The New York Times appears energetically interested in helping Democrat rejuvenate their damaged political careers. On the front page of Monday’s Times came the headline “Challenging ICE Raids Lifts L.A. Mayor’s Image.”
Surprise, in a blue city, opposing anything Trump does will help you out. The online headline for Jill Cowan’s article was buzzier:
Trump Raids Help Stir a Political Reversal for Karen Bass
The mayor of Los Angeles has emerged as a leading voice of the city’s resistance to the Trump administration after facing criticism for her handling of the wildfires.
The defining anti-deportation moment came when she proclaimed it was “unacceptable” for ICE to enter MacArthur Park “in one of the densest immigrant neighborhoods.”
Ms. Bass has since framed the last-minute decision to challenge the agents at MacArthur Park as a natural response to an unfolding crisis. But the image of her facing down a literal Trump administration army has proved pivotal for a leader who only months ago was confronting a well-funded recall campaign.
Ms. Bass has seen a reversal of some of her political fortunes in recent weeks.
Her horrible performance as wildfires ravaged her city can be forgotten. The recall campaign to oust her floundered.
But now, she has emerged as a leading voice of the city’s resistance to the Trump administration, matching the fury of a deeply liberal populace. Her office has countered characterizations of the nation’s second-largest city as a lawless safe harbor for criminals by pointing to the fact that Los Angeles is on pace to have its lowest number of homicides in 60 years. And for the second year in a row, homelessness declined in the city, according to the annual regional count — an imperfect but closely watched measure that had previously been on a stubborn trajectory upward.
Jill Cowan can’t understand that allowing many thousands of illegal immigrants to wander around could be defined as making the city a “lawless safe harbor for criminals,” because liberals compare that crime to something super-casual like letting a parking ticket go unpaid.
When ICE began large-scale raids, Mayor Bass “stood shoulder to shoulder with immigrant rights leaders to denounce them.” She “repeatedly described the raids as terrorizing residents in the city she leads, hurting small businesses and leaving children in fear that they will be separated from their parents.” And she spars with Team Trump on social media.
Unsurprisingly, Cowan found a former John McCain campaign aide to put wind beneath the wings of her comeback thesis:
“It appears Donald Trump may have given Karen Bass a political lifeline,” said Dan Schnur, a longtime political analyst who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California.
Bass has at least won over Schnur, who told The Times in April “It’s difficult to see a situation in which she gets re-elected.”
