Does that mean there’s cheating? Maybe. There’s certainly a strong desire to win coupled with a less-than-convincing devotion to assuring that the will of the voters will be carried out no matter what the outcome. The mail-in ballots that can come in late, the drop-boxes, the rabid leftist partisanship, all combine to create at the very least a lack of trust in the system on the part of anyone on the right.

And so it was almost a foregone conclusion that this would be happening, and that it would seem suspicious whether it is or not:

… [T]he race for second place in the mayor’s contest is moving in a direction that should concern Spencer Pratt supporters, and anyone who thinks Los Angeles needs to move toward a more centrist, common-sense course.

Friday afternoon’s update added roughly 140,000 ballots countywide, with about 42.7% from within the city of Los Angeles.

Mayor Karen Bass remains firmly in first place with 34.98% of the vote. The real drama is the battle for the second runoff spot between Pratt and City Councilwoman Nithya Raman. …

Raman gained 23,115 votes in Friday’s update, compared to 10,711 for Pratt and 20,419 for Bass. In a single ballot drop, Raman netted 12,404 votes on Pratt. …

Put another way, she received more than twice as many votes as Pratt in this batch.

The upshot is that Pratt may fall to third place as more votes come in. And if he’s in third, he won’t be on the ballot. California’s voting system is designed to give voters a November choice of leftist and more leftist, rather than Democrat and Republican. But realistically, even if Pratt holds onto second place, at present he is only getting about a quarter or third of the vote compared to a combined Democrat/leftist vote that constitutes a definite majority.

Why anyone would vote for Bass or Raman is beyond me. I understand that Democrats will vote for Democrats. But these two have had their chances and have failed to help the city. If I lived in LA, I think that even if I were a Democrat I’d give Pratt a chance.

The post Pratt falling in Los Angeles tallies appeared first on The New Neo.

Trump is the only major American politician of the last forty years who was professionally formed in the long-form unstructured format before he ever entered politics. That is the entire answer. Everything else is downstream of that fact.

The standard explanations (charismatic, natural performer, good instincts) are descriptions of the result rather than explanations of the cause.

Well, sort of. He’s actually a natural at it, and then he also has honed his skills over time. It’s not either/or. But yes, he’s got more experience in the long-form interview, both hostile and friendly, than almost anyone on earth. That’s not an accident. He’s sought celebrity, and been comfortable with it, for pretty much his whole life.

I agree with a great deal of the article – for example, this:

Widely misunderstood. Trump does not actually have no filter. He has a very specific filter, calibrated over decades, that allows him to say things that sound spontaneous and unfiltered while actually being controlled performance. He says transgressive things on purpose, knowing they will land. He floats trial balloons, watches the reaction, and either commits to the position or walks it back depending on the response. The persona of being unfiltered is itself a filter.

Also this:

The credentialed class is the class of people who have internalized the institutional consequences of saying the wrong thing, and who have organized their public speech to avoid those consequences. Trump did not come up through any of those institutions. He came up in New York real estate and tabloid culture, both of which are environments where shame is a vulnerability rather than a discipline, and where the operators who succeed are the ones who have learned to act without it. He says things the credentialed class would be unable to say, not because the things are necessarily wrong, but because the credentialed class has been trained to feel an autonomic flinch before the words leave the mouth. Trump does not have the flinch.

The absence of the flinch is read by the audience as authenticity, and is read by the opposing class as proof of monstrousness.

Yes indeed. But the author follows it with this:

Both readings miss the structural fact: the flinch is a learned behavior of a specific institutional formation, and Trump did not undergo that formation.

Here’s where I have the same objection I had at the beginning: it’s not just a learned behavior, it’s in sync with Trump’s personality, although it’s also a behavior that’s been honed and refined through practice.

It occurs to me that Spencer Pratt has had some of this type of practice. Not as much as Trump but more than most, having been on reality TV a great deal. And he also didn’t come up through the normal political paths, so he didn’t learn the pussy-footing obfuscation and the art of talking while saying nothing. Here’s an example of Pratt’s skills:

The threaded NBC clip exemplifies exactly what Pratt said here about being honed for debate by constant battle with hostile media hacks —

Unlike his Democrat opponents:

“Every interview I do it's opposition. When Bass or Raman talk to the media, they can just lie." https://t.co/gcjgGjx08Z pic.twitter.com/WFCEavoJlb

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) May 29, 2026

Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether people without X can access these tweets and videos. If you can’t see the second one, this might help:

Spencer Pratt schools NBC reporter who wants to know if he’s running for LA Mayor just to promote his “brand."

Reporter: “Man, your brand is hotter than ever!"

Pratt initially talks about getting in the race after losing everything in the fires.

But then he gets to the… pic.twitter.com/SrDMy7zyR0

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) May 29, 2026

It’s LA, and I doubt Pratt can win. But it would be astounding if he did.

The post Trump as long-form master appeared first on The New Neo.