Dem
47
GOP
53
In yesterday's election wrap-up, we wrote that we would do a follow-up on the results, particularly in California, once they are finalized.
When we wrote that, 51% of the votes in the gubernatorial race had been reported. As we write this, roughly 24 hours later, that number has climbed to... 55.8%. To give another example, when we wrote that, 53% of the votes in the L.A. mayoral race had been reported. As we write this, roughly 24 hours later, that number has climbed to... 62%.
The reason, of course, is that the people who run California are a bunch of mamby-pamby pinkos operating under the crazy understanding that every eligible voter should have every opportunity to vote. That means that everyone who is registered to vote automatically gets a vote-by-mail ballot. Further, any ballots postmarked by Election Day must, by state law, be counted if they are received within 7 days of the election.
There are a little over 23 million voters in California, and that's... a lot. And in most of the races, the contest for second place, and thus the right to advance to the general, is just too close to call. To be more specific, in many races, including the two names in the above paragraph, there is a Republican in second place and a Democrat 3-5 points behind them. Normally speaking, that would be a tough gap to overcome. But since mail-in ballots skew Democratic, and since the uncounted ballots are all mail-in, it's definitely within the realm of possibility here.
Nobody is entirely sure when the process will complete; you can find sources that say "a few days" and sources that say "up to 2 weeks." It would be helpful to know if the state will process ballots over the weekend, but there is nothing online that clarifies whether that is the case, and we were unable to get an answer from the office of California Secretary of State Shirley Weber. Our guess is that the final results will be available will come mid-week, very possibly on the same day we run down next week's elections in Maine, Nevada, North Dakota and South Carolina.
For now, however, we will direct our attention to a think piece that is blindingly obvious, and that we've already seen variants of in many places (e.g., here, here, and here). The thesis of this blindingly obvious think piece is: "Spencer Pratt is an amateur and a dope, and yet he has built a movement. Democrats should be paying attention."
As readers can probably guess, we hate this entire, lazy argument. Pratt's main (and close to only) campaign plank is: "We have to do something about these homeless people." It takes ZERO insight to figure out that is a big issue for Californians in particular, and for Angelenos in particular. It is the local issue that EVERY politician, on both sides of the aisle, talks about. Go look at the issues page for Mayor Karen Bass (I, but really D), who is the current frontrunner. The very first issue she talks about is homelessness. Then go look at the issues page for Nithya Raman (I, but really D), who is in third place trying to move into second. The very first issue she talks about is homelessness, too.
It is true that Pratt is full of grand promises about solving the homelessness issue. But these grand promises are empty blather. In the past 5 years, California has spent a staggering $24 billion on homelessness, only to see the problem get worse. It is entirely possible that there are different ideas to be tried, and that those ideas could have a positive impact. Indeed, we have a couple of readers who have extensive expertise when it comes to those ideas. But Pratt knows none of those ideas, and he also knows nothing about how to implement policy in Los Angeles (which is extra difficult, because power is diffused across the mayor's office, the City Council and the Board of Supervisors).
In short, even if Pratt becomes mayor (not happening), he's not going to improve on the homelessness situation one iota. And if the lesson of his "career" is "Make big promises that cause the voters to feel heard, even if you have absolutely no idea how to deliver on those promises," then the Democrats don't need him to provide an object lesson. They can just watch a different reality TV star, the fellow in the Oval Office, who has turned meaningless promises into an art form.
Also, the notion that Pratt has started a "movement" is laughable. Take a look at the current vote percentages for the top four candidates in this year's mayoral race:
Now, take a look at the vote percentages for the top four candidates after the first round of the 2022 L.A. mayoral race:
Caruso was 2022's "candidate for people who don't want to vote Democratic." He was also the 2022 poke-the-establishment-in-the-eye candidate. And, as you can see, he did considerably better in the first round then than Pratt is doing now (before getting beaten by 10 points in the general). Nobody is talking about the "lessons of Rick Caruso" or about "Rick Caruso's movement," because those things did not, and do not, exist. The candidate in that slot always gets around a third of the vote in the primary and 40% or so in the general; the only thing that is different this year is that there was also a viable poke-the-establishment-in-the-eye candidate on the left, and she took some chunk of votes from the (current) top two.
So yeah, lazy, clickbait-y analysis that is a waste of everyone's time. As we said, we hate that stuff. (Z)