The lesson from Ohio: Democrats want to fight Trump, not Biden
WASHINGTON >> It should not surprise anyone that grass-roots Democrats are united behind the president who defeated Donald Trump and wary of candidates who seem more interested in fighting Joe Biden than in advancing his agenda.
This is why Cuyahoga County Councilwoman Shontel Brown defeated former Ohio state senator Nina Turner in Tuesday’s special Democratic primary election for a U.S. House seat centered on Cleveland.
Brown, 46, had backing from much of the national Democratic Party as a down-theline supporter of the president. Turner, 53, is a progressive hero, but you could argue she lost the race back in 2020 when she likened voting for Biden to eating half a bowl of excrement (not the word she used). In 2016, Turner declined to support Hillary Clinton against Trump.
It didn’t help Turner’s cause when at a June event for her, the rapper Killer Mike suggested it was “stupid” for House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., to have endorsed Biden in last year’s presidential primaries. Last month, Clyburn wryly told a South Carolina newspaper that he “got involved” on Brown’s behalf “when I was invited by the Turner campaign.”
Brown’s success is being described as a victory of “the establishment” over insurgents and of a “moderate” over a “progressive.” Though partially true, the shorthand misses as much as it reveals.
The divisiveness of Turner’s rhetoric aimed at others in her party goes far beyond where most progressive Democrats are. And with the Trump specter still lurking, the 11th Congressional District’s primary voters decided to reward the candidate
focused on cooperating with a Democratic administration whose success is a precondition to routing Trumpism for good.
Anyone doubting that the former president remains a radicalizing force within the GOP should consider the results of the other major Ohio congressional primary on Tuesday. The Trump-endorsed candidate, Mike Carey, 50, a coal industry lobbyist, overwhelmed a talented field of 10 other Republicans. Carey won 37percent of the vote in a district outside Columbus. His nearest competitor — endorsed by Steve Stivers, the popular GOP congressman whose departure forced the special election — got just over 13 percent.
It needs to be repeated until it really sinks in: If you look at primary results over the past five years, Democrats remain the party in which more moderate candidates can prevail. Republicans, even when they opt against a Trump-endorsed candidate here or there, are much further to the right than Democrats are to the left.
But something else is true, too: Turner’s defeat does not mean that progressive Democrats are “crushed,” to use the sort of language popular on Wednesday. Progressives remain an important force in the Democratic Party but as part of a broader coalition. They succeed when they act as critics inside the tent. They fail when they are seen as bringing down the tent.
Ironically, Turner’s defeat came on the same day that another progressive Democrat, Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri, won a big policy victory in pushing the Biden administration to reimpose a partial moratorium on evictions.
Bush’s one-person sleep-in on the steps of the Capitol to dramatize the plight of the homeless was part of a broad effort by liberals and the left to get the administration to act after it first said that executive action to protect tenants would likely be overturned by the Supreme Court. Even if this turns out to be true, it was a mistake for Biden to resist offering protection for the neediest as covid-19 numbers rise again.
That Biden responded to the pressure is a textbook illustration of how the Democratic Party now works. Progressives can win a lot of ground for policies that are popular (see Biden’s entire spending program) by playing an inside/outside game.
And the lines between “the establishment” and “progressives” are blurry, given that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was pressuring Biden privately for the moratorium and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer gave Bush “amazing credit” in a floor speech on Wednesday.
What doesn’t work is wholesale opposition to Biden and rhetoric that denies the possibility of agreement across the Democratic Party’s factions. And the strategy will fall apart if more moderate Democrats representing tough swing districts lose in 2022 and control of the House shifts to a Republican Party that, under Minority Leader Kevin Mccarthy, has become a Trump defense firm. Carey’s victory in Ohio will only strengthen the Trump apologists.
For her part, Brown embraced the role of a politician who delivers the goods. “I just need to make sure the people I have been called to serve are getting the resources they need,” she said in her victory speech.
For progressives, the lesson of both Brown’s victory and Bush’s is that they will deliver far more as critics who nonetheless remain allies of Biden and his coalition. Their real adversary is not the guy in the White House.