It was the mother of all voter suppression failures

A puff piece from the New York Times interviewing Stacey Abrams, 2018 Democratic candidate for Georgia Governor. From Why Stacey Abrams is still saying she won. by David Marchese.

I really wish the NYT reporters would read their own paper. Just as they are now doing with Stacey Abrams, they used to puff Kasim Reed, (Atlanta's former Mayor), as a rising star and president's confidant, and new generation of leader, etc. There was much speculation about his future national role in the Democratic Party. It was all bright and beautiful.

Until people began to notice all the corruption. Now he is in retirement and being investigated by the FBI with several of his former colleagues either under indictment or already in prison. The NYT enthusiasm was such that it allowed them to overlook what was already known at the local level. They reported what they wanted to see, not what was.

And now they are repeating the cycle. Stacey Abrams is a gifted speaker. And that's about it. Her repertoire of touching personal stories is limited. Her stories are more charming concoctions than factually founded. She has a legislative track record but she is also hard left in a state in which even Democrats are pretty socially conservative. She barely plays in the Georgia arena, she won't play on the national stage. Too hard left, too much self-victimhood, too many tax liens, too much personal financial irresponsibility, too intransigent, too close to the entrenched establishment party corruption.

Not having learned from their infatuation with Reed, the NYT is now infatuated with another nowhere candidate with no traction. In a field of twenty-two. It seems like the Times has an endless stomach for dysfunction and mediocrity.

I ended up reading the whole interview. I suggest that you do not, unless you are a Georgia voter.

It was hard going from the first question. One of Abram's schticks is that routine voter role clean-up (purging out-of-state residents, felons, the deceased) constitutes voter suppression. She loves to use the rhetoric of the 1960s in her political campaigns of the new century teens. The Times helpfully notes:

Amid widespread reports of voter suppression, including about 670,000 voter registrations purged in 2017 and about 53,000 voter registrations pending a month before the election, she lost by 54,723 votes to the Republican Brian Kemp, who also oversaw the election as Georgia’s secretary of state.

Presumably this is intended to lend credence to her claim of voter suppression.

Until you realize there is a more pertinent measure of voter suppression - was voting suppressed?

2018 Total Gubernatorial Votes - 3,939,328.

2014 Total Gubernatorial Votes - 2,550,216.

If Brian Kemp oversaw a voter suppression campaign, it was the mother of all voter suppression failures. An extra 1.4 million voters participated. A 54% increase between 2014 and 2018.

Voter suppression is one of Abrams favorite themes but it holds no water. If she is so dramatically wrong about so easily checkable a fact as that, why would anyone give her much credence? And why would the NYT not notice something as fundamental as that?