John Amis/AP Photo
Stacey Abrams spoke to the media before a Democratic primary debate in Atlanta last November.
Many political observers have accused the coronavirus of putting Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, as the presumptive Democratic nominee, on ice. In reality, the campaign remains largely unchanged from its pre-pandemic state. Biden was nowhere to be seen even at the height of a hotly contested primary, and outside of a sporadic live-stream event, his campaign continues in its dormancy, though his fundraisers have gotten more expensive. This has worked for Biden, anyway; his poll numbers have remained stable while out of the spotlight, and a front-porch campaign against the disastrous hucksterism of Donald Trump makes a perverse sense.
But the muted effort stands in stark contrast to Stacey Abrams. Wholly undeterred by the coronavirus pandemic, Abrams has spent the past few weeks on a media blitz that puts the former vice president to shame. She was featured in Elle magazine and Rolling Stone, went on The View, and made multiple appearances on CNN. While it’s long been customary for VP hopefuls to issue coy demurrals when the question of that office arises, Abrams has cast that practice emphatically out the window. Her media spots have served as full-throated résumé reads, cataloguing her professional achievements and advocating for herself as Biden’s understudy (and, for good measure, enthusiastically dismissing the veracity of the sexual assault allegation against him from Tara Reade). Let there be no doubt: She intends to be Joe Biden’s Joe Biden.
All that adds up to one of the most unprecedented and peculiar political campaigns in American history, an extremely spirited offensive for a technically unelected office with few defined responsibilities. It’s turned Abrams into one of the more brazenly political operators in the Democratic Party, bluntly using the mainstream media to pressure Biden into selecting her—and unafraid to use stick as well as carrot. Abrams warned in an April 22 appearance on The View that she had “concerns” about Biden “not picking a woman of color.” In short, she has been relentless in auditioning for one of the two best seats at the State of the Union address.
The highest-ranking office Abrams has held in politics was that of minority leader in the House of Representatives in Georgia. She spent a decade in the Georgia statehouse before resigning to focus on her run for governor, which she narrowly lost to Republican Brian Kemp amid wide accusations of electoral malfeasance. Since then, she’s served as the head of Fair Fight Action, a voter registration nonprofit that has proven to be a prodigious fundraiser, and has seeded the ground for her vice-presidential crusade.
Abrams’s most recent contribution to her campaign came in the form of an article published last week in Foreign Affairs. In what reads like a paean to the blob, D.C.’s infamous foreign-policy establishment, Abrams cheers the American role in hastening the fall of communism, dabbles in some anti-China demagoguery over the coronavirus, and invokes some Bush-style exaltation of spreading democracy abroad. The introduction makes the broad claim that American foreign policy has “always been grounded not only in the power of our ideals but also in the power of our example.” She gets in on some Iran-hawking as well, blaming them for a shoddy response to the crisis but making no mention of the role of U.S. sanctions in exacerbating their pains in procuring the medicines necessary for treatment.
Adding to the absurdity is the photo that accompanies the piece, a picture of Abrams herself. Making the art a photo of the author of a piece, to put it mildly, is not industry standard for a political magazine. None of the other articles currently on the magazine’s home page feature a picture of the author as their art. When Joe Biden wrote for the magazine in early 2018, he received no such treatment. Abrams is hardly the only Democratic vice-presidential hopeful to find her way into the pages of Foreign Affairs; Tim Kaine appeared with a celebration of the Truman Doctrine. But that ran in July 2017, after he’d already been chosen as vice president, and lost. (Also, Kaine has been an important voice in foreign affairs in the U.S. Senate; Abrams, at this point, is a hobbyist.)
Though the content of that article may be off-putting for progressives (more on that in a second), it’s purposefully placed. Abrams is well aware that her foreign-policy bona fides are seen as a liability, given that she was a state legislator for her entire career in politics and never held federal office. In a March profile in Rolling Stone, she told writer Tessa Stuart that her foreign-policy chops are the thing she wished people knew more about her, before an aide later emailed her, “unprompted, a 13-point list of Abrams’ foreign-policy experience, including seven international fellowships.”
If Abrams were successful in securing the vice presidency, it would mark an exceptional end run around the political hierarchy.
Through the 2018 electoral cycle, and well into 2019, Abrams self-branded as a progressive; indeed, The Washington Post was referring to her as “the most popular progressive not in the race” less than a year ago. But her record suggests otherwise. In 2011, Abrams sided with Georgia Republicans to bring about drastic cuts to the state’s free-college program, which covered tuition at in-state public colleges for students with at least a B average in high school. Later, a lawsuit brought against Georgia Republicans for racially motivated gerrymandering was complicated by allegations that the district maps in question were approved by Abrams herself when she served as caucus leader in Georgia’s House of Representatives. And in 2017, she voted for a bill that favorably relaxed the liability standard for bank executives, siding with Georgia Republicans and the banking lobby in a state where predatory lending has been extremely acute.
Abrams has been less vocal in her self-identification as a progressive in recent weeks, as she tries to pitch herself with maximal efficiency to a Biden camp that counts among itself many advisers who hold progressive ideas in low regard. But it’s clear from her voting record that the pivot to the center should come naturally.
Why would anyone care so much about a job that’s largely symbolic and traditionally divested of real power (save for Cheney, Dick)? To state the obvious, as Biden’s campaign itself has shown, being second-in-command puts one in the pole position to run for the presidency down the line. And given Biden’s advanced age and unrebutted rumor that he will serve only one term, his VP will find themselves much closer to the presidency than even a normal veep. If Abrams were successful in securing that role, it would mark an exceptional end run around the political hierarchy, from the Georgia statehouse to within walking distance of the Oval Office without any national experience whatsoever.
The biggest obstacle that remains is Joe Biden himself. Though some in the media have gotten on board, the same cannot be said of Uncle Joe. According to the New York Post, Abrams’s campaign has not charmed him. “No one takes Stacey seriously. And her public campaigning for the job seems more like a hostage negotiation than an actual attempt to get the job,” a Biden insider told the Post.
And yet there’s no reason to believe she’s out of the running. The campaign has indicated that Abrams remains on the long list of female candidates under consideration, a process that, as perhaps the primary generator of excitement in the Biden campaign to this point, has no clear end in sight. So in the absence of an active presidential campaign, Abrams will likely continue to operate as volunteer surrogate, and the country’s stand-alone vice-presidential push will continue.
