Stacey Abrams on Midterms: What's Going to Happen?
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What is the overall state of American democracy six weeks before the midterms?
Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. Today is Surprisingly wonderful. Surprisingly because we are talking about midterm elections. Wonderful because we have the incomparable. Magnificent. inspiring badass Stacy Abrams. Stacy Abrams. Who is an antidote to despair with her wisdom and action and knowledge. And you're in for a real treat. So listen in. We're setting the stage. We are exactly six weeks from midterm elections today. And In a world full of very, very bad news, very, very often, we are coming in hot with three pieces of good news. Okay. Number one. We are today six hundred and ten days. into the fourteen hundred and sixty one day Trump second term. That's good news. It's good news. We are 42% of the way through.
42%. Just think about that. In a hot minute, we'll be over the 51. Yeah, that's it's glass half full shit. Okay. We're almost there. We're almost there. The glass is half still full. Trump. The point is, we're still a glass. We haven't cracked that is a feat. I am proud of us. Good job. This is what midterms mean. The folks that we elect, this is number two in six weeks, are the ones who will be in office for the second half of the term. They will be elected in November. They will take office in January. They will take us through the last two years, which means they are the ones that will have the power to either continue to enable the circus of devastation or Terrain him in. Okay. This is what I don't like the term, but it's usually called lame duck.
to whether he is going to be able to be emboldened to continue to do his stuff or whether he will be ineffective for the second half of his term. Okay. If he does,
we
could call him a lame
fuck.
That's good, but we're not supposed to say lame because it's like a NS term. I so I was trying to think we need a new one. We could just call him a dumb fuck. A
dumb fuck. Let's call him a dumb fuck. We're gonna we're trying to make him a dumb fuck president, which shouldn't be hard since he already is.
Okay. Number three. This is the three bits of good news. Remember, number one, you're already forty two percent there. Number two We have the opportunity to make him a dumb fuck. Number three. In the Senate, the magic number is 51. Okay. We need 51 Democrats in Senate to overcome the fact that the vice president gets a tiebreaking vote. If it's 50-50, Republicans win. So we need 51. That means that the Democrats need to pick up at least four more seats. That's what we're actually talking about. That's the magic number to get. To where we need to be. Right now, the good news is that we have a real chance to take Senate seats in Maine. For the love of God, please no more Collins. We deserve more than this. Oh God.
North Carolina? And Texas, I know. We have believed this before, but there is a shot in those three states. Also, we have the possibility of flipping Alaska or Ohio and Iowa and Michigan are also in the mix. Like there are real chances here. Okay. This is good news. For the House of Representatives, the magic number is two eighteen. Dems need two eighteen to have a majority. This is notwithstanding the fact that there was this massive racial gerrymandering after the Supreme Court passed. The Calais decision, which if you want to know about that, listen to the Justin Pearson episode that I did. But Despite that, which we had much better chances before that, even so, even with the gerrymandering, we have a real fighting chance.
It looks like right now the Democrats and Republicans are pretty evenly split with likely wins, and it's all coming down to about 21 very, very close races that will make all the difference. So you need to be aware of this. They're in Florida, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Texas, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wisconsin, Washington, Arizona, California, New Jersey, and Virginia. Okay. Also, regardless of whether you are all blue or all red in your state and you think it doesn't matter, it does. You need to show up anyway because the down ballot really matters. All right. We are going to be guided through today. With Stacey Abrams, who has spent decades effectively organizing people.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the overall state of American democracy six weeks before the midterms?
0:00–6:41
2
What are the three pieces of good news Stacey Abrams shares at the start of the episode?
6:41–16:40
3
How does the 10‑step framework explain the slide from a free election to competitive authoritarianism?
16:40–25:12
4
What specific actions does Abrams recommend to combat voter suppression on Election Day?
25:12–32:53
5
Why does Abrams say the day after the midterms is more important than the election itself?
32:53–41:47
6
How can someone with just two hours a week make a meaningful impact in the upcoming elections?
41:47–50:09
7
What does Abrams mean by shifting the question from ‘Is there hope?’ to ‘Did I do hope today?’
50:09–59:44
8
What final calls to action does Abrams give listeners before the episode ends?
59:44–1:07:06
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