Photo courtesy of Business Insider. Shontel Brown is on the right.
I live in the Ohio 11th Congressional District, which on Tuesday will have a Democratic primary in which voters can choose either Shontel Brown or Nina Turner to be their next congresscritter since this gerrymandered district is overwhelmingly Democrat.
More than that, I have lived in Nina Turner’s state senate district for many years, and proudly voted for her several times. My favorite State Senator Turner moment was when she proposed a bill to require everyone who receives Ohio tax dollars to take a drug test in response to a Republican bill to require Food Stamp recipients to take them as a prerequisite to receiving benefits.
Her popularity soared, even Republicans laughed at their statehouse clowns, and Governor John Kasich dropped the idea like a hot rock. It was a beautiful thing to behold.
Then she enthusiastically and effectively campaigned for Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020, publicly refused to vote for Hillary Clinton, and compared voting for Joe Biden to eating half a bowl of shit. She talked about Palestinians as if they were human beings and criticized Israel for being an apartheid state, earning her the ire of the Zionist lobby. I deeply respected her for all of these things.
When she announced she was running for the Democratic nomination, as it was impossible under Ohio law for her to get on the ballot as an independent or third party candidate, to replace Marcia Fudge last year, who had been rewarded for her sycophancy with a post in Joe Biden’s Cabinet, I quickly volunteered for her campaign and put out a yard sign for Nina.
Then red flags started to go up. First, the Turner campaign responded to a question about foreign policy with a statement that Nina considered that irrelevant to her campaign. WTF? The Israeli lobby was already funding vicious attack ads on her, why remain silent? And how is foreign policy irrelevant to a congress person?
Another red flag appeared when Nina openly embraced AOC and the Squad during that campaign, and refused to utter a word of criticism about their cravenly surrender to the Democrat establishment during Biden’s first year in office. She declared herself a proud, lifelong Democrat, in spite of the fact she had openly toyed with the idea of running under the People’s Party banner. This was noticed.
Turner’s Facebook page was replete with criticism from local leftists and independent voters, who informed her in no uncertain terms that this was not what she needed to do in order to win their votes. Their warnings were ignored.
The campaign was vicious. The Democratic Party and the Israel lobby went all out to elect Shontel Brown, who IMO is nothing but a Blue Team cheerleader and whore for power(like Kamala Harris), and seems to model herself on Michelle Obama(eeeew!). She’s a corrupt corporatist through and through, carefully groomed by the local Democratic Party. They managed to do it, with Brown winning by the not-so-overwhelming margin of 50-44%, largely on the strength of Jewish, upper middle class white liberal, and heavily propagandized Black voters.
After her defeat, Turner quickly declared she would run again, in the Democratic primary, and her tone changed even more. She posted everything AOC said with gushing praise, and went on talk shows to say how much she supported Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan after progressive Democrats allowed all of the things that would improve the material lives of the working class to be stripped out of it. Her response to their failure was only to say we need to elect more people like them to Congress and “to keep fighting.” How is abject surrender fighting?
This time around, Turner has focused on criticizing Republicans and grotesquely pandering to the Democratic establishment in general and the progressive caucus in particular. She was duly rewarded by an all-out assault on herself from the former and a formal endorsement of Shontel Brown by the latter. Meanwhile, the Zionists only increased the number and reach of their attack ads. Other Democratic PACs piled on, playing Turner’s “bowl of shit” remark again and again, letting all good Democrats know they will be kicked out of the cult if they support Turner.
On May 3, unless I am completely wrong, Turner will be absolutely crushed by Shontel Brown. I will be surprised if Nina even gets 40% of the vote. Last time, I couldn’t drive three blocks without seeing a Nina Turner sign. Now, I only see Brown signs.
Nina Turner had the chance this time to at least run on the Green Party ticket or as an independent in November, but she decided to stay in the Democratic Party and described herself as a party loyalist. She tried to suck up to the corrupt Democratic elite, who anyone with a brain knows never forgives anyone to their left who challenges them no matter how hard they grovel, and alienated the many leftist, independent, and even Republican voters in this district who might have crossed over just to stick those same establishment Democrats in the eye.
Why should I, a socialist, vote for someone who sucks up to the Democratic Party? Why should I vote for someone who accepted a slot on Cenk Uygur’s vile TYT? Why should I vote for someone who clearly hopes to turn her political name recognition into celebrity status, just like other progressive Democrats have done?
I can’t think of one. Neither can tens of thousands of other disenfranchised voters in this district, and we will stay home and watch Nina Turner reap the rewards of her own grotesque pandering to power in the form of a humiliating defeat.
What a waste. Or, as Donald Trump would say, sad.
The Grotesque Pandering and Self-Destruction of Nina Turner
Depressing but illuminating; thank you. I have seen Nina Turner’s name come up a lot and been confused by her profile. This insider report really helps makes sense of that sense I had (admittedly, without ever taking the time to research her in-depth) of not understanding where to place her in terms of left-liberal-progressive-whatever they are politics. It seems like the one thing that the Democratic Party is truly good at is co-opting challengers from the left (once they’re significant enough to be worth paying attention to at all, of course).