Tom Steyer Appears to Have Proven Conclusively That He’s a Loser

He is a raving egomaniac with a penchant for setting his own money on fire.

For Republicans, the early round of election returns coming off Tuesday's voting in jungle primaries for governor and mayor of Los Angeles are promising. In the sense that actually getting Republicans into the runoffs in those races is an accomplishment. After all, California obviously went to a jungle primary format in hopes of submerging Republican candidates and offering voters runoff choices between Brand X and Brand X(1). But so far it doesn't look like that's working. Yes, Karen Bass is comfortably in first place in the LA mayoral race, but Spencer Pratt has so far put up good numbers and is very much in contention, with momentum heading into the runoff. Bass, at 34 percent as of this writing (I'm resting on a very shaky assumption that the final vote totals will look something like the current numbers when the vote counters in California decide to stop, which doesn't happen on Election Night in California but instead some interminable time later, as mail-in ballots postmarked on Election Day will be counted when they show up), can't be comfortable with a 4-point lead on Pratt. Yes, if you combine her vote with that of fellow communist Nithya Raman, it gets you above 50 percent. But it's not a done deal that voters who chose Raman over Bass won't choose Pratt over Bass — sure, they might be leftists, but they had a chance to vote for the incumbent and opted not to, and that makes some percentage of them true wild cards. It ought to be remembered that while L.A. is certainly a blue city, Karen Bass only barely beat the very flaccid Rick Caruso four years ago. And it isn't like she's governed like somebody earning her way to a second term. Nor has she campaigned like such a somebody. Pratt now has five more months to satirize, skewer, lampoon and, lambast Bass as he's already done with the benefit of an army of AI filmmakers who are making his ads for him, and it's not impossible for that to move the Overton Window. He's already demonstrated that he's far more i...