The LA mayoral debate on Wednesday evening in Sherman Oaks was so bad that it was almost funny.

Almost, that is, except for the residents of the city, who are going to have to live with the outcome.

Incumbent mayor Karen Bass and challenger Nithya Raman stood in front of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association for 90 minutes and failed to introduce a single new idea for the city.

The closest anyone came was when Bass declared that homelessness would never be solved without dealing with drug addiction and mental illness. She was channelling Spencer Pratt for a minute there.

Raman ought to have cleaned the mayor’s clock. She had home field advantage: Sherman Oaks is within Countil District 4, which Raman has represented since 2020. These were her constituents.

But it turns out that familiarity is a problem when your own constituents don’t think you’re doing a very good job.

Raman faced questions about her membership in the Democratic Socialists of America; about her vote against the police budget; and about her recent vote to allow homeless encampments in several parks.

Her answers were shockingly bad. Rather than reassuring the business community that brick-and-mortar restaurants would not face unfair competition from street vendors who evade taxes and regulations, Raman talked about how important street vendors were to the city.

Rather than reassuring homeowners in the room that single-family homes are not in trouble, Raman threatened them, saying that the state would continue to attack single-family homes until the city could build more high-rises.

And rather than push back against Bass’ claim that Raman had missed “thousands” of meetings and votes, Raman simply agreed — “Yeah” — and tried to blame Bass for appointing her to outside jobs.

But Bass didn’t exactly cover herself in glory.

She struggled to explain why her close advisers were doing public relations work for Lineage, the firm whose warehouse burned for days in the Boyle Heights fire.

She also failed to answer Raman’s criticism of how long it took her to appoint a “film czar” — only three years into her term, after tens of thousands of jobs had already left Hollywood.

Some Angelenos missed the entire spectacle –– perhaps the worst streamed political debate in history –– as some who tried to watch on Zoom found the message: “The webinar is at the host’s allowed capacity.”

Perhaps this was a mercy. The debate was so bad that it was almost as if the candidates were trying not to be mayor.

But those are the choices LA is stuck with: The incompetent versus the malevolent.

It’s possible they will improve in later debates. They could hardly do worse.

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