The fight brewing between Connie Chan and Honey Mahogany's replacement candidate Bilal Mahmood — sorry, let's back up. The real story is simpler than the musical chairs suggest: while progressive candidates slug it out for the No. 2 spot in San Francisco's ranked-choice circus, State Senator Scott Wiener may be quietly cruising toward a congressional seat with minimal resistance.

This is what happens in a one-party town. When everyone's fighting over the same slice of the progressive pie, the candidate with the broadest name recognition and the most established donor network doesn't even need to break a sweat. Wiener — love him or not — has been methodically building his political brand for over a decade. While his potential rivals scramble to out-progressive each other in the supervisor lane, he's positioned to consolidate moderate and establishment Democratic support almost by default.

The irony here is thick enough to spread on sourdough. San Francisco's progressive wing, which prides itself on solidarity and coalition-building, might hand a congressional seat to its least favorite Democrat simply because it can't stop infighting long enough to mount a serious challenge.

For those of us who'd actually like to see competitive elections in this city — and maybe, just maybe, candidates who take fiscal responsibility seriously — this is both entertaining and depressing. Competitive races are supposed to produce better candidates. Instead, we get a crowded field of near-identical progressives cannibalizing each other's votes while the frontrunner coasts.

San Francisco deserves real political competition, not a ranked-choice hunger game where the last moderate standing wins by exhaustion. But until voters here decide they want actual ideological diversity on the ballot, we'll keep getting exactly the politics we've earned.