Karen Bass is Faking It ‘Til She Makes It In the LA Mayor’s Race
Animals,
One of the #1 problems that political gamblers have is that they are basically all soy boys who spend their entire lives making Excel sheets instead of ripping beers and getting laid. This lack of contact with the human race is responsible for a lot of baffling betting markets, with the Los Angeles Mayors’ race being the latest. Basically, bettors are making the incorrect assumption that Los Angeles is populated exclusively by Karens and celebrities who are coked-out on Wokeness, and it’s lead to some brutal pricing.
Let’s review:
Here is a little more about are your top 3 contenders:
Karen Bass: current Congresswoman who reached the height of her fame when Joe Biden briefly vetted her for Vice President, only to discover that she used to go to Cuban communist camp with Fidel Castro.
Kevin De Leon: former President of the CA Senate and perennial candidate for high office in California. Absolute savage. Lefty. Basically, Frank Underwood but fluent in Spanish and down with socialism.
Rick Caruso: Billionaire real estate tycoon who develops shopping malls where valets in velvet tuxedos pass around puppies for kids to pet. Former Republican. Had a high-profile gig reforming the LAPD back when literally everyone was getting murdered and smoking crack. Not the Caruso who is the ginger on CSI.
The pricing in this market is batsh*t crazy and presents MASSIVE upside potential. For those of you who’d rather just listen to the podcast, I’m going to link it for you here:
THERE’S NO NEED TO FAKE ‘TIL YOU MAKE IT IN THE LA MAYOR’S RACE
Now, honestly I am not surprised that the pricing in this market is so bad. As a Los Angeles local, I can tell you that there is something seriously messed-up about the people here. For example:
- They would rather be able to say they have an agent than a positive bank account balance
- They are obsessed with looking woke and poor but are generally rich douchebags looking for cocaine
- They claim to be “Progressives” but live in neighborhoods that are insanely segregated. Like if you want to only live with Asian horse riding enthusiasts; or white surfers who have no interest in ever chilling with beach volleyball bros, there is a place for you for here. Literally every neighborhood is segregated by race(s), age, income, preferred hobbies, occupation, *dreams*, cuisine, and climate.
And… Los Angelenos have a deeply tortured soul that is on the verge of exploding thanks to the city’s infuriatingly cozy relationship with:
- Ridiculous COVID restrictions
- Woke excesses
On the issue of Woke Excess, Los Angeles has 80,000 people living on the streets and is in the middle of a multi-year increase in violent crime.
This disorder is additive to a city with failing schools, awful traffic, and laughable public transportation. Old problems are not getting better, and new problems are being explained away as necessary for “racial justice.” Remember, trends here start way before they get to your hometown, which is also true for woke insanity, which has been here for years. This also means people here tire of it sooner too.
There is ample reason to believe the public has lost its patience with this, which we’ll get into. Angry voters just drove the city’s wokest politician, Mike Bonin, to the brink of suicide (literally) and are currently attempting to recall its woke DA, George Gascon.
On the issue of COVID, Los Angeles has pretty much been a joke because:
- The city is still under an indoor mask mandate as of Feb 28, 2022, despite 82% of residents age 5 and up being vaccinated
- LA County’s public schools closed for more than a year while others found ways to re-open
- Children are still required to wear masks in school
- Despite endorsing some of the nation’s most stringent COVID restrictions, California’s politicians are constantly seen flouting them (see Gavin Newsom and Eric Garcetti throughout the NFL post season)
This is Janice Hahn, one of LA County’s 5 supervisors (and former Democratic Congresswoman), recently breaking the party line:
The takeaway here is that even reliable liberals in local government can tell that the voters are one COVID mandate away from demanding their heads.
Lastly, let’s review how other incumbent politicians are looking in today’s California:
And in San Francisco city politics:
Basically, no one is safe.
The schoolboard issue is especially telling, because it fuses everything:
- Liberal voters in San Francisco were incensed that their schools were closed for so long during the pandemic, a feeling that was amplified by…
- These 3 school board members focus on re-naming schools to be more Woke rather than re-opening schools
- Affirmative action policies that ignited racial tensions in majority-minority California.
Here are some quotes about the SF situation from The Washington Post:
“One of the first issues to grab national attention was the board’s January 2021 decision to rename 44 schools they said honored public figures linked to racism, sexism and other injustices. On the list were Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and trailblazing U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif… Angry parents asked why the board would waste time renaming schools when the priority needed to be reopening classrooms.”
“Many Asian parents were already angered by the board’s efforts to end merit-based admissions at the elite Lowell High School, where Asian students are the majority.”
Lastly, it’s important to remember that California voters just rebuked a ballot initiative to once again make race-based affirmative action in the state legal
- In 2020, voters nixed Prop 16 by a 14 point margin
- This is important context for how a liberal, majority-minority state views social progress
With regard to the Los Angeles Mayor’s Race, we’re left with 2 bettable insights:
- Incumbent politicians have a negligible advantage over outsiders. Given Newsom’s bad polls and the absolute drubbing that voters just gave the San Francisco school board, it’s clear to me that voters are willing to blame anyone currently in power for their frustration’s with the Left coast’s slow re-opening.
- Identity politics are going to work differently this year. “Racial justice” and “affirmative action” mean different things to different communities in a city as diverse as Los Angeles. Put another way, affirmative action is unpopular because many Asians and Hispanics are suspicious it will be used against them too.
This is why I believe that the current favorite, Karen Bass, is overpriced at 68c.
What might look appealing about Bass will probably put her at a disadvantage in LA: she’s connected to unpopular officials at the state and local level and is Black. Yes, The Washington Post might have a browser tab dedicated to “racial reckoning” but in balkanized California, electing an African American woman does not always equal progress to other minority groups competing for power. Remember, African Americans make up a mere 8% of Los Angeles, with Hispanics totaling 49%, Whites 29%, and Asians 14%.
With a well-known Latino candidate in Kevin De Leon running to Bass’s left and a Bruce Wayne-style billionaire in Rick Caruso running as a centrist, the current favorite faces tougher competition than the markets have realized.
Caruso’s money is a powerful equalizer. And De Leon’s pull with Latinos and Progressives is a serious threat to Bass’s coalition.
The slim polling available has Bass in a very comfortable lead for now — but more than 50% of voters still don’t even know who she is. For more on this, listen to our podcast.
IN CONCLUSION….
Los Angeles is a very liberal city, but as someone who has lived in diverse communities here for close to a decade, I can say with certainty that there is widespread anger with a local government that continually fails to address core quality of life issues and instead redirects the conversation towards superficial woke virtue-signaling.
It will be quite easy for Bass’s rivals to portray her as more of the same, while De Leon and Caruso use identity politics and their sizable war chests to define the campaign on their terms.
I am short on Bass at 35c and long on Caruso at 13c.
Be sure to listen to the podcast for more detailed analysis, including data from recent polls:
KEENDAWG.
