Timothy Carney of the Washington Examiner notes un unexpected bright spot for Georgia Democrats in 2022 election returns.
Georgia is a purple state: Democrats win most of the big races, and Republicans win the ones in which Stacey Abrams runs.
Abrams has proven extraordinarily good at soaking up media attention and donor money and not particularly good at winning races. She has deprived other, more electable Democrats of funds and even cost Georgia the 2021 Major League Baseball All-Star Game.
Since 2016, in the biggest statewide races — president, U.S. Senate, and governor — Republicans have won only two of them: the two in which Abrams was the Democratic nominee. Democrats won the other three, both Senate seats in 2020 and the presidential contest in 2020, and are leading in Sen. Raphael Warnock’s reelection bid.
Gov. Brian Kemp sits at 53.5% as of 3 a.m. Wednesday morning. Only one Republican has exceeded that percentage since 2010 (Johnny Isakson in his 2016 reelection). Kemp has proved an effective governor and a shrewd politician, but there’s also no escaping the fact that Stacey Abrams is a net drain on Georgia Democrats.
Why is she a drag? Because she’s a conspiracy theorist who doesn’t talk about what voters care about but instead caters to a fawning media and a nonrepresentative donor base.
One new conspiracy theory she peddled this year involved her belief that unborn babies don’t have heartbeats, but instead, that sonogram makers are engaged in a dishonest plot to strip away women’s rights.
Her most famous conspiracy theory, though, was that Kemp stole the 2018 governor’s race. She made this claim again and again and made it a point of doctrine within her party. Her constant claims of widespread voter disenfranchisement were undermined by massive increases in voter registration and turnout in 2018, 2020, and 2022.
