The Washington Post ran a glowing profile of failed Democrat Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams Thursday that better fits a paid campaign advertisement than a close and critical look at a potential vice president.
In the Post’s cheerleading piece aptly headlined, “The Power of Stacey Abrams,” the legacy outlet paints a gallant portrait of a woman who has never won a statewide election as a progressive superhero ready to heed her own calls to serve in the nation’s highest office during a time of global peril.
Here’s how the paper introduced Abrams in just the fourth paragraph of the more than 6,000-profile article accompanied by this picture of Abrams in a cape:
Pandemonium ensues as she walks to the far left of the stage, like a runway supermodel, stops on a dime, poses, tilts her head slightly and smiles. Camera flashes explode. She next pivots and walks slowly to the center of the stage, freezes there and repeats the pose. Again, the flashes explode.
Abrams is summoning her inner actress, and she is both enjoying the moment and getting through it to get to the conversation. She then pivots and walks to the far right of the stage, same. You wonder whether she has done this before, because it is not necessarily what one would expect from a 46-year-old politician who was nearly elected the first black female governor in U.S. history.
She lost by fewer than 2 percentage points in the 2018 Georgia race riddled with allegations of voter suppression. Before that, she was a state legislator who had served as a leader in the Georgia General Assembly for a decade. Now her name is on political pundits’ shortlists of potential running mates for Joe Biden. She also happens to have predicted that she’ll be elected president by 2040.
The Post profile is just the latest media tribute to the former state legislator now inserting herself into the presidential veepstakes as she breaks tradition to actively campaign for a place on the ticket.
As CBS’s Gayle King lamented to Abrams in April, “everyone knows you’re extremely qualified” to be vice president. King made no mention of the romance novelist’s lack of foreign policy credentials or any experience holding high office.
In an effort to sell herself on Biden’s veep-list, Abrams told Elle Magazine last month that her “25 years in independent study of foreign policy” was ample evidence she could broker global affairs. In fact, former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura is more qualified to hold power in the Oval Office than the failed candidate for Georgia governor, who has spent the last two years attempting to delegitimize the results of a democratically held election.
In our new culture of absurdity, however, Abrams’ loss was actually triumphant, and now she’s a preeminent political powerhouse who is a force to be reckoned with as allies put pressure on the Biden campaign to maker her the number two pick.
Abrams has become a star in the mainstream media and Democratic Party, as have others in the increasingly bizarre phenomenon of left-wing candidates failing upwards. Former Democratic Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke lost a Senate bid to unseat Republican incumbent Ted Cruz in the same year that Abrams lost in Georgia in what was supposed to be the year of the great blue wave. Less than 12 months later, O’Rourke leaped into the crowded Democratic presidential race as a woke wonderkid, drawing comparisons to former President Barack Obama. Only one major difference: Obama actually won a Senate seat.
Despite O’Rourke’s similar failure to ever win a statewide race, glowing press coverage following his defeat propelled him into a top-ten contender in the early presidential polls before he even entered the race. Here’s a flashback to the cover of Vanity Fair almost exactly a year ago when O’Rourke made his official debut as a presidential candidate:
O’Rourke lasted in the race through the end of October, dropping out Nov. 1 after participating in four debates.
Former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg also rode a wave of media praise to the top of the presidential primary and lasted through February after losing an effort to chair the Democratic Party. Buttigieg was even seen at one point in the primary as a viable contender for the nomination by pulling off an upset victory in the Iowa delegate count and coming a close second in New Hampshire.
Buttigieg’s face graced its fair share of glossy magazine covers.
The same story of the media lionizing Democratic losers played out with Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, who became a CNN commentator shortly after his failed election. His political rise eventually collapsed after police found Gillum in a Miami hotel with what authorities suspect was a crystal meth incident.
Wendy Davis, the former Democratic Texas state senator made famous for opposing an abortion bill with a filibuster, also lost her bid for governor but became another Democratic golden girl in the process.
The media’s idolization of failed left-wing heroes is not exclusive to Democrats. Seemingly anyone at odds with President Donald Trump, especially Republicans, have been given exorbitant adoration from media elites propping up “The Resistance.”
Former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake opted out of seeking re-election after his ardent opposition to the president tanked his home approval ratings. Joe Scarborough on MSNBC called Flake’s retirement the “political suicide” of the GOP.
Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who only carried a single state in the 2016 primaries and has similarly enjoyed the praise that comes with opposing Trump at all costs, joined CNN as a senior political commentator after leaving office and is likely preparing a return to the presidential race once Trump leaves office, whether that be in 2024 or 2028.
