Nina Turner: Progressive Fighter or Trump Enabler?
When Everything Depended On Defeating Donald Trump In 2016 & 2020, Nina Turner Was All But Missing From The Fight
Ohio will hold a primary on August 3rd to choose the Democratic nominee to fill the seat formerly held by Marcia Fudge in Ohio’s 11th Congressional District. The seat was vacated when Fudge was confirmed as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Biden Administration. Polling suggests that the front runners are former Bernie Sanders 2016 Campaign co-chair Nina Turner and Cuyahoga County Democratic Chair Shontel Brown.
While Turner has the backing of many Progressives including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sanders himself, Brown is supported by more mainstream Democrats like Jim Clyburn (D-SC) and Hillary Clinton as well as the Congressional Black Caucus. This contest shapes up then as a showdown between Democrats who may believe that change can’t wait and those who fear that going too far left may be the quickest pathway for Republicans to return to power.
Turner gained something of a reputation as a fighter during the 2016 campaign making her a darling of the left. The question is whether she possesses the requisite judgement and pragmatism to move the ball forward even when she isn’t getting everything she wants or if she would become just another member of Congress whom Republicans enjoy using to portray Democrats as radical leftists.
Recent history perhaps offers a few clues as to Turner’s temperament. Appearing on MSNBC just days before the 2016 election, Turner stated that “I’m not backing anybody in this general election. Let me clear that up right away.” By that time of course, there was ample evidence to suggest what type of President Trump would become if he managed to win. That Turner was apparently unable or unwilling to grasp this is alarming. Trump went on of course to be a more corrupt and incompetent leader that many of us even imagined. Not to mention that he remade the Federal Courts including the Supreme Court for decades with lifetime conservative appointments. We then all watched on January 6th as his Presidency ended with the attempt to overthrow our Democracy itself.
But Turner seems to have learned little over four years. In July of 2020 when it was clear that another Trump Administration may well achieve his destructive objectives, Turner compared supporting Joe Biden to eating a bowl of excrement. “It’s like saying to somebody, ’You have a bowl of shit in front of you, and all you have to do is eat half of it instead of the whole thing’. It’s still shit” she said. By this time Biden had already clinched the Democratic nomination.
Twice then Turner has had the opportunity to throw her support behind the only candidates left standing who could spare the nation from a Trump Presidency. In 2016 she refused entirely. In 2020 the best effort she could muster was to make a disparaging and even disgusting comment about Joe Biden. For those who believe Turner is some sort of progressive fighter then, history suggests that in reality she may be neither.
Certainly there was nothing progressive about enabling the Trump Presidency by withholding support from Hillary Clinton when Clinton had the last best chance to defeat Trump. It will arguably take decades for the nation to recover from the damage Trump inflicted on the nation in just four years. And when everything depended on defeating Trump in 2020, Nina Turner was once again all but entirely absent from the fight.
Addendum:
When the question of those who chose not to support Clinton in 2016 comes up on social media one response can be guaranteed. It goes like this: “Well, Hillary should have worked harder to appeal to progressives and win our votes.” But, here is the thing. When someone is the last candidate left who has any realistic chance to defeat one of the worst individuals our nation has ever produced, it isn’t really a question of “winning” my vote. You basically have my vote by not being the candidate who is one of the worst individuals our nation has ever produced. Why? Because I generally prefer not to be governed by one of the worst individuals our nation has ever produced. Those like Nina Turner for whom this calculus was difficult in 2016 helped make Trump’s Presidency possible. They may view themselves as principled or uncompromising but the truth is…they simply lacked good judgement.
Great piece. Thank you.