Hillary Clinton has been absent from the public eye for weeks — since an editorial revealed that close friends and former Clinton confidantes believe she’s preparing for a third presidential run — but she popped up Tuesday evening to announce her support for Georgia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who is facing defeat even after a statewide recount.
Speaking at the University of Texas at Austin, Clinton suggested that voter suppression is responsible for Abrams’ likely loss to Republican Brian Kemp, and that had Abrams faced a “fair race,” she’d have won.
“If she had a fair election, she already would have won,” Clinton told the audience, according to Fox News.
She went on to accuse “people on the other side” of “undoing” voting rights in Georgia ahead of the election, apparently referring to Brian Kemp’s effort, as head of Georgia’s elections division, to clear voter rolls of long-time non-voters, forcing people who hadn’t voted in the last several elections to re-register.
Clinton went on to praise Abrams for demanding multiple recounts despite evidence that, even with additional ballots counted, Abrams lags more than 50,000 votes behind her challenger, and she has not pulled Kemp under 50% of the vote, a development necessary to force a statewide runoff election.
“Stacey is really in the arena and she is fighting for the right to vote and have your vote counted,” Clinton said.
Clinton closed her speech with a snide remark about the size of Donald Trump’s inauguration crowd — a fitting end to a speech about not being able to accept the results of a full and fair election with dignity.
Before President Donald Trump won election in 2016, Clinton expressed serious doubts that Trump would accept defeat at the ballot box, and a number of Democrats echoed her sentiments, suggesting that Trump could draw on a narrow loss for weeks or even months, forcing unnecessary and redundant recounts to “prove” he lost through election meddling. Ironically, this time around, it seems Democrats are having a tough time coming to terms with election results.
Stacey Abrams filed suit in Georgia Monday, seeking to keep the recount going beyond the Thursday deadline and asking the court to reconsider more than a thousand rejected ballots, some of which are provisional ballots cast by voters who appear to have voted twice — once officially in their home county, and a second time using a provisional ballot in a foreign county.
Although the suit has little chance of changing the election results, it might result in a temporary injunction halting certification of recount numbers, giving Abrams’ team more time to locate more “disenfranchised” voters and questionably rejected ballots. The odds aren’t in her favor; Abrams needs enough votes to pull Kemp under 50% of the vote to force a runoff and the recounts haven’t provided nearly enough uncounted ballots.
Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, will be taking this comedy show on the road. Starting at the end of November, she and her husband, Bill Clinton, will embark on a several-city “stadium tour,” speaking to large audiences around the country about their respective careers in politics.
Demand isn’t high. Tickets are still available, and they are expensive.