She's not currently running a campaign in Georgia. Her response does not need to take that into consideration. She doesn't hold any current government office. She's making a response, speaking for Democrats across the country, not just her former constituency in Georgia. It's asinine to pretend like she needed to be protective of how she spoke here as if she was running an important reelection campaign today, though as I said it almost seemed like she was going to announce something for the first two and a half minutes of her response.
It's also clear she didn't lose the election in Georgia because of the perceptions of her as a black woman, but very likely was due to voter suppression, an issue I applaud her bringing back up, despite the appearance it would clearly give that she's salty about the outcome. That's why, to me, it's frustrating she chooses to bring that up in her response but for everything else tows the safe Dem line of talking points here in response to Trump in the safest, vanilla way possible.
She behaved during her campaign exactly as she did tonight, so using the fact that she was so popular as an example for why she could act like the imaginary person some of you wish she was doesn't make any sense. Stacey Abrams was asked to speak tonight and this is who she is. The fact that she does not currently hold an office makes her position even more precarious, I would think. Her only influence comes from how she is perceived on this most public stage.
I don't at all think it's asinine to acknowledge that black women have to be careful of their behavior at all times, especially black women seeking positions of power and authority in Georgia. I can't believe you'd actually suggest that potentially bombing tonight isn't a risk for someone still up and coming.
And frankly I don't even know what you people are talking about when you say she was vanilla. She went in on the shutdown at
length. She said Trump was responsible, called his behavior un-American, said it was disgraceful, talked about how it exploited working class people. When talking about the topic of the shutdown she explicitly said the words "cannot be negotiable," though she framed it in a very specific and positive context that keeps away from the "negative Democrats won't come to the table" spin people would look for.
She brought up school shootings and blamed the White House explicitly for a lack of response. She said "family's hopes are being crushed by Republican leadership that ignores real life or just doesn't understand it" and brought up the importance of unions and directly blamed the Republican tax break and the trade wars for economic issues. That's just in the first half.
Did you guys actually listen to what she said or were you so turned off by her tone of voice not matching your own anger that you couldn't process it? Because if that's vanilla, I'm not sure what political discourse is expected to be anymore.