That is some of the biggest dose of copium I have ever read. KLB is an incompetent buffoon, an absolute embarrassment and has about as much chance of being governor of Ga as I do, and I am not running!
My only hope is that she doesn’t drag the whole ticket down with her.
Apparently we have made political life so toxic that only a bunch of narcissists are willing to put up with it. We are getting terrible leaders around the world.
I suspect this situation is also a result of bigness. In a small organization, there is a greater chance that the character of people will be taken into account because a higher percentage of the voters actually know the candidates. Trump couldn't get elected dog catcher if the voters all knew him personally. He had to own his own business because in no other organization would he have been chosen to lead. Smallness is no guarantee of good leadership, but it helps.
I am a big fan of the Bulwark but really don't love a lot of the stuff Lauren does. She is so down on mainstream Democrats. I might as well watch Secular Talk. It kind of makes me sick that the Bulwark is turning Thomas Massie into a working class hero but is so down on a dedicated public servant like Kiesha Lance Bottoms, with a bunch of cryptic innuendo questioning her... Not sure what. But Bottoms is a good candidate. And was a good mayor.
Bottoms combined toughness and empathy in a genuinely difficult moment for Atlanta and the country. Whatever people’s politics, it’s hard to deny that she had to govern through an unusually brutal convergence of crises—COVID, economic disruption, the George Floyd protests, policing controversies, and intense state-versus-city conflict—all at once. She was generally calm, direct, and emotionally grounded.
Bottoms has had a long public-service path: prosecutor, juvenile court work, judge, city council member, then mayor. She was also the first mayor in Atlanta history to have served in all three branches of government locally. That kind of résumé often produces a more practical politician—someone who understands Georgia and its citizens.
By taking unnecessary and unfounded digs at Bottoms, you are only empowering whichever jackass Republican wins the primary.
The fact that Georgia voters rejected Kelly Loefler and that idiot Purdue on favor of Ossoff and Warnock gives me hope for Georgia. The people of that state are generally smart, decently educated, and rarely racist. They are the South, but they are not the south of Alabama or Mississippi. It is generally a forward looking state. Governor Bottoms could be great for the entire country.
It's fantastic how our party insiders immediately jump to trashing KLB and listing all the potentially problems with her candidacy, the second the primary ends. (wHy ArE tHe ViBeS sO bAd?) They are probably going to direct her to avoid talking about issues like crime and Covid, even though it would be better to defend her actions,. This is obvious, but most Democrats constantly assume that obvious things are wrong because of 2016.
Fortunately KLB is also the kind of Democratic politician who doesn't listen to those kinds of people very much - she does have some legitimate political liabilities, but her own lack of regard for the "hyper-online politicos" is probably part of the reason they are so down on her. Can you believe she doesn't spend 20 hours a day apologizing for working for Joe Biden????
So, that's part one. I think the problems with Bottoms' candidacy could well be overstated, by people who make a living overstating problems. That said... part two:
"Georgia operatives who opposed Bottoms in the primary told me that none of the other primary candidates felt like they could go negative on Bottoms and bring up her shaky record as mayor, worrying that it would be a bad look to criticize the only black woman running."
Our party is totally fucked until we can excise idiotic fucking impulses like this. Pandering to black women - who vote for Democrats at about a 97% clip in every election, regardless of who the candidate is, so like, really, what the fuck guys - is exactly the same reason we ended up with a mediocre VP, which is the exact reason we ended up with a mediocre Presidential candidate.
Perfectly exemplifies how all so many in our coalition want to do is say the "right" thing, even if huge swathes of voters don't like it, and not the thing that will make them most likely to win.
Even if Bottoms is a good candidate it needed to be seen how well she held up under that kind of attack, because there is zero doubt it will come in the general. Just ridiculous.
The good news in all of this is now we know Massie's truly shellacking was based on much more than having simply crossed Donald Trump.
Not unlike when (far too long ago) word got out the very popular small-town state-house father of a friend of mine had set up his secretary in an apartment in far off St. Paul. And come November, he was gone.
Maybe the democrats should stop all this pre- and post-primary hand wringing and do fucking everything they can to get Bottoms elected… stop doing the dirty work for the MAGA crowd…. They’ll vote for anyone with a “R” behind their names and it matter naught if they are rapists, adulterers, racists, pedophiles, misogynists, frauds, liars or traitors to our democracy and Constitution - only matters that they are loyal to trump, who is destroying everything good about this country and making it unlivable for everyday citizens in front of our very eyes.
Bottoms is the candidate - prepare for the midterm elections, STFU support the hell out of her!
I am an engaged GA Dem voter and the choices were poor! Just look at Bottom's election results in Fulton County...she didn't even get 50% of the vote in her home county. What did she have going for her...name recognition and that is it. We will all work hard for her, because the alternative GOP candidates are so odious! Brian Kemp will look like a saint if either GOP candidate wins, and I loathe good ole boy Brian Kemp! GA has tremendous potential, and the DNC seems to take all we are doing in GA for granted. Look at the vote breakdown and you will see Dems outvoted GOP in this primary!!! I appreciate Stacey Abrams didn't want to run, but I think her 3rd run would have been successful. Abrams is gifted and brilliant! Bottoms is no Abrams! The GOP candidates: Jones (Trump fake elector) and Jackson (appears seriously emotionally damaged from childhood trauma) are both dangerous! DNC needs to wake up and start taking GA seriously!
Is there a better Dem candidate than Keisha Lance Bottoms to run for Gov of Georgia? Almost certainly yes.
Does the idea that Dems can't criticize her because she's the only black woman in the race just mean that we'll hear all her oppo for the first time from Republicans in the general? Clearly yes.
Is that amazingly dumb idea of not criticizing her at all because of her demographics a clear example of the Dem’s unpopular and counterproductive obsession with identity? Definitely yes.
Does any of that matter now?
No, no it doesn't.
You go into battle with the army you have, not the army you want. KLB is our candidate now and we *NEED* her to win because the alternative is a Trump loyalist who will actively assist him in any illegal schemes he dreams up.
We can point fingers at each other later. Right now we need to throw our full support behind the army we have, because the drums of battle are drawing close. November is not that far away, and it's our final chance. Frankly, we don't deserve that final chance but we have it anyway so we *must* give it our best fucking shot.
Yes 100%. Donald Rumsfeld was an odious character in many ways. But one thing he had right, as you note: you go into battle with the army you have. There'll be time later to re-evaulate your forces. But for right now, just get in there and fight like hell- and WIN!
TIL that's a Donald Rumsfeld quote, thanks Shelfie! Man, if he was half as good at being SecDef as he was at quotes to shift blame, history could've gone quite differently.
So let's not have that happen to us: "If only we'd been more united", "If only we'd fought harder", "If only we'd done this or that."
Screw that, we're going to fight like cats and dogs in the primary, and then line up in solidarity and fight like hell the instant that's over. Because I for one can't stand any more "If we'd only"s.
As an Atlanta resident, I am at a loss at how Bottoms won this race. As mayor she was an abject disaster. Crime was out of control under her watch and even she knew she wouldn’t have been re-elected so she declined to run again. The Republican attack ads write themselves with Bottoms.
Jason Estevez would have been a better candidate, honestly. But if Ga Dems were serious about taking the governorship, they’d have done more to support Geoff Duncan. Yes, he’s a former Republican but this is a purple state and as a moderate, he would have had the best bet to woo disaffected conservatives. You’re not going to get a progressive candidate in charge of Georgia.
As a democrat, I’d really prefer to vote FOR someone rather than against but the party has put me in that position. No way I’m voting for Burt Jones. But the idea of Bottoms in charge of the entire state does not fill me with confidence. I hope maybe Duncan or Estevez runs as an independent in the general election.
As former Lt governor Duncan would have been an excellent person to elect. He has his priorities straight, to say the least, plus the best kind of background. BUT, he's never Trumper, and I don't know how a lot of R's would have viewed this. Maybe he'll run as an independent? Can he do this in GA?
No way Keisha Bottoms is elected governor of Georgia. I speak to former Republicans now never Trumpers who would vote for a moderate Dem without Bottom’s mayoral legacy. She is not viewed highly outside of Atlanta and I guess the DNC which is forever out of touch.
"if either left the Senate, it would be up to the next governor to appoint a replacement."
It's a no-go for Ossoff to run for the White House if there's a Republican governor. If this occurred in a few states, the replacement must come from the same party. In "Hawaii, Maryland, Montana, North Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming...the governor [must] choose from a list of three nominees submitted by the previous senator’s party. Utah requires the same kind of list, but from the state legislature. Arizona, Nevada and Oklahoma simply require the governor to choose someone from the previous senator’s party."
Not Georgia though. If Ossoff leaves and the Republican is governor it will be a flip from Blue to Red
The margins will be so tight in the next elections, 2026 and 2028 there's no way a Democratic senator can leave office early from a Red state.
Is Ryan McKenzie in Charlie Dents old district? I realize these districts have been changed a bunch since then, but I used to live in the Lehigh Valley and voted for Dent back in the day. Lehigh Valley feels like it could swing harder towards the dems compared to other parts of rural PA
GA is a southern state. No woman, especially a black woman from the big city of Atlanta, has ever been elected governor. GA is not all big, diverse metropolitan populations. It is made up of many middle and small towns that, IMO, would never vote for Keisha Lance Bottoms. (And I have lived in GA for 83 years!) The people who think Bottoms can win are tone deaf to reality. So let's hope Jackson wins the Republican primary for GA instead of Bert Jones! ( As an aside, I would vote for Bottoms, but I live in a big, metropolitan area.)
Stacy Abrams is should have been elected in 2018, but Brian Kemp rigged the election when he used his office as Secretary of State to suppress the vote.
Brian Kemp purged over 1.4 million voters from the rolls between 2012 and 2018, including a significant purge of 560,000 voters in July 2017, just before the 2018 election. Kemp only won by 54,000 votes in 2018 and the purge probably made the difference.
Another article from Egan bitching that Dems don't cater exclusively to swing voters who could give a shit less about the party and probably couldn't be bothered to vote in the primary. Noted and tossed in the pile with all the rest.
I'll respect swing voters' mewling once they show a modicum of consideration, judgement, and responsibility or, since that is likely never going to happen, a bit of loyalty and effort to the cause. They're just looking for a future justification for why they didn't vote Dem which they are guaranteed to find or make up eventually anyway.
That is some of the biggest dose of copium I have ever read. KLB is an incompetent buffoon, an absolute embarrassment and has about as much chance of being governor of Ga as I do, and I am not running!
My only hope is that she doesn’t drag the whole ticket down with her.
Apparently we have made political life so toxic that only a bunch of narcissists are willing to put up with it. We are getting terrible leaders around the world.
I suspect this situation is also a result of bigness. In a small organization, there is a greater chance that the character of people will be taken into account because a higher percentage of the voters actually know the candidates. Trump couldn't get elected dog catcher if the voters all knew him personally. He had to own his own business because in no other organization would he have been chosen to lead. Smallness is no guarantee of good leadership, but it helps.
I am a big fan of the Bulwark but really don't love a lot of the stuff Lauren does. She is so down on mainstream Democrats. I might as well watch Secular Talk. It kind of makes me sick that the Bulwark is turning Thomas Massie into a working class hero but is so down on a dedicated public servant like Kiesha Lance Bottoms, with a bunch of cryptic innuendo questioning her... Not sure what. But Bottoms is a good candidate. And was a good mayor.
Bottoms combined toughness and empathy in a genuinely difficult moment for Atlanta and the country. Whatever people’s politics, it’s hard to deny that she had to govern through an unusually brutal convergence of crises—COVID, economic disruption, the George Floyd protests, policing controversies, and intense state-versus-city conflict—all at once. She was generally calm, direct, and emotionally grounded.
Bottoms has had a long public-service path: prosecutor, juvenile court work, judge, city council member, then mayor. She was also the first mayor in Atlanta history to have served in all three branches of government locally. That kind of résumé often produces a more practical politician—someone who understands Georgia and its citizens.
By taking unnecessary and unfounded digs at Bottoms, you are only empowering whichever jackass Republican wins the primary.
The fact that Georgia voters rejected Kelly Loefler and that idiot Purdue on favor of Ossoff and Warnock gives me hope for Georgia. The people of that state are generally smart, decently educated, and rarely racist. They are the South, but they are not the south of Alabama or Mississippi. It is generally a forward looking state. Governor Bottoms could be great for the entire country.
So much to hate about this story!
It's fantastic how our party insiders immediately jump to trashing KLB and listing all the potentially problems with her candidacy, the second the primary ends. (wHy ArE tHe ViBeS sO bAd?) They are probably going to direct her to avoid talking about issues like crime and Covid, even though it would be better to defend her actions,. This is obvious, but most Democrats constantly assume that obvious things are wrong because of 2016.
Fortunately KLB is also the kind of Democratic politician who doesn't listen to those kinds of people very much - she does have some legitimate political liabilities, but her own lack of regard for the "hyper-online politicos" is probably part of the reason they are so down on her. Can you believe she doesn't spend 20 hours a day apologizing for working for Joe Biden????
So, that's part one. I think the problems with Bottoms' candidacy could well be overstated, by people who make a living overstating problems. That said... part two:
"Georgia operatives who opposed Bottoms in the primary told me that none of the other primary candidates felt like they could go negative on Bottoms and bring up her shaky record as mayor, worrying that it would be a bad look to criticize the only black woman running."
Our party is totally fucked until we can excise idiotic fucking impulses like this. Pandering to black women - who vote for Democrats at about a 97% clip in every election, regardless of who the candidate is, so like, really, what the fuck guys - is exactly the same reason we ended up with a mediocre VP, which is the exact reason we ended up with a mediocre Presidential candidate.
Perfectly exemplifies how all so many in our coalition want to do is say the "right" thing, even if huge swathes of voters don't like it, and not the thing that will make them most likely to win.
Even if Bottoms is a good candidate it needed to be seen how well she held up under that kind of attack, because there is zero doubt it will come in the general. Just ridiculous.
The good news in all of this is now we know Massie's truly shellacking was based on much more than having simply crossed Donald Trump.
Not unlike when (far too long ago) word got out the very popular small-town state-house father of a friend of mine had set up his secretary in an apartment in far off St. Paul. And come November, he was gone.
By all means let's trust the judgment of Democratic consultants. Proven political geniuses all.
Maybe the democrats should stop all this pre- and post-primary hand wringing and do fucking everything they can to get Bottoms elected… stop doing the dirty work for the MAGA crowd…. They’ll vote for anyone with a “R” behind their names and it matter naught if they are rapists, adulterers, racists, pedophiles, misogynists, frauds, liars or traitors to our democracy and Constitution - only matters that they are loyal to trump, who is destroying everything good about this country and making it unlivable for everyday citizens in front of our very eyes.
Bottoms is the candidate - prepare for the midterm elections, STFU support the hell out of her!
I am an engaged GA Dem voter and the choices were poor! Just look at Bottom's election results in Fulton County...she didn't even get 50% of the vote in her home county. What did she have going for her...name recognition and that is it. We will all work hard for her, because the alternative GOP candidates are so odious! Brian Kemp will look like a saint if either GOP candidate wins, and I loathe good ole boy Brian Kemp! GA has tremendous potential, and the DNC seems to take all we are doing in GA for granted. Look at the vote breakdown and you will see Dems outvoted GOP in this primary!!! I appreciate Stacey Abrams didn't want to run, but I think her 3rd run would have been successful. Abrams is gifted and brilliant! Bottoms is no Abrams! The GOP candidates: Jones (Trump fake elector) and Jackson (appears seriously emotionally damaged from childhood trauma) are both dangerous! DNC needs to wake up and start taking GA seriously!
Is there a better Dem candidate than Keisha Lance Bottoms to run for Gov of Georgia? Almost certainly yes.
Does the idea that Dems can't criticize her because she's the only black woman in the race just mean that we'll hear all her oppo for the first time from Republicans in the general? Clearly yes.
Is that amazingly dumb idea of not criticizing her at all because of her demographics a clear example of the Dem’s unpopular and counterproductive obsession with identity? Definitely yes.
Does any of that matter now?
No, no it doesn't.
You go into battle with the army you have, not the army you want. KLB is our candidate now and we *NEED* her to win because the alternative is a Trump loyalist who will actively assist him in any illegal schemes he dreams up.
We can point fingers at each other later. Right now we need to throw our full support behind the army we have, because the drums of battle are drawing close. November is not that far away, and it's our final chance. Frankly, we don't deserve that final chance but we have it anyway so we *must* give it our best fucking shot.
Yes 100%. Donald Rumsfeld was an odious character in many ways. But one thing he had right, as you note: you go into battle with the army you have. There'll be time later to re-evaulate your forces. But for right now, just get in there and fight like hell- and WIN!
TIL that's a Donald Rumsfeld quote, thanks Shelfie! Man, if he was half as good at being SecDef as he was at quotes to shift blame, history could've gone quite differently.
So let's not have that happen to us: "If only we'd been more united", "If only we'd fought harder", "If only we'd done this or that."
Screw that, we're going to fight like cats and dogs in the primary, and then line up in solidarity and fight like hell the instant that's over. Because I for one can't stand any more "If we'd only"s.
As an Atlanta resident, I am at a loss at how Bottoms won this race. As mayor she was an abject disaster. Crime was out of control under her watch and even she knew she wouldn’t have been re-elected so she declined to run again. The Republican attack ads write themselves with Bottoms.
Jason Estevez would have been a better candidate, honestly. But if Ga Dems were serious about taking the governorship, they’d have done more to support Geoff Duncan. Yes, he’s a former Republican but this is a purple state and as a moderate, he would have had the best bet to woo disaffected conservatives. You’re not going to get a progressive candidate in charge of Georgia.
As a democrat, I’d really prefer to vote FOR someone rather than against but the party has put me in that position. No way I’m voting for Burt Jones. But the idea of Bottoms in charge of the entire state does not fill me with confidence. I hope maybe Duncan or Estevez runs as an independent in the general election.
As former Lt governor Duncan would have been an excellent person to elect. He has his priorities straight, to say the least, plus the best kind of background. BUT, he's never Trumper, and I don't know how a lot of R's would have viewed this. Maybe he'll run as an independent? Can he do this in GA?
No way Keisha Bottoms is elected governor of Georgia. I speak to former Republicans now never Trumpers who would vote for a moderate Dem without Bottom’s mayoral legacy. She is not viewed highly outside of Atlanta and I guess the DNC which is forever out of touch.
"if either left the Senate, it would be up to the next governor to appoint a replacement."
It's a no-go for Ossoff to run for the White House if there's a Republican governor. If this occurred in a few states, the replacement must come from the same party. In "Hawaii, Maryland, Montana, North Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming...the governor [must] choose from a list of three nominees submitted by the previous senator’s party. Utah requires the same kind of list, but from the state legislature. Arizona, Nevada and Oklahoma simply require the governor to choose someone from the previous senator’s party."
Not Georgia though. If Ossoff leaves and the Republican is governor it will be a flip from Blue to Red
The margins will be so tight in the next elections, 2026 and 2028 there's no way a Democratic senator can leave office early from a Red state.
Is Ryan McKenzie in Charlie Dents old district? I realize these districts have been changed a bunch since then, but I used to live in the Lehigh Valley and voted for Dent back in the day. Lehigh Valley feels like it could swing harder towards the dems compared to other parts of rural PA
GA is a southern state. No woman, especially a black woman from the big city of Atlanta, has ever been elected governor. GA is not all big, diverse metropolitan populations. It is made up of many middle and small towns that, IMO, would never vote for Keisha Lance Bottoms. (And I have lived in GA for 83 years!) The people who think Bottoms can win are tone deaf to reality. So let's hope Jackson wins the Republican primary for GA instead of Bert Jones! ( As an aside, I would vote for Bottoms, but I live in a big, metropolitan area.)
Stacy Abrams is should have been elected in 2018, but Brian Kemp rigged the election when he used his office as Secretary of State to suppress the vote.
Brian Kemp purged over 1.4 million voters from the rolls between 2012 and 2018, including a significant purge of 560,000 voters in July 2017, just before the 2018 election. Kemp only won by 54,000 votes in 2018 and the purge probably made the difference.
https://www.apmreports.org/story/2019/10/29/georgia-voting-registration-records-removed
I remember that debacle. Kemp's behavior was criminal. She had a real shot, and he ripped her off in the most disgusting way. GD Kemp.
Another article from Egan bitching that Dems don't cater exclusively to swing voters who could give a shit less about the party and probably couldn't be bothered to vote in the primary. Noted and tossed in the pile with all the rest.
I'll respect swing voters' mewling once they show a modicum of consideration, judgement, and responsibility or, since that is likely never going to happen, a bit of loyalty and effort to the cause. They're just looking for a future justification for why they didn't vote Dem which they are guaranteed to find or make up eventually anyway.