This column isn't a general examination of the myriad problems with the clown car elections in my once-beloved California, although I will say one thing and tell a story about it before we get to the main topic.
Regarding the overall election situation in the Golden State, I will simply reiterate my long held belief that mail-in voting is, for the most part, the devil. There are many ways that mail-in ballots can be, um, manipulated, and that manipulation is very difficult to prove. The manipulation can be much more impactful in California because of the state's huge population.
Here is the story. For the last six or so elections that I voted in when I was a California resident, I was told that I was on a permanent vote-by-mail list. Given my feelings towards mail-in voting, you can probably guess that I never opted in for that. Every election day, I would dutifully go to my polling place and be told that I had to fill out a provisional ballot because I was on the permanent vote-by-mail list. I would do so, and check the box that requested I be removed from the list.
I was never removed from the list. California Dems were forcing universal vote-by-mail long before it was the law there. If the Democrats are all-in on an election law, you can bet it's not good for election integrity.
Three years after I'd moved back to Arizona and had already voted in two elections here, I checked in with my former state of residence and found that I was still on the voter rolls there. NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG.
The only way to deal with vote-by-mail is to severely kneecap it. Military personnel, people expatriated for work, and those with severe medical conditions should be allowed to vote by mail. I'm sure that a zealous commenter or two will come up with some exceptions, but that's my starting list. Oh, the counting of ballots that arrive late has to stop. If you know you're voting by mail, get it in the mail on time.
One more thing about mail-in ballots: while I do believe that the SAVE America Act has to be passed if there is to be any hope for shoring up election integrity, the bill doesn't greatly restrict vote-by-mail. Baby steps, though. (I'll save my early voting rant for another day.)
Now onto today's main event.
In addition to all of the nefarious background machinations that have to be worried about, there are some mundane factors at play in the Los Angeles mayoral election, one of which is an age-old obstacle that doesn't get talked about enough. One big hurdle that Spencer Pratt faced is that a lot of what would have been his natural constituency in Los Angeles no longer lives there. The die-hard Republican Angelenos like I once used to be have been fleeing the city in droves for at least a decade now. That's going to be a problem for the GOP moving forward even if California's election nonsense is miraculously cleaned up.
The biggest horror in this election has been the fact that Karen Bass is even in the race and, worse yet, in first place all along. The reason she is still around is because the City of Angels has a huge population of insanely wealthy leftists who can afford to be fetish socialists. These are people who are at the pinnacle of the capitalist dream, but fancy themselves as having the souls of '60s radicals.
Some of them actually were '60s radicals. The entertainment industry is still polluted with septuagenarian and octogenarian stars who have been wealthy since they were 30 but pretend that they're down with the struggle. That's because they don't ever have much, if any, exposure to the struggle. Residents of the Tony L.A. neighborhoods like Beverly Park, Bel Air, or Brentwood aren't tripping over Karen Bass's ever-growing homeless population. I used to live just across Wilshire Boulevard from Brentwood and, trust me, nobody over there knew my side of the street even existed. They thought they were slumming it when they went to Santa Monica.
It's easy to be a socialist when a) you're not really a socialist, and b) you have so much money that boneheaded socialist policies don't touch your life. It's the swimming-in-money faux socialists who fuel the political lunacy in Los Angeles. The same goes for Manhattan. The Upper Eastside bluebloods put Zohran Mamdani into office. They're so filthy rich that paying for all of his "free" stuff won't ever interrupt their dinner plans.
The affluent hippie curse won't end when all of the rich '60s radicals die off. Academia keeps producing new generations of Americans who go out into the world to make piles of money all the while championing socialism. There is nothing inside of these people that makes them experience any cognitive dissonance because they don't really know what socialism is. It's a romantic ideal to them because they were educated by people who lied about it. Leftist politics are also completely devoid of logic, so none of them will ever figure out this game of Connect-the-Dots.
It's nigh on impossible to make a case to the rarefied air rich libs in places like Los Angeles, New York City, or Chicago because their votes for Dem socialists are their regularly scheduled virtue signals. They vote for politicians who promise to help the icky poors and feel good about themselves. Never mind that the hoi polloi are forever struggling in places where all of these helpful socialists rule.
None of that is visible from a deck overlooking a private Malibu beachfront.
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Editor’s Note: Republicans are fighting for election integrity by requiring proper identification to vote.
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