Her rise was greeted with a round of most glowing reviews. The 66-year-old president of the Congressional Black Caucus is widely respected by her colleagues in the House of Representatives, a body otherwise ravaged by partisan bickering and testy factional feuds. Republicans in California have sung their praises. Progressive Democrats, dismissed for inequality Biden’s vote for sen. Elizabeth Warren, perked up when rumors of her rise proliferated.
But those early days, from about two weeks ago, now seem like a distant past.
Bass over the course of a few days is confronted with a wave of coverage that describes a series of potentially problematic past relationships, speeches and financial dealings. The proposed succession of stories underscores one of the biggest obstacles Bass faces face when Biden buys to make his choice: She has never questioned the potential, interesting market of national control maintained by those who have run in presidential or high-profile statewide races.
Some of the stories would have caused an uproar in every campaign. Others, backed by conservative media and bolstered by President Donald Trump’s campaign, might be abolished more often. But with Trump struggling to define Biden negatively, the vortex of headlines, as much as the substance beneath them, could jeopardize her place among his vice presidential candidates. The Biden campaign declined to comment on the criticism leveled at Bass level. But Bass’s team pushed back on what it described as an attempt to create a misleading portrait of their career and personal policies.
Congresswoman Bass learned to handle pressure in an emergency room holding people’s lives in her hands – she’s not worried about a few articles meant to distort her proven record of service and leadership and she knows why they are coming in now, “a spokesman said.
Through decades in government, first in California and then on Capitol Hill, she has consistently worked alongside her ideological contradictions to strike deals, such as the package that dragged her home state out of a budget crisis in 2009, which included important actions – hardly the stuff of a serious builder.
Still, progressive leaders, never ashamed to critically review past compromises, have suggested that selecting Bass could be a mover with the left-wing party, which is skeptical, if broadly supportive, of Biden’s campaign. Moderate Democrats and party operations framed it differently, if not less ebulliently, and sent Bass out as a low-key, steep but pragmatic politician with the chops and references needed for the vice presidency.
By the end of July, a consensus began to emerge: Bass had done the work and made more friends than enemies along the way. A chance encounter with Biden, as her camp described it, during his visit to Washington, DC, around the late Civil Rights hero and rep. Honoring John Lewis last week further fueled speculation.
“Everyone loves Karen Bass. People scratch their heads and say, ‘Who’s this woman?'” Steve Westly, a former California controller and big Biden fundraiser, told CNN last week. “If you’ve been a spokesman for the legislature for a state that is twice the population of New York and the world’s fifth largest economy, you know how to manage the media, you understand the economy. I think she’s stronger than people think. “
But his analysis was tested last week because Bass came under the microscope.
Bass denied any suggestion of crimes and told the paper that her consulting income, although paid for by the Community Coalition, was tied to outside subsidies and not contributions from her own campaign coffers.
The report ended a challenging week for Bass, who, after effectively entering the waters of the vice-presidential race, and enjoying a fun early swim, soon found herself in a riptide of stories that resonate with her. time as a teen activist.
She apologized for using the phrase, and claimed in an interview on MSNBC that her intentions were lost in translation.
“I’ve talked about it with my colleagues in the House, and it’s definitely something I would not say again,” Bass said. “I have always supported the Cuban people, and the relationship that Barack Obama and Biden had in their administration in terms of opening up relationships.”
During the presidency primarily, scenario Bernie Sanders’ campaign sought to dispel criticism of the candidate’s rosy statements about Castro’s Cuba with a similar point: that in practice his current positions on the US and Cuba were no different from those of Obama and Biden, who had sought to reopen diplomatic and trade relations with the communist state 90 miles south of Florida.
That particular storyline mostly disappeared, but it was a signal of things to come.
The Trump campaign has tarnished almost every nuance, calling Bass “Communist Karen” – part of a broader effort by Trump’s team to portray Biden as a paw for a cat for leftists – in a press release compiling a series of details of Bass’s past trip to Cuba, including her first time there, in 1973, with the Venceremos Brigade, a creation of Students for a Democratic Society, one of the leading left-wing, anti-war groups of the era.
The Atlantic reports that Bass visited the country on eight occasions in the 1970s and returned a handful of times before and after the introduction of Congress in 2011, including travel in 2015 and 2016, when she left as part of formal American delegations.
A spokesman for Bass downplayed her connection to Cannon, rejecting any suggestion that she always agreed ideologically. Cannon’s policies have shifted over the years. Later in his life he campaigned for former President Barack Obama.
Bass claimed that allegations of abuse against the church were not yet known or investigated a decade ago, although its practices had been in doubt for years and famous former members began to speak out.
“Just so you all know,” Bass said, “I worship proudly at First New Christian Fellowship Baptist Church in South LA.”
CORRECTION: This story has been corrected to reflect that the Daily Caller first reported on Karen Bass’ speech to a Church of Scientology.
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