Speaker Pelosi invited Stacey Abrams to deliver the Democrat rebuttal to President Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night.

While Trump’s address was populated with signs of growth and scattered stories of victims and heroes, at a point going as far as to say “The State of our Union is strong,” Abrams’ response was characterized by calls to action and reform. Abrams provided the unsparing truth of the nation’s state: a work in progress.

Though she conveyed her optimism f0r a stronger union, she recognized that our current pace, our current administration, is restricting such upward movement. Abrams referred to the 35-day government shutdown that stretched from late 2018 in the new year, “a stunt engineered by the President of the United States, one that defied every tenet of fairness and abandoned not just our people – but our values.” In President Trump’s message of unity, which included subtle, even subliminal, partisan jabs, and Abrams followed suit, save subtleties.

Abrams made the case for fundamental election reform, proceeding her controversial loss of Georgia’s 2018 gubernatorial race to voter suppression and Republican Brian Kemp. “The foundation of our moral leadership around the globe is free and fair elections, where voters pick their leaders, not where politicians pick their voters,” she said.

From LGBTQ+ issues to gun control, to immigration reform, Abrams touched on every ever-present issue that keeps us from attainable greatness. Abrams expressed that while she is “very disappointed by the president’s approach” to the aforementioned threats to the American dream, she “still [does not] want him to fail. But we need him to tell the truth, and to respect his duties and the extraordinary diversity that defines America.”

In summation, while both speeches addressed the historic successes of recent, Abrams gripped the full severity of the hindrances besetting State of our Nation and their traceable origins.