Nina Turner is a former Ohio state senator, progressive activist, and recently co-chair of the Bernie Sanders campaign.

Dear Tina, I was recently appalled when I learned about what you said while speaking to The Atlantic and responding to a question about why the decision of the people of the Democratic Party to make Joe Biden their nominee was so disappointing for some progressive Democrats.  You were quoted by multiple sources as saying, “It’s like saying to somebody, “You have a bowl of shit in front of you, and all you have to do is eat half of it instead of the whole thing.’ It’s still shit.” You just broke the most obvious unspoken rules of politics, “Don’t tick off today the people you want to vote for your candidates tomorrow”.  With those words you didn’t do future progressive candidates any favors.

When I learned this I had just seen an interview of you on CNN with Anderson Cooper where you spent a lot more time criticizing the Democratic National Convention for not emphasizing progressives than you spent criticizing Donald Trump.  This despite the fact that Anderson provided you with multiple lead-in questions which provided you with ample opportunities to sound off on Trump.  However bad that was, your remarks about eating a half bowl of s—t were totally unacceptable.

Let me remind you that you are, at least for now, a member of the Democratic Party, and we have an election to win which Bernie Sanders himself described as the “most important election of our lifetime”.  He and Elizabeth Warren are all in, and there you are still on the outside throwing darts.

You have said repeatedly that progressives are the “future of the Democratic Party”. I don’t think that I can disagree with that.  However, they are not the present face of the party at this point in our history. This time around Democrats, by a large majority, decided that Joe Biden was the right person for the job during these trying times.  It wasn’t even close.  As best I can remember only one or two states elected more delegates to the convention for Bernie than Joe.

Don’t forget it was people who acted like you that gave us Donald Trump for the last four years.  In Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin a total of 70,000 people in all three states viewed themselves too progressive to vote for Hillary Clinton.  They voted instead for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate.  It turns out that if those 70,000 people would have voted instead for Hillary, Trump would have lost those three states and subsequently lost the Electoral College. The last four years would have been very different and tens of thousands of people would not have died unnecessarily.

As a long time political observer, let me give you some advice that you may not want to hear, but you need to hear it.  Be patient.  If you are right the Democratic Party as a whole will be much more progressive in the future if young people of today finally decide to get involved and vote and don’t get more moderate as they get older, marry, have kids, and take on more responsibility.  However, moderates are always going to make up a substantial segment of our party and progressives will need them to put their candidates into office.  It makes absolutely no sense to alienate them just because you are disappointed.

Cajun (Rick Guilbeau)    8/22/2020