There are a lot of reasons not to fall in love with politicians, and there is no way I can cover all of them in a column. After all, I write 6 posts a day and I don’t want to run out of material. Bad for business.

But seriously, don’t. Falling in love with politicians like a lovesick teenager is bad for your own mental health and bad for the health of the Republic. I am an admirer of several politicians–Ronald Reagan comes to mind, for instance–but if you invest your hopes and dreams in any one person or politician you are bound to be disappointed and worse.

The case of Trump love (or Trump hate) is the obvious example, but since Trump is likely to announce a run for president tonight I will wait to discuss the case of Trump for future columns. The politician I have in mind today is Stacey Abrams, who inspired so many hopes for Democrats around the country.

Abrams is a fascinating case, even more than Beto O’Rourke. O’Rourke at least had the benefit of looking a bit like John F. Kennedy, thus hitting an important political erogenous zone for Democrats who still think of themselves as the party of Kennedy, despite being pretty much Kennedy despised. As a faux-Kennedy O’Rourke had some surface appeal to many.

But Abrams? Aside from a stint as a state legislator and a failed run for governor of Georgia her popularity is a mystery to me. She inspired the kind of love and admiration that only a Kennedy or Obama could, without anywhere near the political chops. She was nakedly ambitious, lied with the ease of a Clinton, and reveled in the love dispensed on her without having earned it. Why?

Obviously she was quite good at spreading the myth of voter suppression, and that counts for a lot. It certainly accounts for her frequent appearances on TV talk shows, but not for the fact that she became a cultural icon for the political and cultural elite. Her stint as President of United Earth on Star Trek cannot be explained by her facility with lying about voting practices in Georgia. Only the Elite’s genuine love for her does.

I honestly can’t get over that clip. It strikes me as embodying everything wrong and stupid about our ruling class. Slap some schmalzy music in the background and some high minded-sounding narration and you have created an icon.

But a funny thing happened along the way, Georgians–even Democrat Georgians–never did fall in love with Abrams. Only the Elite™ did.

Charles Blow writes a Blow-hard piece on Abrams, and I found it equal parts idiotic and revealing of the distance between the ruling class and normal people.

As the Bible tells the story, Moses delivers his people from bondage and to the “promised land,” but even with all his efforts he is not allowed to enter. He must gaze upon it from a distance.

This, I fear, is the story of Stacey Abrams. She built the huge voter registration and turnout machine that helped Joe Biden carry Georgia in 2020, and helped the state elect its first Jewish and Black senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, giving Democrats control of the Senate. If Warnock wins his runoff next month, she will have helped Democrats strengthen their control of the chamber.

It would be easy to be cynical here and say that a woman did the work, and now a man is benefiting from it, again. But that obscures the fact that what Abrams gave to Georgia and the country was so much larger than any one contest, hers included.

Abrams gets her butt kicked, this time decisively, and Blow finds her to be a Moses figure who gifted the country…what? Joe Biden? Gee thanks, I guess.

Read my column, “An Ode to Stacey Abrams,” and let me know what you think. https://t.co/267AYsLTry

— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) November 13, 2022

Moses? Really? C’mon, man. Get serious.

So what went wrong? I wish I had a comprehensive answer and could articulate it briefly, but I don’t and I can’t.

All I know is that every time I asked people about Abrams’s chances this cycle, they’d demur, or roll their eyes, or give an incredulous and worried “I don’t know.”

In fact, “worried” was a word I heard too often. It seemed to me contagious and self-perpetuating: People became worried because others were saying they were worried.

I simply couldn’t find enthusiastic Abrams voters in my everyday interactions. I live in midtown Atlanta, but I also wasn’t seeing many yard signs or window placards. I wasn’t seeing many TV ads.

Now I have no idea about TV spending in Georgia, but Abrams raised well over $100 million for her race–so I have to assume she was fully capable of getting her message out to the voters. She raised far more than Kemp, who beat her comfortably.

And lack of spending had nothing to do with the attitude of voters that Charles Blow spoke with. As a resident of Georgia himself Blowhard had lots of opportunity to observe the campaign and people’s reactions up close, and people were not buying what Abrams was selling. Perhaps because Abrams was selling her own obvious ambition, not competent governance of the state.

But she just couldn’t get enough traction. Her message lacked momentum.

This was in part because her opponent, Gov. Brian Kemp, went out of his way to appear more moderate than the national party and more moderate than he truly is.

First, he leaned into the fact that he had resisted Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results in Georgia in 2020. People remembered that. It wasn’t that Kemp was pro-democracy and pro-voting — he signed the voter suppression law his Republican-led legislature passed after the 2020 election — but being pro-democracy in that moment when the transfer of power hung in the balance left a lasting impression.

Kemp was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but his sheep suit was impeccably tailored. So much so that at one point during the campaign, the Atlanta rapper and organizer Killer Mike praised Kemp for “running an effective campaign” and reaching out to Black voters and suggested that Abrams should go “everywhere Mr. Kemp just went.”

“Appear more moderate?” This ignores the fact that Kemp had been governor of the state for 4 years and demonstrated his bona fides to the voters. Unlike pundits, they may care more about the results than the rhetoric, and it was the results that they were endorsing, not the blather spewed out by Abrams and her sycophants.

#StaceyAbrams needs better advisors. This kind of stuff isn’t working anymore.

It makes us look unintelligent and ridiculous. #ReparationsNow pic.twitter.com/JvsCUxcdXz

— Boyce Watkins, PhD – Wealth is Power (@drboycewatkins1) November 8, 2022

And this gets us to the vast difference between the propagandists for the Elite™ and real people: ultimately words are words, and deeds are deed. Our ruling class loves pretty sounding words and act as if, and may believe they are a reality. They believe that the fundamental unit in the universe is the syllable, not the atom or quark or whatever. Put together enough syllables and reality ensues.

Abrams’ syllables were a siren song to the Elite™, who fell in love with her ability to say what they wanted to hear. She represented light and hope, and believed that others saw the same thing.

All of this hurt Abrams. But I’m sure that this is not the end of her story. She is relatively young, incredibly smart and a brilliant tactician. She has a future that only she can write. But one thing is clear: She has made it possible for the people of Georgia, many of them Black people, to enter a reality where state power is attainable and accessible.

And so Blow sees in Abrams’ defeat a new reality: one in which state power is attainable and accessible.

Because she lost? Huh?