Search
Close this search box.

Stacey Abrams Really Won

Stacey Abrams won.

The fact that she officially announced she will not be taking the office she ran so beautifully for, is a mere technicality—one that good people who were paying attention, realized was likely a foregone conclusion before a single vote was ever counted. Today is less a terrible surprise, than a long-expected moment of grieving.

For months, her opponent made sure this day would come. Already the beneficiary of years of insidious gerrymandering and historic voter suppression that had stacked the deck precariously in his favor—he resorted to blatant theft for safe measure. He chose the same filthy, soulless path that he has seen blazed by similarly small men when facing strong women they are outmatched by and unworthy of: lie and steal and fix the game until you win. 

Stacey Abrams won.

She ran her race with the grace and skill and dignity of an Olympic athlete. Sadly, her adversaries had placed her in a crooked small town carnie game of chance, where her victory was never really a possibility. She was a clear-eyed optimist, believing that doing the work and trusting the process would be enough. It should have been.

This is why Stacey Abrams won: because she reminded us that sometimes honesty and decency and character will not yield the results we desire; not because we fail in those endeavors, but because the system sometimes does.

The system failed Georgia, who has lost the leader it could and should have had to pull it into places of equality and justice it so needs to be.

The system failed its people, who have lost the opportunity to be represented by someone of integrity and forthrightness; someone not willing to abandon morality in order to feel the cheap high of unearned victory.

The system failed Stacey, too—by not allowing her the level playing field our Constitution and anthem promise, when we live and work and move through this life as citizens here. 

But Stacey Abrams won.

She won because she gave a damn. She entered into the fray and she made herself visible and vulnerable in order to follow her convictions. She opened herself up to brutal attacks from the other side, and when those attacks inevitably arrived—she met them with her humanity; one that never wavered and never faltered. All the way to this day of legislatively coerced concession, she was the best of herself and the best of this country.

Stacey Abrams won.

She won, because in days when bitterness and enmity in America are so en vogue, she dared to bring decency back in style—and she do so gloriously.

She showed us that hope is far better food to live on than derision; that America steps closer to its greatness when it is wider and deeper and fully reflects the kaleidoscope of its people. We need more people to see the victory in living this way.

The political scorecard will be appear as a loss, but Stacey Abrams hasn’t lost a thing.

She doesn’t have the office, but she still has her soul.

That’s why Stacey Abrams won.

 

Get John’s book, ‘HOPE AND OTHER SUPERPOWERS’ here!

 

Share this: