Stacey Abrams tells nodding Kamala Harris that southerners have lived under 'soft authoritarianism' since 1776

Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams suggested to a nodding former Vice President Kamala Harris during an interview Thursday that the American South is what the United States looks like as an authoritarian country.

On her "Assembly Required" podcast, Abrams, who ran unsuccessfully twice for governor of Georgia, spoke to Harris about the future of the Democratic Party and the challenges it faces, particularly in southern states.

"I grew up in Mississippi, came of age in Georgia, and I know you've been spending a lot of time in the South recently. You've been to Tennessee and Louisiana and North Carolina," Abrams told Harris. "And what I tell people when they want to understand what authoritarianism can look like in the U.S., I say, ‘Look South.’ We have lived under soft authoritarianism, I would say, since, oh, 1776."

"And what it has meant is that we have seen the warning signs long before the rest of the country, but we've also been the architects of the solutions long before the rest of the country understands it," she continued.

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She went on to claim that the American debate about voter ID is fake.

"And when you talk about what's happening in North Carolina, I liken it to the fact that we are having this false debate about voter ID. Every state requires that you identify who you are. But if you're in Texas, you can use your gun license and not your student ID," she said. "If you're in North Carolina, yeah, you can vote if you can manage to get to a polling place where, you know, a lot of students don't actually have cars. They don't have the ability to do so."

NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck skewered her comment.

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"Virginia has had voter ID for over a decade and had both Republicans and Democrats emerge victorious. It's an incredibly simple but important way to give voters peace of mind anytime they head to the polls," he told Fox News Digital.

Abrams has enjoyed highly favorable liberal media coverage in her career, which has included harsh criticism of Georgia's voting laws, advocacy for more progressive voting bills, and her refusal to officially concede her 2018 loss to Republican Brian Kemp. She lost more handily in 2022 in a rematch and conceded that race.

"The liberal, elitist media never fact-check these deranged assertions cloaked in historical references. If asking for an ID that must be scanned and recited to the poll worker is authoritarianism, then America stopped being a free country multiple lifetimes ago," Houck said.

Abrams' close loss to Kemp in 2018 was considered a major boon toward Georgia becoming a swing state that merited national Democratic investment.

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Harris, who lost the 2024 presidential election, is considered a possible Democratic contender again in 2028. While Joe Biden won Georgia with her on the ticket in 2020 — ending a long Democratic presidential losing streak in the state — Harris lost Georgia to Donald Trump in 2024.