The Young Turks - TYT's Coverage of OH-11's Special Election - Part 1

Episode Date: August 3, 2021

Part 1: TYT's coverage of Election Day in the race for Ohio's 11th Congressional District seat.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. All right, welcome to the Young Turks special coverage of the Ohio 11th district primary. It is an incredibly important primary. versus progressives. We're gonna get into all the details in a minute. First, it's Jen Cougar, Anna Kasparian, and Dr. Rashad Ritchie with you guys tonight.

Obviously, Rashad's show Indisputable on right after Damage Report, it is on fire, so you're gonna want to watch it. And so Rashad, great to have you here. Great to be here, thank you. All right. So guys, let me give you update first, and then we'll talk about how we got here and what the status of the race is and what all the context of the race is. And we will cover it hopefully as soon as all the way through to when we have a winner. So the polls did close 32 minutes ago, and we do have some results. I read one result for you guys when we were live on the Young Turks.

And the first result that came in had Chantelle Brown with a surprising 56-36 lead. But that was only with 1% reporting. Something I get angry at myself for, I have to do a better job of finding out ahead of time. how much what percentage are mail-in ballots in the particular race and and if the mail-in ballots get counted first. So I don't know those facts and those facts would be irrelevant. I'm gonna give you context for the numbers in a second. But sometimes when it's 1% reporting, it's really 1% reporting sometimes with the mail-in ballots, it's a little deceptive. It's just 1% of the precincts

reporting, but it's a larger percentage of the vote because of the mail-in ballots. So we don't know that in this case. But there are now new results in and the numbers have moved a little bit. So the new numbers are Chantelle Brown with 53.3% and Nina Turner with 39.7%. So the lead is closed to about 13 points, 13.6 points down from 20. So that is good movement in Nina Turner's direction. As always, especially if you're new to this, understand that these results are coming in Different precincts at a time, this is not an actual foot race, they're running live. Oh, Shantel's taking the lead, here comes Nina Turner.

We frame it that way, but we explain it to you in the correct context. This is the pace at which they are being reported, not voted, okay? All the voting has already happened, and now you get this dramatic moments where they reported the votes that have already occurred piecemeal. And it happens every night, every election night, and that's what's happening now. So obviously with, in the beginning with Chantel having a large lead, that is very discouraging for progressives. And let me give you one more piece of context on the numbers, and then we'll get into the race. So the number of votes are important. So each district has roughly 750,000 people in it.

All the House districts are about, are supposed to have about the same number of people. Now, in Ohio's 11th district, there are 421,000 registered voters, okay? So, so that's a lower number, obviously, than the number of people in the district. And then of the registered voters, how many are going to vote and how many are going to vote in a primary? Well, that is a great range. There's a gigantic range. So, for example, two elections I'm very familiar with. One is AOC's election when she upset Joe Crowley.

In that election, there actually was not very much voter turnout. Now I don't remember all the exact numbers off top of my head, but I think the number of people who voted was around just 50,000, right? Whereas in California 25, an election I participated in, there was hundreds of thousands of votes in the primaries. So the range of votes in these primaries is gigantic. Now, more context, why did AOC have a low voter turnout, but California 25 had a very high voter turnout?

Well, California 25 was in the middle of a very contentious presidential election as well, so people were paying more attention to politics. There were four candidates there and it made a lot of news, and it was very much in dispute whether Republicans or Democrats were going to win. Whereas the AOC Crowley primary was more of a sleepy affair where most people assumed that Crowley would win and and there was not a lot of press attention to it. Okay, now when you apply that to Ohio's 11th district, there's been a ton of press attention with major figures here all the way through Hillary Clinton

endorsing Chantelle Brown and James Clyburn and most of the establishment endorsing Chantelle Brown but tons of endorsements for Nina Turner as well, the mayor of Cleveland, many local politicians, state legislators, councilmen, and then of Of course, Bernie Sanders and almost all the Justice Democrats, including AOC, Cory Bush, Jamal Bowman, et cetera, endorse Nina Turner. So it's a very big profile race. So when I look at, you know, total of 28,000 votes in so far, if it was a sleepy affair, I would say, uh-oh, that's a lot of votes in a low voter turnout primary.

And primaries get less voters, of course, than general elections do, normally. And but given the press attention, I would say 28,000 votes is probably not a huge percentage. But it's a real number. So am I concerned right now? I'm definitely concerned and if we lose this one, it will be absolutely heartbreaking. And I'm going to explain all the reasons why it's going to be heartbreaking in a second. But let me do one note here before I bring in Rashad and Anna. So I followed this race with great attention from day one, minute one.

And so I can tell you that this race in the beginning was not Nina Turner versus Chantelle Brown. It was Nina Turner versus the blob. It was like 12, 13 people in the race. And Nina Turner had no idea, I had no idea, no one else had any idea who was going to get picked by the establishment out of that blob, out of those 12 candidates. They were all very generic, very little experience, really not much to speak of overall. There was not one person where you would have had it like in California 25 was very clear.

All the establishment had said Christy Smith, she was already a state legislator, she had experienced, she was from the community, there was a ton of reasons to believe everybody's going to pick Christy Smith when he came to the establishment. In this race, it was not like that at all. So they took a long time to figure out who they were going to pick as the anti-Nina Turner in this race. So this really has almost nothing to do with Chantelle Brown. She had no name recognition, she's the head of the Cuyahoga Democratic Party, but the head

of a county party, that's, that is minuscule experience. But it really got heated when Hillary Clinton said, let me see. I guess, Chantel. So yes, Chantel Brown. And then Jim Clyburn came in, and then all the establishment came in. But to actually be a little bit more accurate, Hillary Clinton planted a flag and said, okay, and obviously everybody knows why she did it. She hates Nina Turner, hates progressives, hates Bernie Sanders, still carrying grudges around in her bag along with her hot sauce. And so she didn't care about Chantelle Brown at all. I don't know if she even looked one minute into Chantelle Brown, she's, but before Hillary, the lobbyist had already decided.

And why they decided Chantel Brown is also very interesting. It's a little bit larger conversation we'll have it in a couple of minutes here as we go forward. But Chantel Brown is basically a cutout cardboard figure for the establishment. So this is Nina Turner versus anti-Nina Turner. And that's what this race is definitively about. more so than probably any race I've ever seen. I mean, she was, she's the perfect establishment candidate.

Chantelle Brown, right? I mean, she brags about reaching policy decisions through bipartisanship, which is just ridiculous, especially in this era when the Republican Party is so incredibly vicious toward the Democratic Party and its agenda. Chantelle Brown, you know, notoriously needed a clap track during one of her rally events, because she's hacked so much charisma that she needed someone to play, people clapping in the background to make it seem like people were into her message. But Jenk, just to answer your question regarding how the ballot breakdown is, regarding absentee ballots.

Jordan Yule sent me this info and I wanted to share it with you right now about. So of the ballots, the total ballots, 26,445 are absentee. But the majority of them, 44,753 are ballots on election day. So it's a smaller portion for absentee ballots, but it's still significant. Sorry, Anna, say the numbers one more time. So there's about 26,445 absentee ballots, and then 44,75 ballots on election day. Okay, so the 44,000 clearly did not get counted in the first batch, okay? So that means the 26,000 might have been counted.

And that is not, and that matches up pretty well here with the numbers we're seeing. So far there's a little over 28,000 votes in and only a couple of precincts reporting. Correct, yeah. And so that, if all of that holds, what that means is those mail-in ballots went to Chantal Brown, that might mean that they were better organized. But it might mean that they're, if they're spread out across the precincts, it might mean that her lead is real in the sense that that would be more likely to be representative, as opposed to one particular precinct, which could be more heavily establishment or progressive.

Can you talk a little bit about what the corporate money flowing into Chantelle Brown's campaign bought her? Because the negative campaign ads, I think, might play a huge role in how people ended up voting. Yeah, I want to say these two things. And then I want to bring her shot in, And then I want to bring you guys in because you guys have a lot of comments already, and I love that you're participating here. So look, the reason she's a perfect cardboard cut out for the establishment is when Democratic majority for Israel came into the race, they spent tons of money. And overall lobbyists have spent to answer Anna's question, literally millions of dollars

against Nina Turner. And they did negative advertising. Almost all the ads were attacking Nina Turner, which is unusual. Why is it unusual? Because the other person has no name recognition. And normally you would build up the other person's name recognition. But in this case, since it was Nina Turner versus anti-Nina Turner, all they want to do was tear her down.

So they've been trying to destroy her the whole race. And at the end, they got desperate and they started lying. And they put out mailers saying that Nina Turner was against universal health care and against $15 minimum wage. In reality, she is perhaps the single biggest fighter. in favor of those two policy proposals. Now, they, the two things that the establishment uses and the lobbyists use is, just support Democratic Party, turn off your mind, don't question it,

shut up and vote for whoever Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi tells you to vote for and, or unfortunately, Jim Clyburn as well, right? And then the second tactic is they know that the voters, especially Democratic voters, agree with us on policy issues. So they will pretend to adapt progressive policy issues. And at the end, they'll even lie about progressive policy, the progressive candidate in the race, and pretend she does not have progressive policy stances. They'll pretend that she has the stance they actually have. That is why they've used every dirty trick in the book in this race.

And if it works, it is devastating, not just because our best fighter will have lost, but all. Also because that means if you have enough money and you do enough dirty tactics, anything will work. And you could defeat any progressive with enough money. And that would be incredibly dispiriting. My job is to keep it real with you guys. And by the way, don't get discouraged. We're still at the very, very, very beginning of this night.

There's tons of voting left to, I'll tell you when to get discouraged. If you ever watched 2016 election, we were very clear on when you're. you should start getting discouraged. And this is not the time. And one last thing about this for now is that the reason they picked Chantelle Brown is because she said, for example, I will never question Israel getting funding from America. And I will attach no conditions to it. So when Democratic majority for Israel, which is a right wing group, and by the way,

she had tons of Trump donors as well, Chantelle Brown did. So while pretending to be the better Democrat. But when she said, I will do whatever the lobbyists want, all the lobbyists swarmed in and said she's the one. And not, and there the corruption was not the bug, it was the feature. So all right, there's a lot more to say on that. But Rashad, I want to bring you in on your general thoughts on the race first, and then I have some specific questions for you.

But what's your take so far? Well, first, let me say that, you know, Dr. King says something really powerful during his era. He talked about the dangers of gradualism and that gradualism is defeating it itself. And there are so many who have engaged in this gradualism approach inside of the Democratic Party, indoctrinating others to believe that the only way to really get things done is to vote for what they call safe candidates. It is interesting, and you made a great point that when they saw progressive policies were actually a winner in the district, they decided to falsely adopt these progressive policies and then attack Ms. Turner. And I saw these attacks, man. I was really, I did not believe that Democrats

would do this to another. Democrat aside of a race that's left leaning. But not only did they do it, they provided no cover for the sister when it was done to her whatsoever, no cover at all, which to me is evidence of a guilty conscience, by the way. So you have this established category of Democrats, they're not interested in progress. Let me be very clear. The same ideology that is associated with Republicans, we call it the good old boy network, the good old boy system. It also coexist inside of democratic politics. What they are making decisions based on petty holdings in their personality and petty, pettiness in who they like and don't like and also who they can control. Let's be very clear. This is not about picking the best

candidate for the district. This is about picking the best candidate who can be controlled by others who are already established inside of the Democratic Party. And that's why they have this de facto test that you must say A, B, and C in order to pass their test. And if you're willing to do that, that's fine. We'll pick a county chair to run as the anti-turner candidate in order to make this a win for us. And they come in with the big guns. They come in with. with Hillary Clinton, and I know some people would disagree with me, but I wish they would sit the hell down. When you look at what the Clintons did during their era, they slowed down the progress of many agendas that should have been pushed and forced and celebrated, but they did not articulate the message. They articulated the message that was quite contrary. Those things have slowed us down. The reason why, and I say this to my college students, the reason why I'm a progressive is because I believe in progress. It's real simple.

to the point, and I back it up with the context of facts and experiences that I have. When you have candidates who are hand selected like this to simply stop a person with real heart and soul for the community, you have a danger inside of the Democratic Party. I personally like Clyburn. I personally like the guy. I can't stand what he did in this race. And I'm willing to call him out, and I've been calling him out since day one. So at some point, we also as participants, as voters in this democracy, we have to be willing to stand against those who are contrary to our policy agenda, even when we personally may like them.

Because it's not about our personal connection as much as it's about the connection to the communities that we love and that love us. You know, Anna, I'm gonna let you go here in a second, but I just want to say one quick thing about what Rashad said. I don't like Jim Clyburn, and I don't know him personally at all. If I knew him personally, maybe I get along great with him. And I say that about almost everybody, right? But in my experience, all Jim Clyburn has ever done is fighting against progress. And so I know people say, no, no, you don't understand. 40 years ago, he did something positive.

Great. And I agree with Killer Mike. And now that the voting is done, I can say. that. Why didn't I say it before? Because the mainstream media would have attacked Nina Turner through me, right? Oh, Nina Turner once said hi to Jake Huger and he says bad things about Jim Clyburn. Nina Turner is anti-democrat. It's nonsense, right? Guilt by association, usual smears, right? But Killer Mike was right in the town hall. So if Clyburn made a deal with Biden to support him and all he got in return was a national holiday for Juneteenth, but didn't

actually get anything substantive, like voting rights, like voting rights for African Americans and for all Americans, well, if Clyburn struck a deal, he struck a horrible deal and he's a horrible politician, right? But my guess is he didn't even strike a deal. My guess is Clyburn was like, I hate progressives so much. Of course, I was just waiting to see if Buttigieg won or Klobuchar one, or Kamala Harris one, and if they didn't win, okay, anybody but Bernie and now anybody but Nina. So you'll excuse me if I'm not a big fan of Jim Clyburn, fighting like hell against progressives and against progress in this country.

And I mean, Rashad, you talked about the tranquilizing drug of gradualism that King referred to all the time. And if we're being honest, Clyburn is the king of gradualism at this point. Don't do anything, don't do anything, don't do anything. Let's wait another 10, 20, 40 years. Yeah, that gradualism, first of all, doesn't even feel like gradualism at this point. Feels like stagnation, and it's not tranquilizing.

People are furious. I mean, the backlash among longtime Democratic voters against the Democratic Party is real. I mean, that's why you're seeing the electorate kind of splintering. You see all the infighting among the electorate. And what people like Clyburn and establishment Democrats want to to avoid is additional, I mean, I refer to it as infighting, but really, corporate Democrats do not want to deal with progressive lawmakers, holding them accountable, speaking out against them. I mean, look at what Cory Bush was able to accomplish.

Cory Bush embarrassed the Biden administration, as they should have been, for refusing to extend the eviction moratorium. It's because of what Cory Bush did in sleeping out there on the steps of the capital that led to the Biden administration turning around and saying, okay, yeah, no, no, turns out we do actually have executive power, and it turns out we can extend the eviction moratorium. We're gonna pretend like we're doing it in a different way, but fact of the matter is, they wanted Cory Bush off those steps. It was embarrassing for them.

And the point here is corporate Democrats in Congress do not want to deal with being held accountable. They want to be able, they love the status quo, they love businesses, you know, they love businesses, because it works out real well for them. They can pretend like they care about social issues. They can pretend like they care about economic issues. But the fact of the matter is, they're funded by similar corporate donors as the Republicans are. I mean, we did a story today about the real estate interest behind the scenes funding these

Democrats, including Joe Biden, which certainly had an impact on their decision making regarding the eviction moratorium and how initially they didn't want to extend it. one of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones, too. When they fall out of balance, everything feels off. But here's the good news. This doesn't have to be the story of your next chapter. Hormone Harmony by Happy Mammoth is an herbal formula made with science-backed ingredients designed to fine-tune your hormones by balancing estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, and even stress hormones like cortisol.

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And they don't want anyone calling them out for it. 100%. Yeah, they hate us. They hate us. They hate the squad. They hate progressive Democrats. They hate shows like this because we know what's going on. It doesn't matter if you have a D as part of your identity in Congress. If you're not doing what you're supposed to do to represent the best interests of your constituents, you should be called out. And they will pour in millions of dollars to defeat someone like Nina Turner,

because she's not going to, she's not a person who's just going to comply with what the Democratic Party wants. Yeah, look, there's nothing more pathetic than a centrist troll. And I've got a bunch of them in my Twitter mentions as well. And so as incredibly frustrated as we are with the alt left, and a lot of those guys are just right wingers pretending to be left. But there are a bunch of them that are actually left wingers. And at least I understand their rage. They're so mad that we don't have Medicare for all, decent health care.

And they've seen their families suffer because they don't have health care and low wages and all those things. And unfortunately, some demagogues take advantage of their justifiable rage. But for the centrist trolls, I just don't get them. Like, yay, status quo. It's worked out well for them. I guess so. But if you're successful and wealthy enough that you're a centrist, what are you doing, trolling online?

And I know that some of those are paid, right? David Brock admitted in 2016 that they paid for trolls to attack progressives online and to support Hillary Clinton, right? So are some of them still doing that? Probably. And so that exists in the world. I want to come back to the Congressional Black Caucus in a second because they were very relevant here.

And I think the press represented it wrong too because there was many members of the Congressional Black Caucus that supported Nina Turner. But I never read that. It's not that they didn't say that Cory Bush, Jamal Bowman, Ayanna Presley, and others didn't support Nina. They reported when they endorsed them.

But whenever they talked about it in general, the press would say congressional black caucus supports Chantelle Brown. That is terribly misleading, awfully misleading, right? And so, but some of them did. And it is for the reason that Anna is talking about. When Hakeem Jeffries says there's nothing we could do, and then Cory Bush shows you that there was a lot you could do, then Hakeem Jeffries is embarrassed and he's mortified because what do they want to do?

I want to read a couple of quotes here because from you guys, a couple of comments, because they're on point here. Man of Tomorrow says they wanted to ice her out by adopting her ideals than discarding Nina Turner, right? And that's exactly the game, but there's one extra step, guys. So Chantelle Brown at the end pretends to be in favor of progressive policies is not in favor of, pretends Nina Turner is against them, those are flat out lies, right? But if they adapted our policies and got rid of Nina Turner, me, Bernie Sanders, AOC, whoever else, and they actually did those policies, who cares? Who cares about our careers or our egos?

I'd be thrilled with that result. But it's worse than that. They pretend to adopt your policies and then never do them. And then go, oh, there was nothing we could do. And the corporate media goes, bravo Hakeem Jeffries. Bravo Joe Biden, bravo Sennie Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. There was nothing you could do. That is why the worst thing in the world is someone like Cory Bush embarrassing them

and showing that there is something you could do and putting pressure on them to go against their beloved, beloved donors. The massive theme in all of American politics, but particularly in this race, is corruption. It's corruption versus anti-corruption. That's what's happening here. By the way, Jeremy Haig wrote it, these are all super chats and we appreciate it. I'll get to the members as well. Jeremy wrote in Cheer Up, Jank, you're already looking defeated.

No, no, no, no. Look, I'm going to give you more details on these results in a second. But no, I'm not at all defeated. We have no idea who's going to win this race. But I will tell you this, at the end of the night, when we do have the results, you're going to get one of two things. You're going to get either massive rage, right? And I'm keeping it real with you guys. I will be livid beyond belief.

And I don't want anybody to get a twisted. Nina Turner ran a great race, a near perfect race. It doesn't have anything new with her or her team. And Dave Weigel from the Washington Post already previewed that the narrative is if she loses, they're all going to blame Nina Turner and progressives and say, see people reject you and hate you, right? So they already have the goddamn articles written, it's insane, okay? Go watch that interview.

So he didn't say they have the articles written, but he said that's the narrative. I know how the narrative works and they can't wait to write those misleading articles, right? So there will be rage if Nina loses. If Nina wins, I'm gonna be through the roof that they spent all those millions of dollars and they did every dirty trick in the book and they could knock her down. And if Nina wins, it'll be, yes, wonderful progressives like you guys who helped her. We raised tremendous amount of money for her through you. You did that and through the volunteers we had people sending in messages as late as today

saying that they're volunteering for her. But mainly it'll be because of Nina Turner and she'll have done a fantastic job and delivered it for us. Now one more piece of context here on the numbers. So the numbers haven't moved since they moved a tiny bit, 53.2 to 39.8, but we're, we We went from basically about 13.5% lead for Chantelle Brown to a 13% lead for Chantelle Brown. Okay?

Now that 1% reporting there, that's the context. I went and looked at a local Ohio website that's tracking this and it looks like most, if not all of the 28,000 votes in now are those original mail-in votes. So on the local site, it says zero percent, not zero percent reporting, zero precincts reporting in, okay? So the actual results from day of voting, and as Anna pointed out, about 44,000 other votes that have come in through mail-in, but today, right? We'll be counted as the night goes on.

But as I told you earlier, that's not great news either, because the mail-in votes did come in for Chantelle, and if they're representative, that's obviously very bad news. But we have no idea if they're representative. All right, back on the Young Turks special coverage of the 11th District primary in Ohio, Jenk, Anna, and Rashad with you guys. And also new members, Daniel Correa, NK, Aiden Evans, and Thomas Cunningham. Thank you guys. You make election night coverage like this possible. We appreciate it. If you're watching on YouTube, we could just hit the join button below to make that happen.

Everyone else, t.com slash join. Worst case scenario, Dragon, wrote in in the member section. Oh, doctor in the house. Woot. Okay. So one piece of reporting here, and then I want to go to Rashad, the aforementioned doctor. So I went to that local site again, and just to be clear, they're definitely all mail-in ballots. Out of 513 precincts in this district, so far, 513 have not reported in yet. So there are no precincts reporting in yet, just the mail-in ballots.

And there, as we told you earlier, Chantelle Brown has about a 13-point lead over Nina Turner with 28,000 ballots in. There's 421,000 registered voters in this district, obviously not all of them are Democrats. And although a lot of them are, and not all of them will vote. But this is likely to be a high voter turnout election because of how much press attention is received. About 17% turnout of eligible voters. That's what the press is reporting, about 17% turnout. Yeah, a little under 17%. Okay, let's do the math on that real quick.

Oh, oh, if that's true, that's around 75,000 voters. Nah, it can't be right. It can't be right. Let me double check, but I'm pretty sure. If that's the case, then. Yeah, turnout is 16.88%. Okay, so we'll see, guys. There's a lot of fog of war on election nights.

So we'll see how that plays out. Okay. Rishat, I want to go back to you. So you were talking about Clyburn and he came. and endorsed Chantel Brown, he pretty much admitted he doesn't know anything about Chantelle Brown. He claimed that, oh, I that he saw the TYT Town Hall and Killer Mike insulted him and because a rapper, and by the way, the insult was barely an insult. He started with a compliment and then critiqued the bargain that he got with Joe Biden.

And because Nina Turner briefly says yes to an insult from a rapper, Clyburn basically He admitted he didn't do any research on Chantelle Brown and decided to bring in as much of the congressional black caucus as he could against Nina Turner. Well, there's a couple of layers to that. One, do you believe him, Rashad, that that's why he did it? Or was he just endorsing against progressives as he always wanted to do? Okay, so Clyburn is lying, point blank. That is not why he did it. Now, maybe it was good cover for what he wanted to do all along.

all along. Maybe he thought it was a good cover. I thought it was a horrible cover story because if you believe that cover story, that means you must believe that this man is so damn petty that he's willing to make a policy decision that impacts an entire congressional district and could impact those in an entire country based on a slight comment that he did not like from one or two people. That to me is a more egregious reality than, And his actual reality, his actual reality is that he doesn't want to be held accountable to a progressive agenda. He's done this before. He's been on the wrong side of the minimum wage debate. He's been on the wrong side of the we need a black female on the Supreme Court.

A lot of people forgot that. He was one of the people saying, no, no, no, no, Biden doesn't need to do that. He's been on the wrong side of even the reparations debate. So these are progressive of black agendas or progressive agendas period that he's been on the wrong side of as it relates to black Americans. He gets this pass, really the power is inside of his own state. And it's because of things he's done over the years that they still celebrate. Well, here's the game of politics. Politics is the ultimate game of what have you done for me lately. That's what this is about. This is all about the current strategy, the current policy. You can't win policy arguments based on what you did 30 years ago.

And what is policy? Policy is a social contract between the community and the government. That's all policy is. And every single day, if you're not waking up trying to create a better social contract between the community and the government that's in charge, then you have lost your way. And here's the reality of most Democrats who served. They lost their way a long time ago. Here's what's happening now with progressive politicians, progressive public servants.

They are the the expression of people telling them when they were growing up, you can actually change this system. They are the expression of mom of them telling these individuals, yeah, as bad is wrong, it shouldn't be this way, but you can do something about it. And now they are in positions of authority and seeking positions of leadership and we're still talking about wait your turn. We're still allowing the old guard who has really been antithetical to the movement of progress to say, well, I'm not going to pick you. I'm going to pick someone else. It's time out for the party that started as an activist movement to allow others in authority to be kingmakers.

This should be the people's party. Progressive progressives represent that ideology at its core. And being the people's champion means that you can't be the champion for corporate America. You can't be the champion for one politician or the other regardless of their partisan affiliation. You can't be that because your actual connection and your loyalty lies with those that you represent every day. And we have to get back to that core. And that's what Nina Turner represented. She represented that all day. And you saw it happening in real time. The polling started coming back, not in our sister's favor, after these attacks went out.

And then these attacks went out and other Democrats supported these attacks or provided no cover. And nobody was the adult in the room, brother and sister said, hey, knock this all. We will not do this to our sister in a Democratic primary. Nobody did that for her. Nobody did that in this primary for her and a sea full of Democrats running. Yeah, so quick update on the race. It's a tiny, changing right now, actually a little bit more of an update. Now the precincts are starting to come in.

So Chantel Brown at 52.3, but Nina Turner now up to 41. So now the lead is down to about 11 points. So it went 20, 13, 11. One of the upsides of Chantel Brown having a lead in the beginning, as we tell you every time. The all the votes are in, it's just a matter of how they get reported. So she never really had a lead, but that's what it looks like. One of the upsides of that is that I get to say all night long, here comes Nina Turner. Okay, so that's my first time saying it.

Let's hope I say that 100 times more until we can't see Chantelle Brown anymore in the distance. But there's one other thing that I gotta tell you guys about, and then I want to go to Anna. This is also a microcosm of 2020 Sanders versus Biden in many ways, all the way through to Clyburn's endorsement making a big difference, okay, all it's hope in this case, not a definitive difference, but it's also clearing the field for the establishment candidate. If the other establishment figures like Hillary Clinton and Clyburn had not come in for Chantelle Brown, what would have happened is the other establishment candidates would have split up the vote, because nobody knew who Chantelle Brown was.

So, for example, right now, Jeff Johnson has 2.6% of the vote. And then it comes John Barnes and Shirley Smith and Seth Corey. You never heard of any of those guys, right? By the way, you never heard of Chantel Brown either, right? Until the last month or so of this election, when all the establishment came in just like they did for Joe Biden and said, no, don't worry about Jeff Johnson, John Barnes, Shirley Smith. Those people are irrelevant. We didn't pick their name out of a hat. We picked Chantel's name out of a hat.

So everybody do not vote for you, even if you're an establishment figure and you like Jeff better than you like Chantelle, do not vote for him. We're all telling you you must vote for Chantel. And so that's part of the dynamic here. A lot more on that. But Anna, yes. Just some more context into the election. So this is from, so a third of Summit counties in-person election day precincts just reported and they broke for Nina Turner. She leads the in-person election day vote by 7% here compares to negative 21% in the mail-in ballots and has brought the summit count to a near draw.

So this is a smaller part of Ohio, but it's still relevant, just showing you how the vote is breaking down. I wanted to respond to some of what Rashad Rishi said, because, you know, as he's talking about the purpose of being a member of Congress, which is to be a public servant, a servant versus what it has turned into today, I mean, you can't take the role of money in politics out of that equation. Because when you have corporate donors doling out campaign contributions to both Democrats and Republicans, politics just boils down to the lowest common denominator. And what is the lowest common denominator? Colts of personality, right? Most of the political discussions that we see have to do with cults of personality. So how did the corporate media cover this race? Honestly, I didn't see

much coverage at all, to be honest. But one thing that I did see yesterday was this obsession over who Nina Turner voted for in 2016. I don't care. I mean, what does Nina Turner, first of all, she didn't disclose who she voted for? She said it's a private matter. Fine. I don't care who she voted for. Her election record, who she voted for for president. has no bearing on what her governing style would be. I know what her governing style would be based on the way that she campaigned for Bernie Sanders, based on the policies and the issues that she's championed and fought for. Those are the issues that should matter.

But American voters, thanks to our corporate media, essentially running interference for corporate candidates, would have you believe that all that matters is the cult of personality nonsense. Yeah, now that is exactly right, but there's one more layer to it, that's so important. Let me tell you why the establishment is scared of death of black progressives in particular. And then female progressives and most of all black female progressives, because they're used to using certain figureheads, and that goes to the point that Anna made about the cult of personality and saying Nancy Pelosi represents all women. And so if you're against Nancy Pelosi, that means you're against women.

James Clyburn represents all African Americans. So all African Americans should vote the way that Clyburn tells them, all women should vote the way that Pelosi and Clinton, Hillary Clinton tell them. And if you don't, then you're sexist or you're racist. Well, they have trouble making that argument against black progressives. And now, let me focus even more specifically on black progressives. Because black voters decide Democratic primaries. They certainly do on national elections because of the overwhelming importance of South Carolina

and the South and Super Tuesday. Now, by the way, that's not an accident. The establishment basically decides which states go first, and they pack the beginning of the Democratic primaries with southern states because their Democratic voters are predominantly African American. Once you have control of the Congressional Black Caucus through people like Clyburn, then you can just tell everybody, black America is for this candidate, and they are not for the other candidate. But when you have a black progressive, that destroys that talking point. So in this case, you've got Nina Turner, and they so desperately want to say

that, no, if you're black, you should vote against Nina Turner. And if you're a woman, you should vote against Nina Turner, but they can't say it. And that's another reason why Nina Turner drives them nuts, because if African Americans in this country find out that the progressive position is their position, then the corporate Democrats are in a world of trouble. They cannot lose that vote. It'll not only undermine them in specific elections like Ohio's 11th, but then their strategy of South Carolina and Super Tuesday helping this.

and being their firewall will be destroyed. That is why it's so important for black progressives to break through. And if they do, then they will be able to put out a message that counters the corporate Democrats, counters the establishment, and that's kryptonite to them. So that's my take on it. Rashad, what's your take on that analysis? I agree 100% brother, and here's what has happened for decades. For decades, the black leaders, many of them that we have celebrated in America,

were handpicked by the white oppressors that we fight. Handpicked, funded, endorsed, and we think that somehow we get a different outcome. Now, that's the work in definition of insanity, right? To do the same thing over and over again and expect a different outcome. What happens in this really ironic and quite perverted reality of supporting those who are supported by those who don't support us, is that when we engage with them, when we contribute to them, when we give them support through our vote, we in fact start financing our own oppression. And in financing our own oppression, we are picking the leaders who create the policy that continues to oppress the progress of black people. Now, I do remind everyone that there is no finality in democracy, or at least there shouldn't be. We're not at a dictatorship, at least not

yet. And because there's no finality in democracy, every election you participate in, every election, you have the ability to engage in, even if your candidate does not win, it is still a win for democracy as long as we continue to keep democracy alive and well, which by the way, obviously, Republican states will try to take that away by the minute by picking who actually counts the vote rather than the voters actually picking the politician. So I think there's something to be said obviously about current black leadership, but it's not just current black leadership, this has been historical. I take it to the crime bill. When the crime bill was signed into law by Democrats, supported by Democrats, it was a whole lot of black people, a lot of black

leaders who supported that crime bill as well. Many of them have received convenient amnesia as a relation to that crime bill. Now, collectively, in hindsight, every black leader I talked with who was present during that time, they say that was a mistake. Well, not only was it a mistake then is a mistake now to not support progressive policies. It not only hurts the black community, it hurts us as a collective, because when you look at the commonality of what we believe as a nation, most Americans, most Americans, item by item policy by policy, they lean progressive. So how are we losing the progressive messaging battle when most Americans are actually on outside if we leave with a policy first agenda? Yeah, I'm going to give more details.

what Rashad's saying is that is historically 100% accurate. But before I do that, tiny bit of results here, the lead narrows more. 51.9 to 41.5, so now it's down to a 10.4% lead, which allows me to opportunity to say, here it comes, Nina Turner. Okay, so now, back to the Congressional Black Caucus and their pivotal role in all of this national political drama. The very old guard in the Congressional Black Caucus was a mixed bag. In the beginning, it was great, right? So we had John Lewis, absolute civil rights hero, Barbara Lee, one of the most progressive

people in all of Congress, and consistently so for decades, right? And then you're Jim Clyburn, and Jim Clyburn is mixed because in the beginning he had a very good civil rights record, but then for most of his career, he has been just flat-out establishment. And in fact, he is the majority whip of the Democratic Party. Now, if he used that power for more civil rights accomplishments and other things that, whether they're progressive or not, help the Democratic agenda, that would be great. But we haven't seen that from Jim Clyburn, honestly, in decades. So, and in fact, we're in the middle of a great example now. I mean, we've got to have voting rights for the People Act is not optional. We must, must, must

have it. And yes, Clyburn does speak up on it. Always be fair, credit where credit is due. But has he gotten anything done? No. Has he slept out on the steps of the Capitol Hill? Like Cory Bush just did to actually win on the eviction moratorium? No. And look, you don't have to sleep out in the street to prove a point, right? But we need to see some fight in you. If you actually are a civil rights hero or you're going to get people voting rights. We haven't seen almost anything out of Clyburn because unfortunately what winds up happening after a while is maintaining your own power becomes more important than serving the voters, serving policy, et cetera. But even they are, but they're not the main issue because again, Barbara Lee is one of the best

and obviously John Lewis was a hero. But when you go to the middle part of the congressional black caucus, that's where you have full blown, remember the John Lewis of the world and Barberlees of the world came in. Some of them came in pre-corruption. The corruption starts in 1978 because of Supreme Court decisions legalizing money in politics, right? So the ones that are fully affected come in in the 80s, 90s, 2000s, et cetera. And I'm not going to pull any punches here. The leader of that bunch is Hakeem Jeffries.

And he's one of the biggest corporate Democrats. He's one of the most conservative Democrats. And I would argue he's one of the most corrupt Democrats in all of Congress. That group then says, to Rashad's point, whatever the establishment says, I got power, they've made me very powerful. Kim Jeffries is now the number four Democrat in the House, right? So I will take their talking points and validate them and pretend that they help African Americans. Yeah, I said it.

Now, again, the Congressional Black Caucus is complicated and nuanced. This is ironically not a black and white issue, okay? Now, the newest members of the Congressional Black Caucus are the best members of Congress. Cory Bush, Ayanna Presley, Jamal Bowman, and the list goes on and on. And so those folks are awesome. And so hence the middle of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Hakeem Jeffries crowd, now they're in a panic. What if the Cory Bush's and the Barbara Lee's at some point expose us? What if people realize we haven't been helping them at all?

We've been taking tons and tons of donor money and only helping ourselves. Oof, that would be deeply problematic for them, right? And if people get a sense that they've been betrayed, obviously that is not going to help the political career of those particular congressmen, right? And why is Hakeem Jeffries number four in the Democratic Party? because he's among the most. He's among the people who raise the most amount of money from corporate lobbyists. Why is Nancy Pelosi number one?

Because she's the Speaker of the House? Because she raises the most amount of money. She raised over $720 million. That was years ago when I last checked. She's probably over $800 million by now. And the press applauds her. Oh, she's such a wonderful master legislator. No, she's good at collecting money from lobbyists.

That's her number one go-to thing. This doesn't have anything new with race or gender, because number two is Denny Hoyer, white male, also great at raising money. Number one in the Senate is Chuck Schumer. And who raised the most money in the Senate? Chuck Schumer, okay? This is not complicated. Money rules Washington.

And the last thing that the Akeem Jeffries of the world want you to find out is that they are part of that club. So when I said in the beginning, you'll excuse me, if I don't think Clyburn's done much in the last couple of decades, I think, in fact, he's been counting. I think he joined that cabal and I think he joined that group that said, yeah, as long as we get to keep our power, what pretty little lies would you like us to tell folks? And I know that they will consider that sacrilege in Washington to say that, right? But that's the truth, that's the reality.

You could look at how much money they raised from donors, you could look at their policies, you could look at what they've accomplished, and their record speaks for itself. And so, and if all of that didn't already happen, now in this, Nina Turner race in Ohio's 11th District, the mask came off. Because before they had excuses, they would say, oh, no, we're just supporting the incumbent. We're not against Cory Bush, we just want to support Lacey Clay because he's in the Congressional Black Caucus and he's an incumbent. Well, the press thought, oh, that's, of course that's true, or the beloved corporate Democrats

have weighed in, we will serve them completely, and they never questioned that, right? I questioned it thoroughly, I thought they were definitely against Cory Bush, because she's a progressive. But they got to tell that pretty little lie. But now there is no incumbent in Ohio's 11th district. And they weren't neutral to two black women. They said no, go to Chantelle Brown. And by the way, why do you think they picked Chantelle Brown rather than 11 or 12 other candidates that were also pro establishment? Because they needed to have an African American woman against Nina Turner, Because she's an African American woman, right? And so so that the Congressional Black Caucus and Jim Clyburn and Hakeem Jeffries of the world could come in and say, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're not against black candidates.

We picked the black candidate, but there's no incumbent in the race. You have no business in this race at all, at all. The reason you came in is because you're afraid that progressives are going to expose you, especially Nina Turner. So Nina Turner is closing in on Chantelle Brown. So Chantelle Brown's lead is now under 10%. Dina Turner at 42%. Chantel Brown at 51.8%. So these results are obviously coming in very slowly.

And it is exciting. And obviously Nina's closing in more and more. And if you were here from the beginning, Chantel Brown started out with a 20 point lead and now it's under 10. But as always, guys, it depends on the precincts that are reporting in. So I told you not to be too worried about the original. so-called lead that Chantel Brown had, and I'm telling you now not to get over-excited about Nina Turner closing the lead, it could go back and forth, okay? But is the fact that

Nina Turner closing the lead a good thing? Of course! Of course it is! Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com at Apple.com slash TYT. I'm your host. Shank Huger and I'll see you soon.