Get the Ricochet app
Ricochet will work fine in a browser on your mobile devices, but for the best experience please download our app.
Harry Enten made a strong argument on CNN that no one had an incentive to cheat in the LA mayoral election. He points out that Bass would beat Pratt by 18 points in the general but would beat Rahman by only 4, according to an LA Times poll. The argument is that the Democratic establishment would prefer a Bass-Pratt matchup to Bass versus Rahman. Thus, the party establishment had no incentive to cheat.
He also looked at the favorability ratings of all three candidates. Rahman is +5, Bass -22, Pratt -32. He argued that based on favorability, Rahman has a decent chance of beating Bass. Again, the Dem establishment would not want Rahman to advance to the general.
However, he overlooked several important factors. First, Rahman had a huge incentive to cheat to get into the general because she was running in third place. And she had the organizational capability to organize it with her DSA crowd.
Second, Pratt was surging at the end, so Bass could not be confident that he would not lead in primary results, which would have been devastating to her aura of inevitability. Here are all the RCP polls of the LA mayoral primary since March:
Finally, Bass could not have been looking forward to five months of pummeling from Pratt supporters making viral AI videos. She had an incentive to cheat to prevent Pratt from having the platform to embarrass her.
2 Caveats:
- My analysis only shows the incentives to cheat. It's not proof that cheating did happen. But we do know that California electoral law provides giant loopholes that make it easy to cheat.
- In a lightly polled race like this one, there are huge error bars on the polling results. So much depends on turnout models, and there aren't many pollsters trying different turnout models, so it's hard to be confident that Pratt was actually leading Bass at the end. But it looks like that probably was the case.
While Enten makes a couple strong arguments why the Democratic establishment would not cheat on behalf of Bass, he overlooks several even stronger reasons why Bass and Rahman had incentives to cheat.
Discussion (25)
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
I know nothing about whether cheating occurred.
I do know it is a system designed to sow doubt and open the door for naughtiness.
CONTRIBUTOR • CHARTER MEMBER
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Two years before Richard Nixon died, I was at an outdoor luncheon, under a tent at his presidential library, as MLB veteran and champion base stealer Maury Wills told a funny story. Nixon wasn't supposed to speak yet, but he couldn't help himself. He leaned into the mike, grinning, in effect "doing a Nixon" as if he were Dan Aykroyd and said "The moral of the story is, if you want to win, steal!"
CONTRIBUTOR • CHARTER MEMBER
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Having said that, the process is faulty from the beginning, but the notion that there's no possible conceivable way a Los Angeles conservative was outvoted, in one case narrowly, by two hard-left women of color is delusional. It doesn't get any less delusional when it's "backed" by solemn assertions that it's scientifically impossible based on mathematical blah blah...
This isn't higher math. they got more votes. I hate it as much as you probably do, but facts are facts. Spencer was never going to win the general election, not here, but I hoped we'd have months of his relentless ragging on the powers that be.
It's a damn shame. But "It's fraud!! It's a conspiracy!!" is a pathetic excuse for being crybabies and sore losers, Al Gore style, when we lose.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
I agree that Pratt was going to have a very hard time winning the general. If you total either Bass's and Rahman's final polling or their votes on election night, it shows that the hard-left would out-vote Pratt in the general. But they had to knock him out of the general. They couldn't risk five months of mockery from Pratt.
There are so many "legal" ways to cheat: ballots mailed to all voters, non-existent voter verification on absentee ballots, unlimited ballot harvesting, weak postmark requirements. This is a system begging to be rigged by those with a political machine to do it.
I can't prove it, but I think in a fair election, Pratt would have advanced to the general and lost in November.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
You're seeing five of 25 comments. Sign in, or join for just $5 per month, to read them all and add your own.