Stacey Abrams’ new book, “Our Time is Now,” pulses with a pressing call for action ahead of the November election. But despite the title's urgency, it also offers a long-term playbook to restructure the “architecture of American democracy.”
The Georgia Democrat explores the hard-earned lessons from the 2018 campaign against Republican Brian Kemp, and urges marginalized voters to tune into lower-profile contests in the “unmentioned corridors of power we too often cede.”
And it lays out prescriptions for expanding voting rights, an issue that Abrams put at the center of her 2018 run for office and the Fair Fight Action voting rights group she launched after her defeat.
She outlines the nation’s faults and fissures over ballot access using Georgia as a primary lens, with a blend of history, modern-day politicking and personal tales, such as a story about her late grandmother’s reluctance to exercise her right to vote.
“Voter suppression works its might by first tripping and causing to stumble the unwanted voter,” she wrote, “then by convincing those who see the obstacle course to forfeit the race without even starting to run.”
It’s bookended, in a way, around the 10-day drama that helped define Abrams to a national audience – the limbo between the 2018 election and a non-concession speech that lionized her to many Democrats and infuriated many Republicans.
The morning after the election, with Kemp in the lead but the results still uncertain, she and her top advisers met for breakfast to sort through their options at a meeting that “had an air of unreality.”
“Eighteen months of campaigning. Three years of planning. And still no answers.”
The next few days were a blizzard of emotions, Abrams wrote, as she tried to sort through options such as a possible legal challenge to contest the race. Though she tried to speed herself through the seven stages of grief, “they seemed to attack me all at once.”
Most of all, she wrote, there was anger, rage and its variations – a raw response that surprised Abrams, who prided herself in calmly navigating high-stress situations.
“My temperament is low-drama and even-keeled, and, to be honest, sustained anger always struck me as a weakness. A person loses focus or, worse, becomes defined by that emotion alone. But I was mad and I couldn’t shake it.”
By the sixth day, when she began to acknowledge there weren’t enough outstanding votes to force a runoff with Kemp, the anger had melted to another sentiment.
She called it the “plotting” phase, and soon she scribbled at the basis of a trio of groups she she founded on a yellow legal pad.
Now a potential vice presidential pick, Abrams' advice to voters is to think big but start small. Urge strangers to register to vote. Introduce yourself to local public officials. Volunteer for a campaign – but ask to be assigned to the least likely voters.
“Pick your lane,” she wrote, “and then invest in someone who thinks they are invisible.”
