The political reality is, Democrats are not in charge of anything right now in Washington. So, in this episode, MSNBC’s Jen Psaki wanted to check in with party organizer and fierce voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams about how Democrats can find their way out of the wilderness and prepare for the next wave of elections. Rather than resisting what is in front of them, Stacey talks about insisting on what Dems want to see from their leaders. And she frames up how to gather the fortitude to stand up for the world they want to see.
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Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
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Jen Psaki: Stacey Abrams wears a lot of hats. She served in the Georgia State House for a decade. She’s also a lawyer and author of both fiction and nonfiction, and she’s an activist. She was an absolute force in boosting voter turnout in her home state of Georgia, helping with a bunch of outside groups to register over 800,000 new voters in the state between 2016 and 2020, leading to the first Democratic presidential win in Georgia in almost three decades. We talked a lot about how Democrats can find their way out of the wilderness. Stacey Abrams: We can’t fight the last war and think we’ll win the next battle. That means we need to learn what we need to learn. What mistakes did we make? What could we have done better? But the environment also changes. And so, when we spend all our time looking back at what we didn’t do, we’re not looking forward to what we can create.
Jen Psaki: She’s run and lost some tough campaigns. But the thing about Stacey is she hasn’t stopped showing up and doing the work to expand accessibility and participation and also to build the tools to try to win the next fight.
Stacey Abrams: It is, to me, not just a call to action, it is a moral imperative that I find ways to be involved. And that’s why when I don’t win an election, I don’t disappear. That’s a tool. Politics is a tool for the world that I want to see, but it’s not the only tool.
Jen Psaki: This is the Blueprint with Jen Psaki.
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Jen Psaki: I wanted to talk with Stacey Abrams after the election because she has a pretty unique way of explaining the stakes and what she sees as the framework of how to approach a struggle that frankly might seem pretty daunting to Democrats right now. But as Stacey says, she’s been in street fights before. Here’s that conversation.
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Jen Psaki: Stacey Abrams, it is so good to see you. I am doing this podcast in part because I’ve been trying to figure out what just happened, and most importantly, what it means from here. And I’ve thought about, you would never remember this, but I was thinking about when I first met you. I first met you, I think it was after you ran for governor. It was backstage at an event in D.C. And I was thinking she has an aura about her —
Stacey Abrams: Aw.
Jen Psaki: — and I am just absolutely here for it. I want to know more about just to say, I want to read her books. And I still feel that way. So here we are.
But let me start by asking you this, because a lot of people listening who know who you are, know who you are because you ran for governor twice, because you are accurately, in my view, credited with really rebuilding the Georgia party, helping elect two Democratic senators in the state. A lot of people don’t know that you are also a creative novelist and writer. I mean, you’ve written thrillers, you’ve written kind of some, can I call them like sexy romance novels, you know, —
Stacey Abrams: Yes.
Jen Psaki: — a little bit. Children’s book, you just wrote.
And in this time where we’re trying to figure out how to talk about things in a way that real people understand, how has that part of your life impacted how you think about talking to people who aren’t paying attention to politics?
Stacey Abrams: So first of all, Jen, absolutely remember meeting you. So thank you for remembering me too. So I first started writing my first publications in the sort of national vein, it was romance, it was romantic suspense. And my intention was to tell stories about interesting things that most folks don’t get a chance to experience or engage. And so my very first novel was about micro zeolite technology, which most humans will never —
Jen Psaki: Most people don’t think about.
Stacey Abrams: Yes. I’ve written about ethnobotany. I’ve written about forensic psychology, linguistics. And the reason I love writing in that way is that I learned so much of what I know of the world from fiction. Not from it not being true, but from someone believing that even though it wasn’t my area of expertise, I had the right to understand it. And so it was romance novels, it was thrillers.
Those stories that took real life experiences and real information and said, come on in, it may not be what you do for a living, but you might want to know about it when you get here. That’s been how I’ve always written. So when I write children’s books, I take big concepts and I think, how would I want to engage it? So I write about perseverance by talking about spelling bees, and I write about diversity by talking about being in the library. My most recent children’s book, “Stacey Speaks Up,” was about activism and empathy, but through the lens of a child who doesn’t get to eat lunch in the cafeteria.
And so, the responsibility we have in writing, and particularly in fiction, is not to divorce real people from complicated ideas. It is to make complicated ideas as accessible as possible in ways that we don’t expect. It’s like getting your broccoli because it’s hidden in your ice cream.
Jen Psaki: Yes.
Stacey Abrams: And —
Jen Psaki: That sounds kind of gross —
Stacey Abrams: Yes.
Jen Psaki: — but I get what you’re saying.
Stacey Abrams: And it’s what I’ve tried to do in all facets of my life. So when I’m in politics, I talk about tax policy a lot. Most people do not wake up thinking, God, I can’t wait to learn more about tax policy. But I try to put it in a space where it feels accessible, and it feels like I should, not only have permission, but I have the right to know. And the best fiction creates that space where people feel like they have the right to information. And if we translate it to the moment we’re in, some of what’s happening, we don’t feel like we have the right to be involved, we have the right to have an opinion, because we aren’t experts on it. And that’s intentional.
And so our job is to rest back the information, to rest back those who said, well, this is beyond your scope. No, it’s not only in your scope, it is your obligation. So, come on in.
Jen Psaki: The reason I wanted, one, I think it’s just an interesting part of your biography that everybody doesn’t know, but also because one of the things that struck me as I’ve reflected since November is that very well-meaning Democrats have a tendency sometimes to talk about things in an ivory tower fashion and language. And I have not run for office like you, but I have spent most of my career around the country on campaigns and things like that. And so I think about things like the use of the term authoritarianism, which in no doubt is a threat, right? And people should talk about that in the media, and it is something people should be aware of. But I’m kind of wondering, and to put my cards on the table here, I don’t think that was the right closing message, but words like even using the word oligarchy, is it kind of closing out people from the conversation who may want to participate in it, but feel like I don’t even know what they’re talking about?
Stacey Abrams: Yes and no. We shouldn’t ignore the capacity of people to want to learn more, but we have to give them a way in. And so, yes, if I’m going to talk about oligarchs, my job is to start by saying people who have a lot of money and think they should be in charge of everything, we call those folks oligarchs. And when it’s a bunch of men, we’re going to call them bro-ligarchs. That’s what that is. Authoritarians, somebody who thinks that just because they get a title, that they have the power to do anything they want, and they’re not accountable to anyone else. Authoritarians, that’s what they are. Those are bullies who think that they have the right to do whatever they want to do. We should not let them control our futures. Those are authoritarians.
So when you see someone who’s like that, you should think about them as an authoritarian and this is what we do about it. So, it’s not that you don’t use the shorthand, but shorthand only works if people understand the underlying narrative. DEI is another one. People believe in diversity, equity, and inclusion. They don’t know what DEI is. So our job is not to abandon DEI. Our job is to make sure we connect the dots. I mean, you experienced this, people who loved the Affordable Care Act, but hated Obamacare.
Jen Psaki: Sure, many, and especially in red states. It’s a good point.
Stacey Abrams: Yes.
Jen Psaki: Well, let’s talk about, I mean, DEI is, it’s very front and center for so many people right now. How do you talk about that in a way that people feel like it impacts them and it matters to them?
Stacey Abrams: So first of all, DEI isn’t new. We may have been talking about it a lot in the last five, 10 years, but it’s been around for 248 years, and I can prove it. Post-Revolutionary War, everything we’ve done as a country, has been about making sure that diversity, equity, and inclusion are part of our nation. Diversity means all people. That’s all it is. Diversity simply means that all people should get to participate. Equity means that everyone has a fair opportunity to participate, so they have fair access to opportunity. And then inclusion means everyone should have a pathway to the American dream.
Our entire country is premised on DEI. It is a foundational set of values. The problem is we let it get hijacked by those who want the freedom to discriminate. They want it to be safe to discriminate. So when you see people who are anti-DEI, which part don’t they like? Do they not like the diversity part because they think too many people get to be successful? Do they not like the equity part because they don’t want to have to compete? Or do they not like the inclusion part because they think some people should be isolated and kept away from opportunity? So, let’s ask, what part of DEI don’t you like? Do you hate diversity? Do you hate equity? Do you hate inclusion? Or do you hate all of it?
Jen Psaki: And some people, I can’t speak for the entire anti-DEI world, thank God. But I mean, some people hate all of it, right? They feel like —
Stacey Abrams: Yes.
Jen Psaki: — I’m a white man. I’m being excluded because of DEI policies. That’s the kind of summary from the opposition, right?
Stacey Abrams: So the reason we have to talk about DEI is that it applies to all of us. Diversity is all people. No one is excluded. But the reality is that from the beginning of this country, some people were told, despite your presence here, we’re not going to let you fairly participate. So we’re going to put impediments.
So we had the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to say, hey, Black people, come on in. We had the Chicano Movement to say to the Latino population, yes, you’re good. We had the 19th Amendment and Title IX. But we also allow veterans to participate. We have the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act. That is a massive DEI law.
Title I, if you had a child who went to a school, oh, I don’t know, let’s say in the Appalachian Mountains, who finally had access to education, and I don’t know, graduated and went on to college and grad school and became the vice president of the United States, that was because of DEI. That was for white guys.
But the issue is, we have to do things to correct past mistakes and to provide access to opportunity. Kenji Yoshino said it recently. He said, talent is everywhere. Opportunity is not. DEI is about how we marry the two. That’s not about excluding anybody.
Jen Psaki: It’s about including people who are not included.
Stacey Abrams: Exactly.
Jen Psaki: Which the way you described it, I actually haven’t heard anybody do it exactly that way. It kind of leads me to, I mean, there’s been a lot of hot takes on the election. I’m just going to put it that way. I’m sure you have views on a lot of them. I mean, one of the things that concerns me, if I’m being honest, is this take that, oh, what’s happening here is that the Democrats have lost connection with all white working class voters and that’s what the total focus needs to be.
Now there is a truth that white working class voters are moving away from Democrats and that is a big challenge. There’s an economic messaging issue. Maybe there’s a policy issue. And I want to ask you about that. But then there are also these takes like Democrats have been too tied up in cultural issues, right? DEI, some people say, or trans issues. And we should not talk about those anymore. We should just talk about issues that impact working class voters. What do you think of that? How do you make sense of that in your mind?
Stacey Abrams: I begin by pushing back hard against the relegation of my humanity to a cultural issue. Let’s start with the fact that I’m a woman. Abortion rights is not a cultural issue. It’s a medical issue. It’s an economic issue. It’s an educational issue. It’s a moral issue. Should someone else get to determine the future and the quality of my life simply because they don’t like me as a Black person? The fact that I may face impediments to being able to take care of myself and my family is not a cultural issue. It is a foundational issue of what kind of country do we want to live in.
And so one of the ways we’ve allowed the other side to shape our narrative is that we respond to their distaste instead of responding to our intention. Seventy-seven million voted for Donald Trump. Seventy-five million voted for Kamala Harris. The gap was not that too many people heard themselves talked about in an election and believe that someone saw their pain, that as someone who was transgender, they didn’t — we didn’t lose the election because we said that you shouldn’t bully children and tell them that they are not worthy of their presence on this earth.
If that was someone we lost in an election, they weren’t voting with us anyway. But our myopic focus on how we failed to convince the one and a half million, ignores the 90 million who didn’t vote because they didn’t hear themselves included, because they heard their needs and their pain reduced to something that is an afterthought instead of being a central premise for political engagement. And so I respond to those hot takes by saying it is the most facile and weakest set of arguments that rather than doing the hard work of bringing more in, we fight over those who didn’t like us in the first place. And that’s not to say that they don’t have legitimate reasons. I’ve always said, I respect your right to believe something different than I believe. I respect your right to be a member of a party that is not my own. That’s the choice you make. My job is to either give you enough reasons to come and join me or to find those who do, but never knew that they were invited to be a part of the conversation. And I think that’s the tension that we’re facing where we should always do a retrospective. That we need to know what worked and what didn’t work. But we can’t stay there. We can’t keep fighting the last war and ignore both the casualties of that last fight and the potential victims of the next one if we don’t get our act together and go and find them. Because that 90-million-person population, they need economic opportunity. They need education. They need security. They need to know that their humanity is valued. We can’t undo what happened, but we can’t be so myopically focused on who we didn’t get that we forget that we’ve got a green field of people who we can go and get and talk to about the issues that matter and tell them that they matter. So they come and join us the next time.
Jen Psaki: I worry sometimes about the loss of the morality of people. Like we’re going to put a morality over here in order to win. It’s like, what does that even mean? Which drives me crazy.
But I am also obsessed with this group of people who either, some of whom turned out in 2020 and didn’t turn out in 2024. Some people who have never turned out. And you’re thinking, those are some people who could benefit from these policies, which to me feels like where the focus should be.
Let me ask you, I mean, this is the therapy portion of this conversation. My mother is a therapist. So like, you know, one of the things that I’ve heard from a lot of friends, I’m sure you have too. And also there’s been a lot of reporting on this specifically with Black women of feeling like we just gave it all we had. Right? We just did everything to get this person elected. We love Kamala Harris. We wish she would have been elected. We did everything. Donald Trump won. I’m out. I don’t want to have anything to do with this anymore. What do you make of that? How do you feel?
Stacey Abrams: So the phenomenon is referred to as internal exile. It’s when people feel that there is literally nothing left that they can do, but let’s understand the context. In 2017, we had the specter of a Trump presidency, but didn’t know what it was. We then survived it and we thought we’d won. And then he came back. We have a legitimate grief that we’ve got to go through. And so part of what we’re feeling, part of what we’re witnessing is the grieving process. Something we thought we’d accomplished was gone. We didn’t do it the way we thought we had. Or whatever we did, we didn’t do it with the strength and the permanence that we stopped this mega maniacal flim-flam artist from coming back and winning office. So that’s part one. But then the second part is resistance works the first time because you don’t know what you’re up against. There’s a freedom to your action because you simply don’t know what you’re facing. Now we know. And we know that what he intends is bolstered by people who should be outraged and instead are complicit. And so there’s not just grief, there’s also a bit of paralysis because this is a new approach to this work. And it goes back to the issue of oligarchy and authoritarianism. When we haven’t conceived of our nation as being party to those things, when we haven’t imagined that we could be so fragile as a country, that two million people can lead to the first woman commandant of the Coast Guard being fired —
Jen Psaki: Yes.
Stacey Abrams: — because she had the audacity to be a woman and take that job. That we have people being rounded up and terrorized by the people who should be protecting them. Those are things that we have a hard time conceiving. And so if you’re a Black woman, we knew it was coming. We’ve seen it before. We know our history. And that’s why we were so energized and engaged and histrionic is not the word, but why we were so loud and deliberate about saying, danger, danger, Will Robinson. And it is exhausting to do that and to see it happen anyway. But I will say this, not wanting to participate in things that are performative does not mean we don’t tend to perform the things that matter.
Jen Psaki: What is, tell me more about what you mean by that.
Stacey Abrams: The performative is we’re going to be righteously indignant, but we’re still going to vote for the guy. We’re going to be offended by it unless it means that I pay less money for my gas. And so yes, there is a tension in the general conversation. I mean, you said it just a moment ago. When people are willing to put morality aside, for those of us who live because morality didn’t get put aside, because moral courage made manifest our full citizenship, the idea that you can set morality aside is not only offensive, it’s scary. And so part of the responsibility is to say, it’s not enough to say you’re with me, unless you’re willing to do the things that make it painful for you to be with me. It’s easy to be an ally when there’s no cost. True alliance is when there is actual responsibility and when there is the possibility that you may not get what you want to guarantee that someone else gets what they need. And so I’m not as despondent as some are. Now, I don’t take it seriously, but I recognize that particularly for Black women, we don’t have the luxury of not being engaged. We might take a nap.
Jen Psaki: A nap is allowed for a few.
Stacey Abrams: But we’ve got to be back because the attacks that are directed at us aren’t going to stop but we have to be renewed for the fight. And I think that’s the dynamic we’re seeing.
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Jen Psaki: We’re going to take a quick break here. And when we’re back, more with Stacey Abrams on why Trump’s win this time around feels so different than it did in 2016 and how Democrats should go about picking the battles they’re most passionate about. That’s next.
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Jen Psaki: You touched on this. It does feel so different from 2017. And the question as to why, do you think it is going to require a different response, a different strategy? Because in 2017, it was a little bit for good reason. People were a decibel of 10 around everything, right? And there is a reason to be a decibel 10 about most things that I’ve seen since Trump was inaugurated, but it’s a question of do you pick what you’re a decibel 10 about? Do you have to be selective about the fights you fight? That does feel different from 2017, but what do you think?
Stacey Abrams: We’ve got to be selective. We also have to be able to differentiate between what is shock and awe and what is meaningful action. Part of his tactical toolbox is chaos and cacophony. He makes so much noise that you forget to look at what he’s actually doing. And that’s why I call him a flim-flam artist. You know, when you look behind the curtain, I mean, if you’ve seen “Wicked,” if you look behind the curtain, you realize —
Jen Psaki: I have.
Stacey Abrams: — there’s just, exactly, there’s not as much there. Now, what’s there is real, and the harm is real, and we should never diminish the pain and the terror and the harm, but we can’t give him more credit than he’s due.
Jen Psaki: Make him bigger than he is.
Stacey Abrams: Exactly. So for example, the president cannot rescind a constitutional amendment with an executive order.
Jen Psaki: Birthright citizenship you’re talking about.
Stacey Abrams: Yes, exactly. It just, it can’t happen unless we allow it to happen. And we have systems in place to stop it from happening. Now what he effectively did was weaken our faith in those systems, but those systems don’t just exist by wishing and hoping, they exist by intention. And so I don’t talk about resistance, I talk about insistence. We have to insist on our systems doing their job. We have to insist on our politicians doing their job. So I’m not going to talk about what Trump is doing. I’m talking about what Republicans are doing. Because until Republicans say no, they are complicit in his actions. So it is Republicans that are making it safe to discriminate against. It is Republicans that are telling disabled veterans, we are not going to give you access to the resources you need because that’s considered DEI. And so we are going to strip you of the protections you fought for and literally gave part of your body to defend for the rest of us. I’m not going to say that it was Trump that stopped cancer researchers from talking to doctors when people are in deep need and on the brink of losing their lives. Because it wasn’t Trump that did this. It was Republicans who have said, it’s okay that you have blocked access to scientists having conversations with doctors to save people’s lives. Until Republicans and Democrats, but Republicans are in charge, until they say no, they are complicit. And so part of our other responsibility is that we cannot deify to good or ill this one man. He might have the pen, but somebody’s giving him the ink and the paper and the ideas. And those are the people who are also to be held accountable. And our job is to figure out what things are being done that we can respond to, that we can amplify, and that we can dismantle. And so to your point about decibel, some of us are dealing with tinnitus —
Jen Psaki: Yes.
Stacey Abrams: — because the decibel has gotten so loud.
Jen Psaki: Yes.
Stacey Abrams: And so we’ve got to find our space, but there are a lot of us. So let’s figure out the thing that matters to us most. Not that other things don’t matter, but let’s figure out what is the most concerning, the most urgent and the piece where if I show up, it may simply be that I provide a safe haven for a child whose parents have been disappeared. But what can I do?
Jen Psaki: Which is, it sounds like what you’re saying is people have to pick the battles they’re passionate about and fight those battles.
Stacey Abrams: Exactly.
Jen Psaki: And you cannot fight every battle on every battlefield because you’ll have a version of tinnitus, or you’ll pass out before the first year is over. And that is kind of a different approach than eight years ago. What you said just really, I mean, I’ve been saying in the months after the election, it felt a little bit like nothing mattered. And of course, many things matter, but to come back to eight years and the same guy is elected, there was a moment of, for all of the hard work and passion and efforts to make the world a better place and to give people greater rights and protect them, here we are. And I think that was a feeling at least I know I had and I know others had as well.
Let me ask you, because right now we’re talking about these policy fights, which are so important and the system and what the system can do, I think is an important part of it too. We are, I was just talking with my team about this morning. There are going to be more elections this year.
Stacey Abrams: Yes.
Jen Psaki: There’s special elections. There’s going to be governor’s races —
Stacey Abrams: Yes.
Jen Psaki: — in New Jersey and Virginia, there’s going to be midterm elections.
Stacey Abrams: Yes.
Jen Psaki: And I wanted to ask you just about the issue, which is so close to your heart of voter suppression and how, as you look back at the election, it’s obviously an ongoing issue, but it is hard to quantify or to define for people what it means, because it’s not always just people being intimidated at the polls, it’s people being intimidated away from participating.
Stacey Abrams: Yes.
Jen Psaki: How should we be thinking about this as it relates to preparing for the fights ahead for the next elections in the midterms?
Stacey Abrams: So this goes back to something you said a little earlier about who didn’t show up. A lot of people didn’t show up because they couldn’t show up because voter suppression is alive and well. And we got distracted by the chicanery on one side and then by the unnecessary lauding of those who engage in voter suppression. I mean, look, I live in a state where the failure to commit treason turned two of the architects of voter suppression into folk heroes. That’s problematic to me, because the fact that you do one good thing does not diminish the bad that you’re willing to do. And Georgia put in place lots and lots of rules to make it harder for people to vote. And so here’s how people need to understand voter suppression. It is not the guns and the dogs and the hoses from “Eyes on the Prize.”
Jen Psaki: Which is what people often think about it as.
Stacey Abrams: It is. So voter suppression is three parts. One, can you register and stay on the rolls? Because that’s the threshold issue for being able to vote. And we know that in Texas and in Georgia and in New Hampshire and in Wisconsin, across the country, they’ve made it harder to register. In Florida, the laws they passed were so egregious that the League of Women Voters said, we can’t afford to register voters at one point. So can you register? And then can you stay on the rolls? When you have mass, amounts of purging. Yes, you should maintain good roles. But when mass purging happens, when in the state of Georgia, you can have people trying to take 30,000 people off of the rolls simply by saying, I don’t think they should get to be there. When you weaken the ability for people to stay on the rolls, that is voter suppression. So can you register and stay on the rolls?
The second, can you cast a ballot? So in every state, that in 2020 allowed you to vote by mail or vote at a drop box when those were pulled back. If I have to work a double shift two towns away from where I am and you make it illegal for me to vote with not with ease, but with a convenience that didn’t need to exist before because you weren’t able to force me to work like this before, that is voter suppression. When the state says we are going to remove opportunities for you to vote, when we are going to make it difficult for you to cast your ballot because it is not 1798, when we make it harder for you to cast your ballot. And when we know it works without increasing fraud, which everyone agreed didn’t happen, when I make it harder for you to cast your ballot, when I put in place what they’re trying to do in North Carolina and discount you Kava voters because you have to have an I.D. that you may not actually be permitted to have, or you may not have access to, even though I have all the other proofs points that I need to let you vote, when I can’t let you cast your ballot. Because I live in a state where you have to have someone sign an affidavit to prove that you should be able to vote by mail. So anything that makes it difficult for you to cast your ballot is voter suppression.
And the third is does your ballot get counted? North Carolina is the perfect proof point. Pennsylvania as well. The number of lawsuits filed to make it impossible to count the ballots that got cast. The fact that we still don’t have a Supreme Court justice in North Carolina.
Jen Psaki: That’s a crazy story.
Stacey Abrams: Because the court is refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of 60,000 voters because there is a sore loser. And I’m going to just address this. I’ve never once questioned whether or not I get to be the victor or the loser in an election. I will always question the systems that make it impossible for the voter’s intention to be made real. That’s what we’re dealing with. So when you say I’m not going to count ballots because I don’t like who submitted the ballot, that is voter suppression. Voter suppression means that you try not to make people’s votes real. And that extends into trying to retcon what they should have had to do before they submitted it, whether the date was legible, whether it was on the left side or the right side, those things that sound like administrative issues are voter suppression. And so here’s the big way to draw it all together. Can you register and stay on the rolls? Can you cast a ballot? Can your ballot get counted?
But fundamentally, and you said this, the psychic effect of voter suppression is that it’s too hard. I’m not going to bother trying. I’m not going to jump through the hoops. I don’t have a PhD in voter access.
Jen Psaki: Right.
Stacey Abrams: And therefore, when I think of the things that are highest on my priority list, trying to navigate using the most basic of rights is just too much work because I don’t know what I’m going to get for it, but I know the grief I’m going to face if I try, and so I’m not going to do it. That’s voter suppression in the 21st century. Sorry for very long answers.
Jen Psaki: No, I think it’s so important for people to hear because there are these questions that are impossible to answer about why certain people didn’t turn out, right? And why groups of populations didn’t turn out. And there are a lot of reasons, —
Stacey Abrams: Yes.
Jen Psaki: — but that is undoubtedly part of it. You know, one of the other things I think that is in the effort to pick yourself up, which I think a lot of people are trying to do and figure out what their fights are. I mean, I host a television show and people, my friends will say to me, I’m just not watching any news. I’m like, you know, this is what I do for a living, but it’s fine. You’ve obviously run tough races. You’ve lost tough races. You’ve stayed in the fight. Have you ever not wanted to stay in the fight?
Stacey Abrams: Oh, of course. But the point is the fight is for my life. The fight is for my family’s life. The fight is for the communities I care about and their lives. If people would just do the right thing by each other, I, you know, I’d watch TV for a living.
Jen Psaki: Yes. A range of TV.
Stacey Abrams: Yes. I love television. But the reality is we’re not talking about cultural issues. We’re not talking about statistics. We’re talking about real people and how they are allowed to achieve their American dream. And if we’re thinking internationally, how people either survive or thrive. And it is to me, not just a call to action, it is a moral imperative that I find ways to be involved. And that’s why when I don’t win an election, I don’t disappear. That’s a tool. Politics is a tool for the world that I want to see. But it’s not the only tool. I write romance novels and children’s books and non-fiction and legal fiction, because those are also ways to imagine the world I want to be a part of. I start companies and I start nonprofits because those are also ways to construct the world I want to be a part of. I am relentless about getting that constructed because I would like to watch more TV. Therefore, I can’t quit until we get it done. So let’s get to it.
Jen Psaki: Well, just a sidebar. I want to know what’s your favorite show you’re watching right now. I need some more shows.
Stacey Abrams: So I’m very excited. “The Night Agent” is back.
Jen Psaki: Okay.
Stacey Abrams: Because that’s one of my favorites. “Reacher” is coming back. I love “Reacher.”
Jen Psaki: Love it.
Stacey Abrams: Lee Child is a fantastic writer. Just finished “Silo.” So if you haven’t watched it, go and do it.
Jen Psaki: Okay, haven’t.
Stacey Abrams: There is a really lovely French detective show called Astrid that I watch on Amazon. It’s really fantastic. And then for comedy, I am rewatching “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” because it just makes me happy. And Andre Braugher and Andy Samberg are just beautiful and magical together.
Jen Psaki: Okay, I love all these recommendations. They’re excellent. I just finished a season of “Shrinking.” I’m a little behind, but it’s very good. And I’ve been rewatching “Black Doves,” Black Dove.
Stacey Abrams: Yes, with Keira Knightley. That’s on my list.
Jen Psaki: It’s very good. And I keep thinking about her and how she’s living this life.
Stacey Abrams: Yes.
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Jen Psaki: Next up, Stacey Abrams and I look at how Democrats can find their way back out of the wilderness. More in a moment.
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Jen Psaki: Okay, back to the topic at hand, or one of the things I want to talk to you about. So the other piece here is just how do we all, I feel a little like we’re in the wilderness. I don’t know.
Stacey Abrams: Yes.
Jen Psaki: And you’ve helped the Georgia Democrats get out of the wilderness. How do we get out of the wilderness here?
Stacey Abrams: The first responsibility is to understand that we can’t do it all at once. We’re not going to, I love sci-fi, we’re not going to teleport out of here. So, people like to talk about my plan. My plan took 10 years.
Jen Psaki: Yes. Wasn’t overnight.
Stacey Abrams: It wasn’t overnight and it’s not over yet. Like we got to purple, but purple means that you still have to fight over it. Purple means that we’re actually competitive. It doesn’t mean we’re guaranteed victory. Blue is when, you know, you’re good. But we’re not there yet. And so the first responsibility is to understand it’s going to take time. The second is to realize you cannot fight every fight, but everyone can fight something and fight for something. And that means that we’ve got to pick and choose. We’ve got to invest in support. We can’t do everything. The third is that there are resources in the wilderness. We often think, well, we’re in the wilderness. We are isolated from resources. They’ve got all the power. They don’t have all the power. This was not a landslide election, 1.5 million plus people picked who gets to be in charge. And that’s how democracy works.
Jen Psaki: You’re telling me it wasn’t an overwhelming mandate as we heard.
Stacey Abrams: Exactly. But that’s how democracy works. They got it. There you go. But as you said, there are elections every day. I mean, we are always picking new people. If you want the ability for authoritarians to steal our sense of self to stop, make sure you’re showing up at school board meetings. Make sure that you’re reading to kids. If you want to address the issue of whether kids are in the school to prison pipeline, make sure they have lunch. Because one of the greatest predictors of their academic success is whether they’re hungry or not. So find the thing that matters, but we’ve got the resources. We don’t have to do big stuff. We start with small things, but we also build things. And then I very firmly believe that, so a friend of mine just said it today.
Jen Psaki: I love the giggle. I don’t know where this is going. And I’m excited.
Stacey Abrams: So he said, there’s some people you can tell have never been in a street fight. Meaning they get hit and they just stay down. They’re like, they do the armadillo. They’re like, —
Jen Psaki: Yes.
Stacey Abrams: Yes. Well, I’ve been in street fights. So part of being in the wilderness is that you can train in the wilderness. You can shadow box in the wilderness, but you can also pop out and do what you need to do. And part of our responsibility is to recognize that the wilderness gives us a chance to regroup, but we can send scouts on ahead. And we’ve got some folks who aren’t in the wilderness who need to get messages from us and the origin of marathons. We just need to send the runners up ahead to say, this is what’s coming. We’ve got people in Congress, they need to not just hear from us, but they need to hear from us what they should expect from what we expect from them. And right now we’re not doing that. We’ve got good people who are voting for terrible things. And that’s because —
Jen Psaki: Give us some, I mean, the Laken Riley Act is one I think of.
Stacey Abrams: Yes, absolutely. That is one of the most offensive bills to pass, not because we shouldn’t weep for her, but because it was such a poorly written and subversive law that undermines the rule of law. It weakens the protections for those who did nothing wrong and it did not have to happen. There was an absolute possibility to pass a version of Laken Riley that actually solved the problem that was attempted to be solved. But instead of fighting the fight of, let’s make sure we’re getting it right, there are good people who opt it for expedience in a way that is deeply concerning to me. And we can’t let this keep happening. We cannot compromise our way to morality. We have to have our values in check. We can compromise our vision without compromising our values. And we need to be asking every person making decisions on our behalf, which one are they serving?
Jen Psaki: What does that look like to you? I mean, because there’s many forms of accountability. I mean, there’s people calling their members of Congress. There’s people writing them letters. Every citizen has a voice, no question about it. There’s primary, people being primaried, but then we also need a big tent for the party. So it’s where do you draw the balance of that?
Stacey Abrams: Well, I also realized that one election and one vote and one decision does not diminish or eviscerate years of good action. As a legislator, I voted on things, but now in retrospect, I’m like, what was I thinking? It happens. The issue isn’t did it happen? It’s why and will it happen again? And what are the consequences?
So I use Laken Riley as a perfect example. I live in Georgia. I understand the impetus to take action. My concern is whether the action taken is an overreach that puts more people in jeopardy. That is a responsibility we have to consider. And so, I don’t fault anyone for wanting to take action, but I do demand that going forward, we be more intentional about the consequences of those actions. And sometimes we see the habit and the pattern that people present to us, where they’re always apologizing after they’ve done the thing we didn’t think they should do. That’s when you start to think about who should have the job. Because if you’re not willing to do the job the way we need you to do it, the point of a democracy is we get to pick somebody else. But I don’t want us to jump automatically. You did this thing I don’t like, and therefore you must be gone. No, it’s one, let me tell you why I’m upset. Let me tell you why I’m concerned. And let me talk to you before you do the thing you’re about to do. So that’s why someone like you is so important. That’s why the work you do every day is so critical. We need people to know what’s on deck and know what’s at stake and know why they should be concerned. And then if they don’t do the right thing, I have sort of a three-warning rule. Like I’m going to warn you and I’m going to remind you. And then the last time I warn you, then I’m going to do something about it.
We should do the same. We should think about what are the warnings we can offer? What are the supports we can give? And then we say, if this happens again, here are the consequences we intend to meet out under our purview as citizens, under our purview as those you are supposed to be serving. But we can’t just expect people to read our minds, and we can’t expect that they understand everything. Part of our job as citizens, it’s an active responsibility. It’s to say, this is what I need you to do, and this is why I need you to do it, and I’m going to watch and see if you’re willing to do it.
Jen Psaki: So what does a first warning look like from you? A call, a letter?
Stacey Abrams: It’s a call, it’s a letter. Sometimes it’s just in my head. I’m like, you should have known better.
Jen Psaki: You’re like, I’m putting this down as number one. It’s a secret number one and Stacey Abrams, let’s see, don’t want to get to three. Let me ask you about something else I’ve been thinking a lot about because I worked for the Kerry campaign when we lost, and you may remember all the hot takes after that election —
Stacey Abrams: I do.
Jen Psaki: — and what that meant. And it’s so interesting to look back because four years later, Barack Obama was elected, right? Who never would have been what people would have diagnosed as the answer and the aftermath of the Bush win. And I’ve been thinking about that a lot and talking about it a lot because you sometimes hear people say things like, well, we now know there’ll never be a woman elected president in my lifetime. How many times have you heard this?
Stacey Abrams: Make me change.
Jen Psaki: And certainly, never a Black woman. It’s like, we have to nominate a white man next time. Now, maybe a white man will emerge. I have nothing against white men, but like, what do you tell people when they say that?
Stacey Abrams: We can’t fight the last war and think we’ll win the next battle. That means we need to learn what we need to learn. What mistakes did we make? What could we have done better? Why was the decision made? But the environment also changes. And so when we spend all our time looking back at what we didn’t do, we’re not looking forward to what we can create. So my question is what conditions need to be created? So that more people believe that it’s okay, because we got really close. In fact, we did do it the first time. We got a woman, or the second time, so surely notwithstanding. Hillary Clinton got more votes. So we know it’s possible. She just didn’t win the electoral college. Okay, so what did we learn from that? This time, Kamala got really close. What did we learn from this? It is not that it can’t be done. If that were the case, inventors would never invent anything. If they stopped after the first or second or third time, something didn’t work. We would not have light. We would not have indoor plumbing. Like there are lots of things that wouldn’t be. And we treat politics as though it’s a sort of one and done. And the reality is we’re talking about people’s lives.
And therefore, the tools to make people’s lives better should be sharpened, should be refined, and we should be aggregating them as often as we can. But what we can’t do is say, oh, that hammer didn’t work on that nail. Or that hammer didn’t work on that screw, so we can’t use a hammer ever again for anything.
Jen Psaki: Right.
Stacey Abrams: Maybe we need to just build something new where the hammer makes more sense. Or we figure out what to do, and maybe we invent a new tool that is a multi-use tool.
Jen Psaki: Or a screwdriver.
Stacey Abrams: Exactly.
Jen Psaki: I love the analogy. I’m like, I know another tool, and I’m going to name it now.
Stacey Abrams: Exactly.
Jen Psaki: I mean, I always say to people, I’ve worked in politics a long time. You’ve worked in politics a long time. I can’t speak for the American public —
Stacey Abrams: No.
Jen Psaki: — and what they’re ready for when. I don’t know.
Stacey Abrams: No.
Jen Psaki: I root for all of these people who are on the bench, governors and others. I have no idea who will emerge because guess what?
Stacey Abrams: Absolutely.
Jen Psaki: I don’t decide. Neither do you. Even as much as we collectively have worked in politics. Let me ask you, we’ve gone to dark places because I think we need to go to dark places and discuss. But I want to add a kind of more positive note because you kind of got on the map in the state legislature, right?
Stacey Abrams: Yes.
Jen Psaki: You didn’t just kind of grow out of the earth and become a national leader. No one does. There is a great, amazing bench in the Democratic Party, which I think is really exciting. But there are also a lot of people that we may not know of right now who may become leaders. Who do you think Democrats, people, the media, where should people be looking for kind of the next emerging leaders that maybe they aren’t right now? Because sometimes, you just only talk about four or five governors and there’s obviously many more beyond that.
Stacey Abrams: So I think more in terms of the archetypes. We need to be looking at people who are speaking up when it’s not safe to do so. We need to be looking at people who are entrepreneurial and how they’re trying to solve civic problems. We need to look for folks who represent populations that have not been seen or heard in very useful ways and who have been able to break through and make us pay attention. And we need to look for people who want to do the work. Not people who want the title, but people who want to do the work. Because the people who want to do the work are the ones who are going to be around when things are hard. They’re going to be the ones who are willing to be entrepreneurial when everyone tells them, oh, we can’t get this done. And they’re the ones who are actually listening to the folks who need them the most because they know that that’s the reason you do any of this. So I don’t think it’s looking at a certain title or a certain job, it’s looking for those characteristics and those archetypes to understand what the next wave of success and opportunity and progress look like for us.
Jen Psaki: Stacey Abrams, I love that you have such a moral clarity. It is not universal. And I think it’s so needed in this moment to be fearless about speaking up for what you believe in and that people don’t agree on everything.
Stacey Abrams: Yes.
Jen Psaki: So I thank you for that. Thank you for spending the time and helping us try to navigate our way out of the wilderness. Appreciate it so much.
Stacey Abrams: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Jen Psaki: Thank you. So one of the things that struck me about my conversation with Stacey Abrams is that she has this aura of hope about her, even though she’s fought tough elections and lost. She has done so much to register voters and defend voting rights in the state of Georgia. And there has been many things that have happened that have been challenging there. And she’s still hopeful about the path forward, which gave me an ounce of hope as well. The other thing that really struck me about our conversation was how she talked about DEI. Because it’s such a poignant topic right now, given what’s happening in the federal government. And when she said basically, so let’s ask what, why, what part of DEI don’t you like? Do you hate diversity? Do you hate equity? Do you hate inclusion or do you hate all of it? It pretty much cuts to the core of the issue. And I thought she did it in a way that most people aren’t doing as clearly.
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Jen Psaki: Thanks for listening to The Blueprint with Jen Psaki. Be sure to subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts to get this and other MSNBC podcasts ad free. As a subscriber, you’ll also get exclusive bonus content like the recent conversation my colleague Chris Hayes had with Jia Tolentino of The New Yorker about his new book, “The Siren’s Call.”
The senior producer for The Blueprint is Margaret Menefee and our producer is Vicki Vergolina. John Ball is our associate producer. Our booking producer is Michelle Hoffner with additional support from Makena Roberts. Our audio engineers are Katie Lau, Mark Yoshizumi, and Bob Mallory, and Bryson Barnes is the head of audio production. Alex Lupica is the executive producer of Inside with Jen Psaki, and Aisha Turner is the executive producer of MSNBC Audio. I’m your host, Jen Psaki. Search for the Blueprint wherever you get your podcasts and follow the series.