Georgia's Stacey Abrams, a failed gubernatorial candidate, is trying something new in American politics: with naked ambition, she's simultaneously begging for and demanding the vice president's spot on the Democrat Party ticket.

The media are dutifully playing along, trying to puff her as something other than a local politician who believes that her race and sex cards are a handful of aces.  However, in the Washington Post's laughably reverent paean to Abrams, there's a peculiar slip revealing what leftists actually think of African-Americans — and it's all the more aberrant, given that the author is himself an African-American.

In some ways, Stacey Abrams is a laudable woman.  One of six children, she grew up in an intact family and excelled in school, eventually earning both a Master of Public Affairs and a law degree.  Despite being a leftist activist from an early age, she held real jobs after law school, working as a tax attorney and founding two companies, one a beverage company focusing on babies and toddlers and the other a consulting firm.

Entering politics, Abrams was elected to the Georgia General Assembly in 2006, representing parts of Atlanta and unincorporated DeKalb County, and held that seat for a decade.  She eventually became the Democrat minority leader.

In 2018, Abrams ran for governor, only to lose by 50,000 votes to Brian Kemp.  That's when she made her name at a national level, not for running and making a good showing, but for refusing to admit that she'd lost.  Instead, she dug out the tropes about voter suppression and racism.  Abrams insists to this day that she won.  In Democrat circles, being a sore loser is a winning issue.

In other ways, Abrams is not laudable at all.  First, she's a die-hard leftist, who buys into every leftist position: abortion, gun control, no voter ID, socialized medicine, the expansion of government-run K–12 education, and the end of cash bail and the death penalty.  I think all of those ideas are bad for society and especially bad for the people Abrams claims to speak for — American blacks.

Abrams also writes romance novels, which is a great thing to do (it's the single most popular novel genre).  I wish I could write them, too.  Unfortunately, one reviewer hints that her writing is awful, in part because her male lead is sexually aggressive in a very un-MeToo way.

And then there are Abrams's money problems.  As of 2018, she had $200,000 in debt and owed $54,000 to the IRS.  Her explanation for this debt is both understandable and decent (student loans, immature spending, and taking care of her niece), right up until she pulls out the race card.  With Abrams, it's always about the race card.

Whether any of her abilities, values, or problems makes her qualified to be the vice president for a man who's likely to drop out or get sidelined the day after his inauguration (assuming he wins) is something for backroom Democrats to decide.  I know I would infinitely prefer not to see Abrams at America's helm.

But this post isn't really about Abrams.  It's about the Abrams hagiography that black activist Kevin Powell got published at the Washington Post Magazine on May 14.  If you follow the news, you've probably seen people laughing at the article, both because of the bizarre photo implying Abrams is some kind of superhero and because of Kevin Powell's over-the-top praise:

This dark cartoonish Abrams portrait is better with bats. pic.twitter.com/hsuk3gECu8

— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) May 17, 2020

How is every journalist employed by the Washington Post not named Jennifer Rubin not completely embarrassed by this Stacey Abrams profile. How does something like this even make it past editors who care about their reputations? pic.twitter.com/yqpSeTnBbM

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) May 17, 2020

I can not believe this is a real image that the Washington Post used in their profile on Stacey Abrams.

The desire from so many in the media to make Abrams into a larger than life superhero is bizarre and telling. You'll never see a conservative woman get this kind of coverage. pic.twitter.com/ojDGy6K17Y

— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) May 17, 2020

I won't rehash the points in those tweets.  Instead, I'd like to focus on just one sentence in the entire article.  It comes after a riff about the way Abrams's parents encouraged her education and about Abrams's own intellectual abilities.  And then there's this (emphasis added):

Abrams excelled in academics and was always in advanced studies, which meant she was routinely the only black student in her classes.

I've now read that sentence at least ten times, and there's only one way to understand it: blacks cannot succeed in academics.  Abrams is anomalous because she's a black person who did succeed.

Is that really what Powell (who I had assumed, based upon that sentence, was a 60-year-old white guy) meant to say?  Or did Powell inadvertently let slip how high-profile leftists, including black leftists, view most of the African-Americans whose votes they want to control?  "Hey, guys, we know you're stupid, but there are some of us smart enough to make decisions for you.  Just vote for us or for the people we recommend, and we'll take care of everything else."

Abrams has built much of her career on being a race hustler.  With that one sentence in a high-impact article, it appears that her supporters (or, at least, Powell and the WaPo editorial team) are themselves race hustlers with a disturbingly low opinion of blacks.