Stacey Abrams: There Is ‘No Choice’ But to Reelect Joe Biden

(Bloomberg) -- Stacey Abrams supports President Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee and is working to help him get reelected, she said Thursday at the Bloomberg Green Festival in Seattle. 

“I’m not concerned, I’m committed,” Abrams said. 

The voting rights activist and former gubernatorial candidate in Georgia on Thursday applauded the Biden administration’s work to make climate-friendly options available to all people, particularly through the Inflation Reduction Act’s financial support for cleaner vehicles and home energy. Abrams said that explaining these benefits to voters — and preventing former President Donald Trump from winning — is the crucial work of the final months before the November presidential election. 

Biden won Abrams’s home state of Georgia in 2020, turning the Republican stronghold into a swing state and helping propel him to the White House. Abrams, who built a network of over  800,000 new voter registrations in Georgia, was credited with delivering Biden crucial support to win the state’s electoral vote

@staceyabrams #BBGGreenFestival pic.twitter.com/j3LPqaPdVP

On Wednesday, Abrams penned an op-ed defending Biden in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution following his much-criticized debate performance, saying that Trump planned to become a “dictator on Day 1” if reelected.

She affirmed her Biden support in Seattle, reminding festival goers of his record. “He is our president, he is our nominee and he will be our president again if we do the work to make it so,” she said. “Let’s be clear, we would not have the IRA, we would not have the billions of dollars that are being poured into communities of color ... but for President Joe Biden. We know absolutely that these dollars will be transformative.”

To get Biden reelected, Abrams said “we have a lot of work to do” over the next three months, including explaining to Americans the benefits of his administration’s climate and economic policies. Although the IRA was passed in 2022, it has taken time to deploy these billions of dollars in federal funding. With more IRA incentives and state rebates now arriving, potential Biden voters have to be convinced of its advantages.

Most families make decisions about how to power their homes “at the kitchen table,” Abrams said. “We’ve got to take the conversation out of ‘what is happening in Washington’ and take it back to ‘what is happening in my life.’”

Abrams also criticized the Supreme Court’s recent Chevron and Snyder rulings. She said that the Chevron decision means the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Water Act could now be dismantled “with the stroke of a pen.” Abrams raised concern that the Snyder decision — which she said makes it “legal to bribe local officials” — has significant energy stakes as well, allowing public utility commissions to act with little oversight. 

She said Biden supporters will need to make potential voters aware of how these threats to environmental and energy regulations could harm them — and how the IRA can improve their lives. 

“The work of winning an election is not just who is running, it’s not just what’s on the ballot,” she said. “It’s who is in the booth.”

Watch the full interview and check out more from the Bloomberg Green Festival here:

#BBGGreenFestival continues with @staceyabrams, @rewiringamerica’s Ari Matusiak, @tpg’s Jim Coulter, @AtmosMag’s Willow Defebaugh, Sally Jewell, @Amazon’s @KaraHurst, @S10Bird, and more.https://t.co/451NfldsAw

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