Return to "troubled times"

On the last day of qualifying, Manny Bruno jumped into the mayor's race after all.

It wouldn't be a mayor's race in New Orleans without Manny Chevrolet.
The entertainer and perennial candidate jumped in at the last minute Friday, qualifying to run against incumbent Mayor Mitch Landrieu, former Civil District Judge Michael Bagneris and NAACP local chapter Predisdent Danatus King.

Now that the horses are lined up, I'm looking forward to seeing how people handicap this race.  Once the fanfare over Bagneris's entry settles, his path to victory is still difficult to see from here. Mitch will have conservative whites sewn up entirely. He's likely to get 80-90 percent of less conservative whites as well. It's especially difficult for me to imagine any of the recent white transplants who get so much media attention being anything other than Landrieu voters... although I'm also wondering how likely they are to vote.

Mitch won't have the same big chunk of the black vote he enjoyed in 2010, but it's hard to imagine him not getting at least enough to put him over the top.  Jesus, that's just five minutes of thinking out loud here and I'm already wondering if this even gets to a runoff.