Day of All Hawks, 46th of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Helios): My alternating-day walk got rained out today, but I made good use of my free time by voting in the run-off election for the Georgia primary, and then got my annual emission inspection done (all good). 

Remember in 2020 when, after Georgia elected Joe Biden for president, a group of Republicans fraudulently tried to pass themselves off as the official electors and cast the state's votes for the Stable Genius in the electoral college? One of those fake electors, Burt Jones, is now in the Republican primary runoff for governor, and unsurprisingly has the Stable Genius' endorsement. He's described as a S.G. loyalist and holds fervent anti-immigration views. 

His opponent, Rick Jackson, has never held public office and has no history of public service, but he's supposedly a billionaire and thinks he can run the state like a business. He gives off these creepy Kenneth Copeland vibes, and is bombarding the Atlanta airwaves with a constant barrage of television commercials, each one more distressing than the one before. He compares himself to a home-grown version of the Stable Genius - "an outsider" who has enough wealth that he "doesn't owe nobody nothing." 

A dishonest, borderline criminal Lieutenant Governor (Jones) versus a creepy billionaire health-care executive. The only person who can save us from being governed by one or the other is the Democratic candidate, Keisha Lance Bottoms, a former mayor of Atlanta. 

Let me tell you one thing about Georgia politics - candidates, especially Republican candidates, win their races by campaigning against Atlanta. To the rural voters outside the city, Atlanta is too crowded, too dirty, gets too much of the tax revenue, and is too black and too gay. All that either Jones or Jackson will have to do to beat Bottoms in the general election is remind voters that she used to be the mayor of Atlanta. Case closed. Game over.

It's only made worse that she was mayor during the covid crisis and the George Floyd protests and associated unrest. After Rayshard Brooks was killed by the police in South Atlanta and protesters burned down the Wendy's at which he was killed and blockaded the streets, she wisely didn't throw gasoline on the fire by sending in the SWAT team to take back the streets, but that allowed her opponents to label her as "soft on crime." Others remember her for the unpopular mask mandates and school closings over which she was forced to administer. 

So all that Jackson/Jones has to do to beat her is remind voters of those difficult times ("I'll never make you wear no mask") and act tough on crime, especially against immigrants and minorities. One of Jackson's ads already declares that if anyone tries that kind of stuff when he's Governor, "you'll either be departed or deported." Not that Jones' ads are much better - in one he uses an AI-generated video of Jackson shoveling money into a furnace.

But Bottoms is not even that popular with progressives here in Atlanta. Politically, she lost the battle for mask mandates and against early school and business openings when she was outmaneuvered by Brain Kemp, and after the presidential election of 2020, it seemed like she lost all interest in actually being Mayor and was just waiting for a political appointment by Joe Biden. He ultimately made her a Senior Advisor as the Director of the Office of Public Engagement. No doubt, Jackson Jones will label her as a "Biden insider."

On top of all that, she's a black woman in a state where a distressing number of voters still feel that either disqualifies a person from holding office. The name "Stacy Abrams" is still used here as a racist dog-whistle shorthand way of saying "not one of us."

I have no political disagreement with Bottoms. I think she's highly intelligent and well qualified to be Governor. I will vote for her. I just think that it these reactionary times, she doesn't stand a chance of winning a race against one of two white Republican men, unless the candidate who wins today flames out and screws up royally, something which I wouldn't put past Jones or Jackson.