From the Magazine: Sherrod Brown may have been Dems’ best 2020 hope. The remaining field could learn a lot from his ability to advance left-wing goals while sounding like a moderate.
The telemarketers have invaded cellphones, so when I got a call at 11:45 a.m. on March 7 with a number but no name attached to it, I didn’t bother to answer. My mistake. It was Jenny Donohue, the communications director for Sen. Sherrod Brown , wanting to give me a “heads-up about something.” A minute later, she sent me an email titled “Senator Will Not Run for President in 2020.”
Sen. Sherrod Brown stands with his wife, journalist Connie Schultz, and South Carolina voters at a meet-the-candidates oyster roast at the Summerville Country Club in Summerville, S.C., on March 2, 2019. I. Brown doesn’t promote potentially disruptive “big government” programs that could significantly raise taxes. He also avoids extreme social and cultural positions. These are, fundamentally, left-wing proposals. But when I was following Brown around New Hampshire, I was surprised to hear people at his events describe him as a moderate.
Brown also avoids the extreme social and cultural positions that are today being heavily promoted by young left-wing activists. He is a longtime advocate of civil rights and women’s rights, and was one of a minority of Democrats to vote in 1996 against the Defense of Marriage Act; but when I asked him what he thought about calls to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement and reparations for African Americans, he said, “You don’t abolish ICE. You improve it.
That alone doesn’t explain Brown, however. Other aspiring politicians have grown up in a dying industrial town without becoming a tribune for its workers. Former House speaker Paul Ryan, a fierce defender of corporate prerogatives, grew up in and later represented Janesville, Wis., which was ravaged by factory closeouts.
Brown travels to Alabama for the march in Selma. Brown en route to Selma. Brown travels to Alabama for the march in Selma. During his “Dignity of Work” tour, Brown quoted a passage from the New Testament’s Book of Matthew, Chapter 25, that was a central text of the Social Gospel. In it, Jesus praises those who feed the hungry, tend the sick, clothe the naked and take in the stranger — what is done for “the least of these” — and condemns those who give the thirsty nothing to drink.
Pragmatic Means vs. Utopian Ends I don’t know why Brown decided not to run. I suspect from his statements afterward that his heart was not in the long slog of a campaign. But just as I became convinced that Brown would have made a formidable general-election candidate, I became equally convinced that he would not get the Democratic nomination. Here’s the political science version: The calendar was against him.
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