A House Race in Cleveland Captures the Democrats’ Generational Divide

Nina Turner’s move from Bernie Sanders’s campaign co-chairwoman to House candidate has highlighted a Democratic divide between impatient young activists and cautious older voters.

WARRENSVILLE HEIGHTS, Ohio — Nina Turner had just belted out a short address to God’s Tabernacle of Faith Church in the cadences and tremulous volumes of a preacher when the Rev. Timothy Eppinger called on the whole congregation to lay hands on the woman seeking the House seat of greater Cleveland. “She’s gone through hell and high water,” the pastor said to nods and assents. “This is her season to live, and not to die.” On Aug. 3, the voters of Ohio’s 11th District will render that judgment and with it, some indication of the direction the Democratic Party is heading: toward the defiant and progressive approach Ms. Turner embodies or the reserved mold of its leaders in Washington, shaped more by the establishment than the ferment stirring its grass roots.