THE RIGHT-WING MEDIA ATTACKS KAREN BASS FOR FOCUSING ON RIGHT-WING PRIORITIES (AND THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA PILES ON)

It's possible that Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass deserves all the criticism she's getting, but if you're The New York Times, this is not how you should be reporting on that criticism -- with a story that includes direct quotes from only two people apart from the mayor: a homeowner who doesn't really have any way of knowing what the mayor did or didn't do while traveling at the request of the president of the United States, and her opponent in the last mayoral election, a rich ex-Republican who probably wants to run again in 2026:

When a series of dangerous, wind-driven fires broke out on Tuesday in the Los Angeles area, Mayor Karen Bass was on the other side of the globe, part of a delegation sent by President Biden to Ghana for the inauguration of its new president....

The mayor’s absence has drawn criticism from some Angelenos....

“There was zero preparation. There was zero thought here,” said Michael Gonzales, 47, whose home burned down in Pacific Palisades, a wealthy neighborhood that overlooks the Pacific Ocean. His family of five was camped out in a hotel in Santa Monica on Wednesday as they began figuring out where they will live.

Mr. Gonzales, a lawyer, said he believed Mayor Bass made a poor decision to remain overseas despite forecasters warning of the most dangerous fire conditions in more than a decade.

“It was an utter breakdown in leadership and it starts with the mayor’s office,” he said in an interview....

Rick Caruso, a real estate developer who lost to Ms. Bass in the mayoral race in 2022, said that he had a team of private firefighters in Pacific Palisades on Tuesday night helping to protect a major outdoor retail space he owns, as well as some nearby homes. All night, he said, they were telling him that water was in short supply.

City officials confirmed that water tanks ran dry during the intense firefight early Wednesday in Pacific Palisades because demand surged to four times the normal rate for 15 hours. The system, they suggested, was not designed to supply so much water in such a short period.

“The lack of water in the hydrants, I don’t think there’s an excuse,” Mr. Caruso said. “This was very predictable,” he said, referring to the forecasts that predicted the devastating windstorm.

Mr. Caruso, who served two stints as president of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said that it will take to time to account for why firefighters struggled to get enough water to fight the fires.

“This is a massive failure of epic proportions,” he said. “To know the storm was coming and then to leave, and not rush back. Leadership matters and the first thing is to be present.”

But this is how the mainstream media operates. Because right-wingers have been attacking mainstream news organizations as liberal for sixty years or so, they reflexively assume that any criticism of a liberal is justified, while assuming that there must be a valid reason for nearly everything conservatives do, even when they're proposing batshit crazy ideas like annexing Greenland.

As a rule, Democratic officeholders spend the majority of their terms on the back foot because when they're viciously attacked by the right, the mainstream press inevitably piles on. The right is attacking Bass for reducing fire department funding, and it's true that her 2024-25 budget cut the fire department's budget by $17.6 million. However, as Politico reports, there was supplementary funding that actually increased the fire department's budget:

The city was in the process of negotiating a new contract with the fire department at the time the budget was being crafted, so additional funding for the department was set aside in a separate fund until that deal was finalized in November. In fact, the city’s fire budget increased more than $50 million year-over-year compared to the last budget cycle....

And who was the big winner in Bass's initial budget? The police department. Fox 11 Los Angeles reported in April:

... the proposal — described by Bass a "reset" — includes ... an increase of more than $138 million for the Los Angeles Police Department; and a decrease of about $23 million for the L.A. Fire Department.

The right-wing media always says that police budgets should be increased, and raises hell if there's even the slightest indication that a city plans to trim the money that goes to cops. So Bass was doing what the right wanted.

In fact, when Bass and Caruso ran against each other and against other mayoral candidates, they battled one another over how many new cops they should add to the LAPD.

... real estate developer Rick Caruso revealed details of his platform Tuesday, including a plan to add 1,500 officers to the LAPD's force if elected mayor.

The Los Angeles Police Department's current personnel number stands at 9,521 sworn members, 185 fewer than its authorized deployment for the fiscal year, Chief Michel Moore said Tuesday.

An additional 1,500 officers would put the department just over 11,000 officers, the number called for by mayoral candidate and LA City Council member Joe Buscaino. City Attorney Mike Feuer has said as part of his campaign for mayor that the department should expand to at least 10,000 officers, and Rep. Karen Bass said that if elected mayor she would bring the department to its authorized levels of 9,700 officers by hiring civilian personnel to move desk officers to patrol.

There's also a Fox Business story with this headline:

Los Angeles Mayor Slashed Fire Budget Last Year, Prioritized Homeless Population

Really? Has there been a Fox story about California in the past five years that doesn't describe homelessness there as a massive problem? So why is Fox objecting to the fact that there's more money in the budget for dealing with homelessness than for dealing with fires? Isn't that what the right wants?

And as this story concedes:

The budget for homelessness was also reduced in the 2024-2025 budget....

So you can't win. The right sets the terms of every debate and changes those terms 2when circumstances change. The mainstream media frequently echoes right-wing critiques -- and so every Democratic officeholder is perpetually operating in enemy territory.