There is never a time where Stacey Abrams doesn’t move a crowd to want better and to be better. On Saturday afternoon, Georgia’s Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams, implored the crowd at the 2022 Essence Festival of Culture to not let their apathy with the country’s current state distract them ahead of the 2002 midterm elections.
Addressing the progessive moments like Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Black woman, joining the Supreme Court, but also the more regressive moments, like, the overturning of Roe v. Wade Abrams explained how easy it is to forget exactly where the now blue state of Georgia was before the 2020 election.
“We had not only four years of Donald Trump, but four years of unfettered conservative assault on who we are and what we wanted to be,” she said. “You cannot undo the four years, which followed 40 years of an attempt to roll back who we are and fix it in two and half-three years. But what we could do is stop the bad from happening and that’s exactly what we did when we elected Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock from the state of Georgia.”
“If you think Mitch McConnell is bad now, imagine how bad he would be if he actually had all the votes he needed in the senate,” she said.
She added that democrats holding the Senate in Georgia is not just about stopping the bad things from happening, but also building towards good. Much of the criticism surrounding the Democrat party is that they are playing offense to the Republicans defense. That game plan has left the liberals far from the progression that many think could have been accomplished during the Obama administration and more recently in half of the Biden administration.
“We have to stop treating voting like it’s magic.” Abrams said. “We do not undo the past with a wave of a wand or a moment in the ballot booth. Voting is medicine. Raphael Warnock is medicine. If I am elected, I am medicine.”
And like real medicine, it sometimes tastes nasty she said. “Sometimes [it] hurts more than whatever is wrong with us. But we know that if we take our medicine, we will get better. Our votes have to make us better.”
She told voters that they have to vote every time even if elected officials disappoint their constituents. “Our side might disappoint, but the other side intends to destroy.”