What Stacey Abrams Should Do Next?

The Georgian who is usually sure about everything finds herself conflicted about her future.

- Rebecca Traister

Governor (The job she wanted most.)

Senator (The job Chuck Schumer wants her to run for.)

Veep (The job another white guy might want her for.)

President ( )

I am sitting in a car with former Georgia House Minority Leader and recent gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. She’s just invited me in from the cold outside Manhattan’s Gramercy Theatre—where she’s soon to go onstage for an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes—but Abrams is signaling in some ineffable way that she’s not in the mood to talk. She’s checking her phone and, every once in a while, peering through the tinted windows at the long line of people hopping up and down in the February chill and in anticipation of seeing her. The event, for Hayes’s podcast Why Is This Happening?, sold out immediately after it was announced, and in the hours before it starts, tickets are going for hundreds of dollars on the resale market. Abrams can see her excited fans, but they can’t see her.

The hush isn’t unfriendly—she pulled me off the street into the car, after all— but it is disconcerting, simultaneously intimate and slightly awkward. I’m dying to ask some questions in these extra, unscheduled minutes I’ve been granted with my subject, whose time these days is extremely limited. But I’ve known Abrams for a few years; I’ve been in her company often in recent months; I’m familiar enough with the vibe in the car— the “We’re being quiet now” vibe—that I know better than to break the silence.