While Georgia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams campaigns on a radical platform for higher taxes, the imposition of a Single-Payer healthcare scheme, and immigration policies that would leave Georgia less safe, former President and native Georgian Jimmy Carter has issued a strong warning for his party as it moves further to the left.
The Associated Press reports that former President Jimmy Carter is calling on Democrats to avoid relying on left-wing campaign proposals that could alienate independent voters, specifically cautioning about the “political consequences” of healthcare policies like Single-Payer that Abrams has championed. Carter’s call for centrism comes as Abrams has fully embraced her party’s left flank, becoming the most liberal gubernatorial nominee in Georgia’s history. But Carter isn’t the only Georgia Democrat who has cautioned against radical proposals pushed by Abrams, former Atlanta City Council President Cathy Woolard also criticized Abrams’ decision to embrace tax hikes as a key part of her campaign platform earlier this year.
As Abrams shows no signs of moderating her extreme, far-left agenda to appeal to moderate voters, Carter’s calls for moderation appear to be falling on deaf ears with her campaign. Stacey Abrams continues to prove that she is too radical for Georgia.
Former President Jimmy Carter… has a warning for his fellow Democrats looking to oust the current administration: Don’t go too far to the left.
‘Independents need to know they can invest their vote in the Democratic Party,’ Carter said Tuesday during his annual report at his post-presidential center and library in Atlanta, where he offered caution about the political consequences should Democrats ‘move to a very liberal program, like universal health care.’
That’s delicate — and, Carter acknowledged, even contradictory — advice coming from the 93-year-old former president, and it underscores the complicated political calculations for Democrats as they prepare for the November midterms and look ahead to the 2020 presidential election…
Still, Carter stressed, Democrats nationally must ‘appeal to independents’ who are souring on the current administration…
Carter’s latest handicapping comes near the conclusion of a midterm primary season that has seen Democratic primary voters move the party to the left.
In some states and districts, that means nominating full-throated advocates of single-payer health care, a $15 minimum wage and abolishing or at least overhauling the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. In other races, it means nominees who back more cautious moves to the left, such as background checks before certain gun purchases, a ‘public option’ health insurance plan to compete alongside private insurance policies, step raises for the minimum wage and an immigration overhaul that offers legal status to some immigrants in the country illegally.
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