Stacey Abrams on minority rule, voting rights, and the future of democracy

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary, Philosophy

4.5 • 11.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2020

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’re one day away from the election, though who-knows-how-many days from finding out who won it. But there’s more at stake than whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden will be our next president. There is a fight behind the fight, a battle that will decide all the others. America is not a democracy, and Republicans want to keep it that way. America is not a democracy, and Democrats — at least some Democrats — want to make it more of one. Democracy has, in particular, become Stacey Abrams’ animating mission. In 2018, Abrams lost the George gubernatorial race by a razor-thin margin amidst rampant voter suppression. Since then, as the founder of Fair Fight, she’s turned her attention to the deeper fight, the one that sets the rules under which elections like her plays out. In her recent book, Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America, Abrams makes the case that the fight over democracy is the central question of our politics right now with more power and clarity than any other politician I’ve heard. In my view, Abrams is right. And so she’s exactly the person to hear from on the eve of the election. We discuss the GOP’s turn against “rank democracy,” the role of demographic change, how Republicans have cemented minority rule across America political institutions, why we potentially face a “doom loop of democracy,” the changing face of voter suppression in the 21st century, what a system that actually wanted people to vote would look like, why democracy and economic equality are inextricably linked, and much more. One thing to note in this conversation: You won't hear Trump's name all that much. It's the Republican Party, not just Trump, that has turned against democracy, and that is implementing the turn against democracy. And it's the Democratic Party, not just Joe Biden, that will have to decide whether democracy is worth protecting, and achieving. Democracy is on the ballot in 2020 and beyond, but it's not just on the presidential voting line. References: "The fight is for democracy." Ezra Klein, Vox The Dictator's Learning Curve by William Dobson My previous EK Show conversation with Abrams Book recommendations: Ida by Paula Giddings Charged by Emily Bazelon The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:46.0	I understand why you don't vote.
0:52.0	I understand why you don't vote. I completely understand it, but I will tell you that if the choices vote or not vote, not voting will guarantee that nothing changes.
1:03.0	Voting at least gives you a one more bite at the apple and the more people we can get into the system, the more powerful your one vote becomes.
1:22.0	Hello and welcome to this workshop on the Vox Media podcast network.
1:27.0	It's tomorrow. The election is tomorrow. The election is tomorrow.
1:32.0	Go vote. I mean, if you take nothing else from this episode, go vote. Go vote on your own behalf. Go vote on the future's behalf.
1:42.0	And importantly, if you live in a place where it is easy to vote, go vote on behalf of those who don't.
1:48.0	Go vote on behalf of those who are being kept from voting. Go vote on behalf of those who are rejected at their polling place or have their mail-in ballot canceled.
1:56.0	If it is easy for you to vote and you are just busy, then vote as an act of solidarity with those who are trying really hard and are going to be turned away.
2:05.0	Go vote.
2:08.0	Which is also a lead in to this episode.
2:11.0	What is on the ballot in this election is not just Joe Biden and Donald Trump and not even just down ballot candidates.
2:18.0	It is. I've been arguing on the show for some time. It is democracy itself.
2:22.0	It is democracy itself. We are in a space as Ganesh Sitaraman argued here a couple of weeks ago. We are in a space of transition.
2:30.0	There was an equilibrium that dominated after the Civil War. There's an equilibrium that dominated after the New Deal.
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