Primary post-mortems

Posting here has been kind of slow because I'm writing up a bunch of stuff about the primary results. The short version is the mayor's race is over and the reason for that is the Charbonnet campaign blew it big time on many fronts. What I'm writing are a series of posts that examine several of those fronts in detail.

To understand why it's over, one need only  take a look at The Lens's precinct maps. Specifically, look at all of these Cantrell precincts (in green) in the Lower Ninth and in East New Orleans that Charbonnet needed to carry in order to have any shot in the runoff.

I'm going to write more about why it went this way later. But just know, for now, Charbonnet isn't going to dig out of that hole.  Cantrell is looking at something like 60% of the vote in the runoff now.

There's a lot more to say about all of this. In the meantime here is a starter question to think about.  This week, Cantrell's backers (and some ostensibly neutral observers) are heralding her "progressive" and even "populist" campaign.  Why is it none among them seems to have noticed this one quote from election night picked up on only (as far as I can tell) by me and conservative TP columnist Tim Morris? 

Cantrell, meanwhile, will be trying to assure her doubters that she is not the radical community organizer of their nightmares and that her experience representing City Council District B has prepared her to become mayor.

"I'm not talking now about taking from the rich and giving to the poor and all that kind of crap," Cantrell said in a telling moment of her victory speech. "What I'm talking about is creating balance so everyone feels like they're winners. We all can win. It is not a zero sum game as we have been made to believe. We will not be pitting neighborhoods against one another, we will be building up neighborhoods."

I'll come back to that as well as ton of other stuff later. But I'd love to hear Cantrell voters, in particular, describe what they think it means.