Karen Bass: “I have called councilmember Nithya Raman to congratulate her on her victory, and I have committed to ensuring a smooth…”

“I sure as heck wouldn’t have gone.”

“Every now and then we’re popular, but we go out of popularity very quickly,” Bass said on a recent Friday in Watts at Nickerson Gardens, a large housing development.

Bass stresses the city has cleared dozens of encampments and brought thousands of people into shelter, but data show nearly half of them dropped out of the system and presumably returned to the streets.

I have made enough progress to merit another term leading a city of 3.8 million people.