If you're wondering how to think about the primary election results in California, I have a good choice for you. Writing for Vox, Christian Paz interviews Dan Walters, who has spent a lifetime studying CA politics and writing about them for the Sac. Bee. Dan is old school which means you don't know his own politics. Walters opines:
Karen Bass is definitely in trouble. If you're an incumbent mayor and you can't get 50 percent in the primary, that means most of the voters are against you.
I think Bass defeats Raman, but I think with Pratt she's got a potential problem here because he's struck something in the voters in Los Angeles, their unhappiness with the status quo on homelessness, crime, and the fires.
It looks like Democratic voters kind of rejected the more progressive wing of their party. (snip) California is not as progressive as it's often portrayed in the national media. And there are a lot of Republicans in California - a quarter of the registered voters.
Walters also talks about how CA got saddled with the jungle primary, and the structural issues which make both governor and mayor less powerful in CA than one might imagine.
