Rep. Karen Bass, under serious consideration by Joe Biden to be chosen as his vice-presidential running mate, told NBC News that she is “not a communist.”
I’m sure that’s true. I’m sure she doesn’t have a membership card that identifies her as a member of CPUSA. I’m sure she doesn’t have pictures of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao hanging in her office — at least, not where the public can see them.
But back in the ’50s, Bass would certainly have been identified as a “fellow traveler” of the communists. As Politico reports, her sympathy and support are with communists and she makes a point of hanging around communists. In 2017, she eulogized “friend and mentor” Oneil Marion Cannon, a longtime leader of the American Communist Party.
But she’s not a communist.
The California congresswoman described Oneil Marion Cannon as a one-man force in progressive politics who became the “union printer to the left” in Los Angeles, where he worked for “interracial and intercultural understanding,” opened a community hub and even once “belonged to the Independent Progressive Party.”
Left out of the 406-word eulogy: Cannon was a top member of the Communist Party USA for decades.
That omitted detail and her little-noticed 2017 eulogy today takes on outsized importance now that Bass is on Joe Biden’s VP shortlist. As quickly as the congresswoman and former speaker of the California state Assembly shot into serious contention for Biden’s No. 2, she has come under intense scrutiny, prompting questions about whether Biden would be risking too much by selecting a politician just now coming under the glare of the national spotlight.
Well, maybe she was just being nice in saying all these nice things about the communist leader. But was she a communist? There were thousands of people who supported the communist agenda, promoted and communist ideas. That doesn’t make them card-carrying members of the Communist Party.
But it makes them unfit to serve in public office in a democracy.
A spokesman for Bass downplayed her affiliation with Cannon, comparing her friendship with him to her relationship with the House Republican leader.
“Karen Bass has always been a Democrat and only a Democrat. The Congresswoman is friends with Kevin McCarthy and is not a Republican. She knew Oneil Cannon but never shared the political ideology he may have had at one time in his life,” Bass spokesman Zach Seidl wrote in a statement.
“While she and Cannon differed politically, she recognizes work he did in the community,” he wrote. “He taught the printing trade to generations of young people in South Los Angeles and he co-founded a wellness center, which is South LA’s first organic produce market and a local food hub increasing access to healthy local food for the entire South Los Angeles community.”
What makes that argument bogus is that whenever a conservative or Republican is discovered being too friendly with a white supremacist or anti-Semite, he is immediately canceled. Reasonable people don’t judge someone entirely by the company they keep. In Bass’s case, we have a public record of a far-left radical that clearly shows what can only be characterized as “un-American” ideas.
A stated goal of communists is the overthrow of the U.S. government — violently or otherwise. I think that can safely be considered “Un-American.” What exactly does Karen Bass believe? We have a right to know if the weak-minded Biden is unintentionally bringing a communist Trojan horse into the White House with him if he wins.
Someone should tell Biden how many votes he will lose if he adds Bass to his ticket.
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