Sunday, August 8, 2021

What Special Election Lessons? The Script Didn't Flip

<"Trust Us, Really..."
The Reckoner>


 <i.>
Our mainstream news media wasted little time clearing its collective throat Tuesday, once the dust settled from Ohio's Congressional special elections last week. No such drama for the Squawker and myself, as we also did our civic duty, in helping to whittle an eight-candidate field of city commissioners to six, which we'll winnow down to three seats in November.

I felt pleased that one candidate I particularly disliked wound up among the two who didn't make the cut. She sent a mailer that sounded like a political version of the dating game. It consisted of six bullet points, starting with this moth-eaten chestnut: "To be a responsible steward of taxpayer dollars."

It reminded me of so many personal ads back in the day, from people whose chief desire amounted to "Going bowling/walking on the beach/walking in the woods with my mate." Right, who doesn't? But I'd skip to the next one, thinking, "Tell me about you, not your hobbies. I need more substance here." Evidently, my fellow voters thought likewise of Ms. Cliche Obvious Pants's precious bullet points.

The takeaways from Ohio seem more elusive. The 15th District Republican race offered little drama, as Trump-anointed ex-coal industry lobbyist Mike Carey swept an 11-candidate field. He garnered 18,655 votes to 6,724 for his nearest rival, Jeff Lane, a sufficient show of strength for a 12-county district that includes sections of Columbus, plus small towns and suburbs south and west of the city. He's favored this fall over Democrat Allison Russo, who netted an impressive 13,585 votes herself. We'll see how that turns out.

Carey played to Trump's cultish base, as evidenced by the photos I saw of him cradling an AR-15! (Or maybe it's an M-16...I can't tell, offhand.) Subtle, it ain't, but the Trump experience was never about that, anyway. Still, a lot of mainstream media headlines seemingly hedged their bets, coming off a Trump-backed candidate's defeat in another special election, in Texas.

Notable examples included the Canton Repository ("Trump Secures Win in 15th Congressional District With Mike Carey, But Low Turnout Clouds Picture"), and Jewish Insider ("An Early Test Of Trump's Clout In Ohio Special Election"). Even one of my favorite blogs, Down With Tyranny, raised a similar hope in its headline ("Will Trump Be A Double Loser In Ohio Tuesday?").

We know the answer: not really, amid continuing hype of "Republican civil war," and a "Trump resistance within the GOP," but I'm not seeing it here. For now, empty suits like Carey see a brighter future in lining up to kiss The Donald's ring. It beats ending up on the outs, as Liz Cheney has discovered.

Yes, turnout for the 15th District race was pitiful (only four Republicans, besides Carey, broke the 5,000-vote mark). Even so, Trump continues to cast a shadow over our democracy, because he has the money, the juice and enough warm bodies willing to aid and abet his quest. Short of his death, illness or imprisonment, we aren't wrenching free of him any time soon, especially if his army continues to reward the behaviors associated with him.


<"Silly Season TV":
The Reckoner>


<ii.>
The results of the Democratic race in the 11th District, consisting mainly of Akron, Euclid and Cleveland, OH, are way more troubling. Establishment-backed favorite Shontel Brown eked out a narrow win over progressive firebrand Nina Turner by a roughly 4,000 vote margin (37,666 to 33,420 votes), while two other candidates barely registered, with less than 1,000 votes apiece.

The postmortem crowing is running on overdrive, as the Washington Post's headline made clear: "Nina Turner's Loss in Ohio Means Biden Doesn't Need to Keep Caving to the Left." Politico fell in line, as well, with this summary: "Establishment Prevails As Brown Beats Turner In Ohio Special Election." I'll spare you further examples.

Turner's principal offense seems to have been her derisive summary of Biden's march to the nomination last year: "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." That commentary came in the wake of Bernie Sanders's second unsuccessful Presidential campaign, on which she served as his national co-chair.

Such comments raised the ire of Biden ally Jim Clyburn,  who didn't like being called "stupid" for not demanding more from his longtime buddy, as Turner stated during an appearance with hip-hop artist Killer Mike. Clyburn cited this moment as his reason for getting so personally involved, though I suspect it came down to a baser impulse: She doesn't belong here, because she backed Bernie. She led protests against Hillary Clinton's nomination. Let's put this firmly gal in her place.

The resulting race was as dispiriting as American politics gets,  complete with barrages of slick attack ads, charges and counter charges, super PAC spending orgies, and enough mud to keep the Mississippi River flowing for decades (climate change be damned). 

Clyburn's intervention stinks like the usual brutish machine politics, when The Kids (that's us, remember?) dare to question The Adults, like him and his crowd ("Sometimes, I have real problems trying to figure out what progressive means," a statement that revealed way more than he wanted it to, I suspect).

I know little about Shontel Brown. However, her campaign's go-along-to-get-along themes, coupled with her eagerness to hoover up special interest money from Republicans like New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft -- who donated $1 million to Trump's 2016 inauguration -- don't bode well for her future constituents. At least, those who can't drop a sufficiently heavy donation to buy the appropriate access to her conscience, such as it is.

It's the reason why critics like State Rep. Juanita Bryant ask, "As a Democrat who has helped Democrats all over the state, we cannot condone Democrats that are accepting money associated with Trump. How can we have someone who is the party chair and says that she's a Democrat's Democrat but is accepting Republican money?" 

It's a fair question, one that Brown will undoubtedly do her best to avoid answering. For the depressing nitty gritty, read "Lessons From The Nina Turner Race?" (see below). The donors lining up to buy the seat read, as you might expect, like a Who's Who of corporate America -- the same one, of course, that's busily donating again to Republican insurrectionists, after indulging in the usual 30-second spectacle of public moral outrage. You get the picture.


<iii.>
At the same time, the results show the need for progressives to work smarter. Hard work alone isn't enough when you're up against reactionary forces willing to spend whatever it takes to buy a seat. It's also fair to ask if Turner's dream was a realistic fit for a district where Hillary Clinton posted her strongest Ohio margin in 2016 (68 percent), and Biden ran equally well in 2020 (73 percent).

But if I were Clyburn and company, I wouldn't crow too long. The race also highlighted a continuing generational divide in a party whose senior leaders are, well seniors, in their seventies and eighties, from Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (70), at the lower end, to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, at the upper end (81). If I were Brown, I wouldn't crow too loudly, either. For all the dirty politicking on her behalf, Tuesday's result suggests she has a long way to go, before everybody feels the love.

"In the decisive Super Tuesday contests that effectively ended the Sanders campaign, the Vermont senator won an estimated 63 percent of 18-29 year olds and 42 percent of voters between 30 and 44," The Week notes, in its own commentary (see below)." These voters want sweeping change and aren't necessarily as put off as older voters are by the progressive left's broadsides against the Democratic establishment."

The recent scramble over last month's expiration of the eviction memorandum perfectly illustrates the last point of the above quote. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in late June that it preferred future extensions to go through Congress alone, yet Biden waited -- literally -- until the eleventh hour before the July 31 expiration date, before asking Congress to try and pass something.

How does this happen, with Democratic control of the Presidency, and both houses of Congress? Landlords, the last time I checked, aren't the most popular public figures. Shouldn't Democrats relish the idea of picking a fight with them? Sure, it's great that Biden rolling out a new 60-day extension, based on the pandemic, but it shouldn't have taken a public sleepover by Missouri Democrat Cori Bush to push him that way.

Such missteps make the Clyburns of the world look less like geniuses, and more like the Michael Corleone seen in The Godather, Part III (1990), as the aging wise guy struggles to hang onto his empire, while he gropes for a purpose beyond...well, continuing for the sake of it. But I'll give the Godfather this much: at least he sprinkled a little bit of sugar on that brown steaming bowl, if only once in awhile, when he wanted to win somebody over. --The Reckoner


Links To Go (The Dark Money Dance Continues):
Down With Tyranny

The Intercept 
In The Race Against Nina Turner,
GOP Donors Fund Shontel Brown:

The Week
Democratic Leaders Should Think Twice
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