Speaking as a long time Bernie Sanders supporter, I respect Shontel Brown's victory

[Tom Rinaldo]

It's likely I would have voted for Shontel if I lived in her district. Since I don't, I didn't have to make that call or give that choice my full attention, but the people who live there got ample expsure to both candidates who ran in that primary. They chose Shontel Brown and that is good enough for me.

I admire many of Nina Turner's endorsers. Beyond Bernie and AOC, I also have great respect for Robert Reich, Katie Porter and Jaimie Raskin among others. If I had to decide based on policy positions only, I suspect Turner would have been my choice. Which is not to say that I oppose Brown on the issues. She is more than fine with me in regards to our nation's priorities, and I can enthusiastically support her. But while Turner might have been a more forceful advocate for some ideas that I hold dear, ideas don't take a seat in Congress, flesh and blood people do, and in my opinion Nina Turner was a very flawed candidate.

It is not enough to hold the right views on issues, you also have to be skilled not only at advocating for them, but at moving the ball forward toward someday, hopefully sooner rather than later, implementing them. A good politician needs to pull far more people toward them than they push away. Turner, sometimes needlessly, too often does the latter. She is strident where another tone would be more effective. She frequently is divisive when common ground should be sought instead (her relationship with Democrats at the head of our presidential tickets here leaps to mind.) Her bitterness comes across as central to her personality rather than a loss of patience with justice either delayed or denied. Rather than skillfully wielding both the carrot and the stick to secure positive advances to her agenda from those whose support she ultimately will require, Turner seems all "stick" in her approach.

I get that it can be unpopular, in the short run, to fight for positions that seem to many to be politically unfeasible. Any walk back through history illustrates that there always are people who are ahead of their time, be they the early advocates for Women's suffrage, or of a 40 hour work week. It is precisely the ground breaking work of early advocates for seemingly politically unfeasible progressive advances, who shift the ground beneath us to someday make those advances possible. But even that requires some tact, and at least a modicum of diplomacy, especially so for activists who attempt to exert direct influence within the legislative sphere.

To a person, all of Nina Turner's most prominent political endorsers are themselves much more apt at working within our current political system than is she. I see her loss last night as much more a clear rejection of Nina Turner than of the ideals she espouses.

[BeyondGeography]

1. Well said

Turner is a warrior in serious need of some happy.

[-misanthroptimist]

2. I'm pretty sure you have the right of it, Tom

Turner seems to be very combative. In an election that can be a positive. In a primary it rarely works to one's advantage. This wasn't even close to one of those rare instances where it's helpful to be combative.

[Ocelot II]

3. The problem with Nina Turner, as you observed, was not her policy positions.

The problem was that she is a toxic character with a long history of bomb-throwing and bashing Democrats. Clearly she is someone who would not function well in Congress because she wouldn't have the trust and confidence of most Democrats. I supported Sanders in 2016 on the basis of his policy positions but soured on him shortly after the convention of that year precisely because it became apparent that he doesn't work and play well with others and therefore would not make an effective president. His subsequent work in the Senate suggests that he might have learned his lesson, but some former members of his entourage apparently have not - Turner being a prime example, along with her fellow Dem-basher Briahna Joy Gray and a few others. Their behavior during the 2020 campaign cemented for all time my opposition to Sanders as a presidential possibility, since he didn't and wouldn't repudiate their most noxious remarks (e.g., referring to voting for Biden, Turner said: “It’s like saying to somebody, ‘You have a bowl of shit in front of you, and all you’ve got to do is eat half of it instead of the whole thing.’ It’s still shit.”). You can't have people like that working for you and expect to govern effectively.

[CentralMass]

4. Well said Tom.