Opinion: The lesson from Ohio: Democrats want to fight Trump, not Biden - Dionne Jr.
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-the-line 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 E. 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.”
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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.
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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.
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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 (R-Calif.), has become a Trump defense firm. Carey’s victory in Ohio will only strengthen the Trump apologists.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/04/lesson-ohio-democrats-want-fight-trump-not-biden