Ever since the Los Angeles mayoral runoff took a bizarre late turn, much of the discussion has centered on allegations of fraud.

The fuel for those allegations is obvious enough. Common-sense candidate Spencer Pratt appeared poised to force a showdown with incumbent Karen Bass before a flood of late-arriving mail ballots dramatically altered the race's trajectory.

For many observers, the optics alone were enough to trigger suspicion.

Maybe those suspicions are justified. Maybe they aren't.

Reasonable people will question the statistical anomalies, ballot-harvesting laws, vote-counting timelines, and the peculiar habit of heavily Democratic jurisdictions finding large batches of votes that seem to break overwhelmingly in one direction. Others will spend plenty of time litigating those questions.

What interests me is something different.

Even if every ballot was counted fairly, and even if there was nothing improper whatsoever about the outcome, can we please stop pretending Democrats had no reason to want Pratt gone?

CNN analyst Harry Enten recently mocked what he called the "LA mayor stuff," insisting it was a dumb conspiracy theory because the Democratic establishment supposedly preferred Pratt to advance rather than Raman.

The evidence of Enten's claim is that Karen Bass crushed Pratt in hypothetical head-to-head polling by 18 points, while she led Raman by only four.

The problem is this just isn't how politics works. At all.

Enten's argument assumes the only thing politicians care about is winning the election immediately in front of them: If Bass would beat Pratt more easily than Raman, then Team Bass should have wanted Pratt to advance.

But elections do not occur in a vacuum. Politicians are not merely trying to win races by impressive margins. Parties are trying to control narratives.

And Spencer Pratt had become a narrative problem.

Every day he remained in the race was another day of cable news interviews, viral clips, podcast appearances, clever ads, and social media engagement centered on one theme: The visible failure of progressive governance in America's second-largest city.

• The homelessness crisis.

• The fires.

• The crime concerns.

• The bureaucratic dysfunction.

• The perception that basic competence has become optional.

Pratt wasn't as much of a threat to Karen Bass's job as he was a threat to the Democratic Party's story about California.

At a moment when progressives are trying to convince voters that concerns about Democrat governance are exaggerated, Pratt had become a walking, talking exhibit for the prosecution.

Imagine what five more months of that would look like:

• National interviews beginning with footage of encampments, burned neighborhoods, executive failures, and questions about whether Los Angeles represents the future of urban America.

• Republicans using those clips in congressional races from Pennsylvania to Arizona.

• Democrats being forced to answer for Los Angeles every week through November.

That is the context that Harry Enten's highly paid CNN analysis (somehow) ignores.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Not the Bee or any of its affiliates.