“Bass has been a proponent of certain popular left-wing causes in the past, cosponsoring bills in Congress in support of Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, for instance. Yet her moves to the right as mayor on issues such as housing and policing, happening in a solidly blue city in a solidly blue state, illustrate the limits of mainstream Democratic Party politics.
Claiming the mantle of the progressive left while acting to reinforce the center: this is the key to Karen Bass’s mode of politics, which has endowed her with an impressive ability to co-opt progressive goals and language toward reactionary ends — her “Inside Safe” program being perhaps the best example. As even Pastor, a scholar with ties to social movements who remains close to Bass, recently told the LA Times, “I think she’s gotten more grace than other political figures might get.”

Bass’s mayoralty ought to serve as a warning to the Left about the type of nonprofit organizing she started practicing in the 1990s. What Mike Davis said in the preface to the 2006 edition of his classic book City of Quartz rings out more urgently than ever: “Los Angeles needs, in short, a more, not less, ideological politics.” - Jacob Woocher, “LA Mayor Karen Bass Puts a Progressive Veneer on Centrism” (Jacobin)