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Congratulations to her on getting as close as she’s going to get to being president of any country.

Say what you will about Stacey Abrams, it’s a real achievement to have built a cultural profile high enough for stuntcasting as the president of Earth in a “Star Trek” series without ever having held federal or statewide office. She’s one of the most famous politicians in America somehow despite never having won an election bigger than a Georgia state assembly seat. She hasn’t held any public office at all in nearly five years.

That could change in November, but Abrams will be swimming against a strong Republican national current. Her only hope is Donald J. Trump splitting the right in Georgia between Brian Kemp and David Perdue, embittering the loser of the primary and causing a meaningful chunk of butthurt Republican voters to stay home in the fall.

He’s helped Democrats to unlikely victories in Georgia before. With Trump working on her behalf, only a fool would count Abrams out.

Although if I were her, given how well Republicans are doing on the generic ballot, I’d be glad to have a fallback career in science fiction.

The adulation for Abrams on the left will abide even if she loses another election but her chance of being a future presidential nominee likely will not. Some Democrats have taken to whispering lately that black candidates may have an electability problem, which is hard to grok when Georgia’s upcoming Senate race will be contested between a black incumbent Democrat and a black Republican challenger. Abrams herself may have an electability problem, though, having failed to get past Kemp even in a Dem wave year like 2018. Bernie Sanders campaign alums are already preparing to field a candidate nationally in 2024 in case Biden decides not to run again — and their candidate of choice isn’t Abrams:

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Top figures from Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign are privately encouraging Ro Khanna to run for president in 2024 if Joe Biden doesn’t seek a second term, giving the California congressman an important stamp of approval from progressives as the party looks to its post-Biden future…

“I think Ro would be a very effective candidate,” said Longabaugh, who stressed that he was only referring to a scenario in which Biden did not run again in 2024. “This guy has a message that’s very powerful. … Ro is basically saying, ‘Is there a way in which we can reconstruct the economy so that all of the wealth is not just being generated on the East Coast, West Coast, or out of my congressional district?’”…

The three-term congressman cuts a unique profile: The 45-year-old is a die-hard liberal who happens to also represent the startup paradise of Silicon Valley. He calls himself a “progressive capitalist” and envisions a future in which America’s eroding democracy is strengthened by spreading well-paying technology jobs across the heartland.

Congratulations to Ro Khanna on his eventual “Star Trek” cameo as emperor of Mars or whatever.

Here’s the clip of Abrams’s appearance on last night’s episode. “I’m still floored when I think about Stacey gracing us with her presence in our Season 4 finale,” said star Sonequa Martin-Green, using language one would typically reserve for a religious leader. In five years, Kemp’s going to have just wrapped his second term as governor and be thinking of a presidential run while Abrams will be playing the president on the inevitable reboot of “The West Wing.”

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