 1: to my embarrassment that I was a little skeptical about
Speaker 1: the formulation social justice architect. Well, boy, was I wrong. Indeed,
Speaker 1: what Stacy Abrams accomplished in the twenty twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: election was precisely being an architect of a new form
Speaker 1: of social justice through her extraordinary voting efforts. Now, let
Speaker 1: me be clear, the events that took place on January
Speaker 1: six are events that deserve to be remembered for the
Speaker 1: outrageousness that they produced. Donald Trump's calling to a crowd
Speaker 1: to march on the Capitol when he knew the crowd
Speaker 1: was riled up, when he knew that it contained many
Speaker 1: people who might be entirely willing to storm the Capitol itself,
Speaker 1: when he knew that the overall goal was to interfere
Speaker 1: with accounting of the votes that would have assured that
Speaker 1: Joe Biden would become president. Those were instances of impeachable conduct.
Speaker 1: They were high crimes and misdemeanors under the Constitution. By
Speaker 1: focusing today on Stacy Abrams, I in no way want
Speaker 1: to downplay the significance of Trump's wrongdoing, nor the appropriateness
Speaker 1: of Congress taking action, including impeachment if it so chooses
Speaker 1: to try to hold Trump accountable. That's all the more
Speaker 1: important because as you hear these words, Donald Trump has
Speaker 1: just a few days left in his term as president,
Speaker 1: and in that time he is of course capable of
Speaker 1: doing still more to interfere with the democratic process, whether
Speaker 1: he does so or not. But our reason to listen
Speaker 1: again to Stacy Abrams's interview is to acknowledge that we
Speaker 1: cannot only be pessimistic and backwards looking when we think
Speaker 1: of the events of the first part of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: We must also be optimistic and forward looking, and that
Speaker 1: optimism starts but does not end, with Stacy Abrams. Her
Speaker 1: efforts are inspiring, and you can be very sure we're
Speaker 1: going to hear her name a lot in the years
Speaker 1: to come. One last thing before we go. We could
Speaker 1: all use a little entertainment right now. Kurt Anderson and
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin have teamed up to create a new audiobook
Speaker 1: called Asta la Vista America, Trump's Farewell Address. It's the
Speaker 1: perfect deranged finale to a deranged era, and it's available
Speaker 1: exclusively at a Trump Farewell dot Com for only ninety
Speaker 1: nine cents. It's possibly the last time we'll hear Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin doing Trump and it's memorable. Eventually, maybe we'll remember
Speaker 1: Baldwin's Trump a lot better than we remember the real guy.
Speaker 1: By Ostalla Vista America now at a Trump Farewell dot Com.
Speaker 1: Here's an excerpt. My fellow Americans, Happy New Year. That's right.
Speaker 1: For a while, you're still free to say Happy New
Speaker 1: Year like you were free on New Year's Eve, together
Speaker 1: together and have fantastic parties and hug and sing and
Speaker 1: kiss without masks. Okay, hope, I gotta or with masks,
Speaker 1: your choice, especially if you're not immune like me and
Speaker 1: the First Family. But soon, in March or April or whenever,
Speaker 1: try going into a restaurant or a store if they're
Speaker 1: not all shut down already and say Happy Easter. They'll
Speaker 1: scream at you, kick you out, even if you're wearing
Speaker 1: a mask. America will be much less great again, My
Speaker 1: fellow Americans, this is the most important speech I've ever given,
Speaker 1: the most important in history. Speaking of history, George Washington,
Speaker 1: I cannot tell a lie, just like me, although I
Speaker 1: actually could tell lies if I wanted, but I don't.
Speaker 1: And that's actually why they hate me. The phonies, the radicals,
Speaker 1: the liberals, the elitis, the fake media, the antifas, because
Speaker 1: I tell too much truth. But our first president, first
Speaker 1: forty five, Washington invented what I'm doing now, what many
Speaker 1: historians call his farewell address. He could have run again
Speaker 1: one very easily, another term, then again and again and
Speaker 1: again forever. No rule against it. And back then also
Speaker 1: elections weren't rigged. In his farewell address, George Washington told America,
Speaker 1: like I'm doing now, why he decided against staying in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. For another four years. No thanks bye, by
Speaker 1: going home after fighting so hard for freedom, heading south
Speaker 1: with the first lady, play golf sport of Kings, back
Speaker 1: to the big beautiful plantation with his own two hundred
Speaker 1: lifetime personal employees, almost like family, very diverse, like Marlago.
Speaker 1: As they say, history repeats. So this is my totally
Speaker 1: voluntary farewell address to you the people. Farewell, hope, like
Speaker 1: we talked about, farewell for now as far as the
Speaker 1: White House goes, because never say never. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: after the total takeover by the communists, look at that
Speaker 1: squad over in Congress. I call it a death squad,
Speaker 1: like in the bad places they come from. Ill Han Cortez,
Speaker 1: Ayana Ocasio, Rashida Kamala, also Booker. When they're thousands of
Speaker 1: thugs and bad umbres show up in your suburbs and
Speaker 1: towns flown in from Detroit and Chicago, plus the antifas
Speaker 1: from Portland and Seattle, who can blend in look like
Speaker 1: your own kids, so sneaky, then you'll be saying, sir,
Speaker 1: we want you back, we need you back right away. Well,
Speaker 1: don't say your President Trump didn't warn you until next week,
Speaker 1: when we will be back to you with a fresh
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one episode. Be careful, be safe, and be well.
Speaker 1: Deep background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our
Speaker 1: producer is Lydia Gencott, our engineer is Martin Gonzalez, and
Speaker 1: our showrunner is Sophie Crane mckibbon. Theme music by Luis
Speaker 1: Skerra at Pushkin. Thanks to Mia Lobell, Julia Barton, Heather Faine,
Speaker 1: Carlie mcliori, Mackie Taylor, Eric Sandler, and Jacob Weisberg. You
Speaker 1: can find me on Twitter at Noah Rfeld. I also
Speaker 1: write a column for Bloomberg Opinion, which you can find
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot com. Slashfeld to discover Bloomberg's original slate
Speaker 1: of podcasts. Go to bloomberg dot com slash podcasts, and
Speaker 1: if you liked what you heard today, please write a
Speaker 1: review or tell a friend. This is deep background