There’s a lot for Democrats to be excited about right now. After a devastating loss in the 2016 presidential election and nearly a year of a Trump administration, we are making strides with wins in some very surprising places. This, of course, includes last week’s Senate race in Alabama—marking the first time in 25 years that the state will send a Democratic senator to Congress. As we know, black voter turnout has been essential to our recent wins in the South this year. And we can keep the momentum going if we understand this and amplify our efforts to target young people, people of color, unmarried women and white liberals.
Daily Kos has endorsed Stacey Abrams in the Georgia governor’s race. Abrams hopes to turn out the aforementioned demographics in order to turn Georgia blue and become the state’s (and America’s) first black female governor. In a recent New York Times article, Michelle Goldberg asks whether black voter turnout could be the key to Democrats winning in the South, and specifically, in Georgia.
As Abrams points out, you need to get a lot more white voters to win statewide office in Alabama than you do in Georgia. The non-Hispanic white population in Alabama is around 66 percent; in Georgia, it’s less than 54 percent. The challenge for Democrats is getting voters of color to turn out at the same rate as white people, particularly in nonpresidential years. Alabama shows that, with enough resources and organizing, it can be done.
And if it can be done, it means that Democrats don’t need to woo culturally conservative white people in order to resurrect the party in the South.“What I am arguing is that we actually embrace the new reality of what the South looks like,” Abrams told [journalist Michelle Goldberg].
Embracing the new reality of the South means that we don’t have to play the constant cat-and-mouse game of trying to persuade certain folks to vote Democratic when we know that they won’t anyway. Yet, this race is not a foregone conclusion. There is still a Democratic primary for Abrams to win and many wonder if a black female candidate can appeal to white moderates, especially in the South. Yet, there is no evidence to support that she couldn’t. In November, Jennifer Carroll Foy ran for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates, in a suburban district with a 57 percent white population. She won her race by 26.3 points—which was higher than Hillary Clinton’s lead in that same district in 2016.
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Jones proved that it’s possible to win in the South — in Alabama! — without moving right on social issues by leaning hard into the Obama coalition of people of color, educated white liberals and young people. “The next proof point is to show that this is something that can be exported, and doesn’t require a pedophile as your foil,” says Abrams.
If she wins, its unlikely that Abrams will face a Republican opponent quite like Roy Moore. But she will likely face one that has equally dangerous policy positions with plans to take Georgia back in time to the days of Gone with the Wind. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen. We have a chance to win with Abrams in Georgia if we put time and resources into this race. The country is finally waking up to what black women can do at the voting booth. But that’s far from the only role black women can and should play in politics. Now’s the time to see what a black woman can do as the chief executive of a state.