Ball: Why Nina Turner lost

There were a few factors. One is that the establishment Dems came in with $millions in ads that outright lied about Turner's history. That is what progressives deal with every time. But more importantly to Krystal, the establishment made the case that Turner is a trouble-maker, not a team player with the Party, and painted her as usual as a radical asking for far too much. It was a false but compelling narrative for the predominantly black district, playing on their fears that getting something with the establishment, though inadequate, is still better than getting nothing with the radical. Meaning of course that the establishment has to still peddle that narrative because repeated polling shows that the majority of voters want the progressive policies but they are painted as radical and too much.

 

Krystal though does note that Cori Bush was a great example of fighting for a progressive policy by camping out on the Capitol steps because Biden said he didn't have the power to continue the eviction moratorium, laying the blame on Congress. Meanwhile Pelosi punted on it and released the House to recess. But Bush kept it up, shaming them both for abandoning a lot of people to eviction when there was indeed something they could do about it. And fortunately corporate media uncharacteristically stepped up and reported on it so that millions saw it and rang the White House and Congress' phones off the hook. A day later Biden had the CDC extend the moratorium via the CDC.

 

So both the Turner and Bush stories had mixes messages. One is that progressives are still being beaten over the head with big money to prevent them from getting elected. But once elected, like Bush, there are public relations tactics they can use to shame their own Party into submission. Granted they won't work on Repugs since they have no shame whatsoever. But establishment Dems still want to maintain at least the facade that they give a shit about the working class so well-publicized shaming works. We need to keep putting up progressive candidates to defeat the corporate cronies, continually expose the establishment's big money corruption in those campaigns, and keep up using every available tactic to retain progressives if we're ever going to have a government of, for and by we the people.