/leftypol/ Leftist Politically Incorrect

While I know I underestimated the extent of the DNC wins which would occur in the US midterms this year in general, which resulted in a seismic shifting of the American political landscape from red Hitler to blue Hitler, the single aspect which most took me off guard was the set of DNC gubernatorial wins, particularly in Georgia and Texas which haven't elected DNC governors since the 1990s.

In Georgia, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms won the race for governor, becoming the first Democratic Party candidate to do so since Roy Barnes. I, admittedly, was extra surprised by this. For those not familiar, Keisha Lance Bottoms, for much of her stint as Mayor, was the target of about the fiercest petty booj ire someone could receive - for the small business owner strata, she was broadly blamed for the wave of crime during the last year of her tenure, as well as being resented for her COVID policies. Without defending her overall, this was not really a reasonable criticism; the crime had surged as a result of the economic impacts (mass unemployment, a convoluted Kafka-esque unemployment benefits system, and the emptying of streets and commercial buildings which then sat vacant) of the pandemic and the associated shutdowns rather than lax policing, and her own COVID-19 policies as mayor were not out of line with those of other cities in GA or in the country in general. Nevertheless, these criticisms were pervasive and so I was surprised that she was elected to a state which had had consistent GOP governors for so long. Without really earning it, Keisha Lance Bottoms was perceived as vaguely to the left of many other Georgia establishment Democrats, a fact which put her in contrast with the DNC's perennial GA Gubernatorial election loser Stacey "my favorite book is Atlas Shrugged" Abrams.

So, with all of this said, why do I think Keisha Lance Bottoms' election is notable, beyond being somewhat surprising?
The answer to this is very simple - beneath all of the shopkeeper noise about her being "soft on crime," "radical," and whatever else, is a material fact which might hold more significance:  it was actually Keisha Lance Bottoms who in announced the creation of Atlanta's notorious Cop City project in 2021. Because Andre Dickens was Atlanta mayor during most of the years of repression and construction of the massive police base, the fact of Bottoms' involvement can be easy to overlook, but it is probably the most significant aspect of Bottoms' mayoral legacy, and it will likely characterize how Bottoms will actually govern the state. Rather than merely being a victory for the "good cop" "rainbow" wing of capital, Bottoms' election may represent a decisive forward advance in the ongoing rollout of America's military police state, a promotion for direct participation in the suppression and surveillance of a major city. Atlanta is today not only the most surveilled city in North America, but one of the most surveilled cities on the planet, and the introduction of Flock cameras to the city began while Keisha Lance Bottoms was Mayor. This I read as indicating the real course of things to come.