Democratic voters frustrated by their party’s feckless leadership got a shot in the arm last month when former Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, an economic populist with deep ties to the Buckeye State’s industrial working class, launched his campaign to take on Republican Sen. Jon Husted. Brown is by no means certain to prevail. In his bid for a fourth Senate term, Brown lost by 3.5 percentage points last November to MAGA newcomer and car-dealership tycoon Bernie Moreno. And the first poll of the race has him trailing the undistinguished Husted by six points — a sign of how much Brown, who won reelection in 2018 by a healthy margin, is now the underdog against Trump’s GOP.
Despite the uphill battle, Democrats desperate to see their party rebound in next year’s midterms regard Brown as a powerful asset. Since the Nineties, his aversion to neoliberal globalization and muscular advocacy for union households have been critical to preserving his party’s links to the New Deal tradition. Though flipping control of the Senate is a tall order — Democrats need to gain four seats and aggressively defend at least three — Brown remains one of the party’s few viable bridges to blue-collar Trump country.
Democrats undeniably need more voices like Brown, who can take on vested interests and connect with voters mistrustful of both political parties. The paradox of Brown, however, is that he is a capable political veteran who inadvertently highlights his party’s weaknesses. He is the quintessential candidate of “Trump Democrats” — voters whom most Democratic officials and bigwig liberal donors vilified for the better part of the last 10 years. That alone reinforces the notion that contemporary progressivism is hopelessly elitist. But Brown’s lonely stand for industrial labor also suggests the Democratic establishment has tacitly welcomed the so-called dealignment of working-class voters and the rise of regional polarization, phenomena which tend to attenuate social-democratic commitments to collective bargaining, a stronger safety net, and large-scale developmental projects.
Brown’s view of political economy encapsulates the road not taken by Democrats since the end of the Cold War. The Biden administration’s patchwork effort to fashion a national industrial strategy more coherent than Trump’s nodded to Brown’s convictions, forged during the first brutal wave of plant closures in the Seventies and Eighties. That was a bittersweet vindication for Brown and other red-state Democrats who were dragged down by Biden’s unpopularity on immigration and other fronts. Despite the long tailwind of nationalist populism and the sting of Trump’s 2024 triumph, influential Democrats still quietly put technological progress and the possibilities of a borderless world above Brown’s “Old Left” concerns.
Brown’s re-entry to national politics could impose some much-needed discipline upon his party. His stature is arguably strong enough to set the tone for the Democrats’ midterm strategy. He embodies the kind of unflinching left-populism generally missing from Democratic ranks, even within the Rust Belt; younger Democrats like Rep. Chris Deluzio of neighboring Pennsylvania invoke Brown’s philosophy to chart a way forward. Brown’s unparalleled name recognition can’t be discounted, either. A “comeback kid” narrative would cement his legacy while perhaps granting Democrats a second chance in what was once America’s pivotal swing state.
Still, it is hard to argue Brown represents both the party’s heritage and its future, as was plausible when he first entered the House of Representatives in 1993, railing against the perils of free-trade. Brown may occupy unique ideological terrain in the Democratic coalition — he is a fierce critic of corporate power but also an economic nationalist who sees China’s manufacturing dominance as an existential threat to America’s future. A political outsider he is not. At this stage, his pitch may no longer convince an electorate pulsing with anti-establishment sentiment bordering on outright nihilism.
Neither does Brown’s familiar face indicate that the Democratic establishment, divided between the Pacific Coast and the Northeast, has made any serious effort to rehabilitate their battered local party branches across the industrial heartland. Indeed, the fact that Brown had to be prodded out of semi-retirement by the hapless Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, simply underscores that Democratic elites have neglected rebuilding their leadership ranks in Ohio and other former swing states. No one from Ohio’s shrunken Democratic congressional delegation is tapped to be a future party leader, and unlike state parties in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania that have managed to “nationalize” local races against right wing opponents, Ohio Democrats have struggled to draw sustained interest in reviving their fortunes. Under the circumstances, Schumer’s recruitment of Brown is less a hearty endorsement of left-populism than an admission of the party’s strategy malpractice.
Party officials might also overestimate the luster of his particular blend of progressive populism and nationalism, particularly for those Millennials and members of Gen Z who see no downsides to economic integration with China. Brown has ramped up the attacks on Trump’s tariffs, but he has always been a unions-first trade protectionist at heart. This raises the question of which voters Brown might court to regenerate his coalition. Ohio has seen slow population growth this century, and while it has gradually become more diverse, underwhelming turnout among minority and younger voters has been a persistent problem for Democrats.
Brown evidently did not counteract these trends in his vexing loss to Moreno. But even if he manages to mobilize irregular voters who lean Democratic, he will have his work cut out for him across the state. The Right-wing tilt of Ohio’s rural counties is a microcosm of Democrats’ regional woes, something Brown’s fundraising prowess and persistent outreach is unlikely to significantly reverse absent a sharp economic downturn on Trump’s watch.
“Brown remains one of the party’s few viable bridges to blue-collar Trump country.”
And there is the legitimate concern of whether Brown, aged 72, truly represents the change the party needs. In a party weighed down by plodding institutionalists and clueless figureheads, he is the rare Democratic elder despondent progressives could rally to. On the other hand, the party elite seems intent on throttling younger Left-wing insurgents like Zohran Mamdani or Omar Fateh instead of cultivating fresh talent, a problem which may eclipse Brown’s bona fides on workers’ rights and leave younger party activists uninspired by his campaign. Either way, a Brown comeback, however heartening for Rust Belt Democrats, wouldn’t exactly herald a passing of the torch.
There are other aspects of the enthusiasm gap to consider, as well. Democrats’ silver lining in recent years is that they have overperformed in special elections and the last two midterms. But the face-off with Husted, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine to fill Vice President JD Vance’s vacated seat, is not the rematch with Moreno that would galvanize grassroots activists. And in contrast to fellow Democrats Gavin Newsom, JB Prtizker, and Chris Murphy, Brown will almost assuredly have to tack in a different direction from those craving #Resistance 2.0.
Should Brown succeed, he will be in the unenviable position of having to check Trump and congressional Republicans while also pursuing an “Ohio first” agenda that might conceivably transcend party lines. Partisan Democrats will have to contend with the unsavory prospect that Brown might end up collaborating with Moreno, a businessman repeatedly accused of wage theft, as he did with Vance briefly following 2023’s disastrous train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
Finally, it is doubtful Brown can singlehandedly bend the Democratic coalition, now dominated by the Brahmin Left, to his way of seeing things. He is unabashedly for the type of constituencies and economic sectors that Schumer infamously wagered were worth letting go in favor of upscale suburbanites and knowledge workers. But losing to Moreno, who boasted on the campaign trail he would oust the “old commie,” was a bitter blow to Brown’s own theory of politics.
Brown’s champions in progressive media believed he could distance himself from the unpopular Biden-Harris administration while simultaneously capitalizing on the investments that Joe Biden’s signature industrial policies were beginning to bring to Ohio. That assumption proved overoptimistic. Brown touted the long-term economic benefits of policies his influence had at last helped bring to fruition, along with legislation he crafted that saved the private sector pensions of thousands of blue-collar Ohioans and restored Social Security benefits to thousands more public sector workers. Alas, the backlash to inflation, Biden’s lax border policy, and cultural progressivism neutralized these positive developments.
This highlights the challenge of being a “progressive” populist when progressivism has drifted so far from its origins. Over the course of his career, Brown has proved reliably liberal on key cultural issues such as abortion, and he generally adapted to the pressures of party activists, moving in a more lenient direction on border enforcement until 2023, when it became politically untenable. But Brown never seemed especially enthusiastic about his party’s unquestioning elevation of identity politics in the past decade. He has always emphasized the fight against a “rigged system” (albeit with an extended hand to firms who want to revive Ohio’s proud industrial heritage). Perhaps this time around Brown will feel emboldened to declare his independence; humbled by the public’s rejection of “wokeness,” it is possible, too, that progressive advocacy groups will grant his new campaign greater flexibility.
Thus far, however, he has avoided explicitly criticizing how sectarian identity politics and niche cultural stances handicapped populist and labor-friendly red-state Democrats. Such is the predicament of all Left-leaning politicians trying to navigate the currents of this “post-liberal” or “post-neoliberal” moment. Brown implores his party to wake up to the central fight around economic power. Yet, wary of stoking an intra-party civil war, he appears reluctant to claim the middle ground on other issues that might be framed by neo-progressive activists as capitulating to the MAGA worldview.
The reason is simple: it is difficult in America’s hyperpolarized climate to stake out a nuanced position on anything Trump has routinely exploited for political gain. Most salient, of course, is immigration. Trump’s indiscriminate deportation regime has been executed with grotesque zeal, and lately it has cost him public support. Voters desiring an alternative still rooted in stronger borders and labor law nevertheless don’t trust national Democrats to manage the issue properly.
Whether Brown can help earn back that trust remains to be seen. After countless reports magnifying how much their party has bled working class support across race and region, it is clear Democrats must stress the sort of “kitchen-table” issues Brown has long insisted the party embrace. By the same token, soak-the-rich populism isn’t the panacea for the Left that today’s progressives wish it were, and to succeed electorally Democrats will have to make difficult choices that will incense some of their single-issue activists. As much as he may relish playing the firebrand underdog, Brown will have to take risks of a greater magnitude if he is to lead his party to redemption.
