By Jennifer Rubin

The Washington Post

It’s rare, with all the leaking and telegraphing, that we get surprised by a candidate’s decision to run or not run for president. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, managed to surprise the political and media universe by deciding not to run in 2020.

The Post reports:

” ‘I will do everything I can to elect a Democratic President and a Democratic Senate in 2020,’ Brown said in a statement. ‘The best place for me to make that fight is in the United States Senate.” . . .

“Brown said later that he always leaned toward staying the Senate, where he is the ranking Democrat on the Banking Committee, a powerful perch to pursue his passion for tighter regulation of Wall Street and greater worker rights. Six of his Senate colleagues have entered the race.

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” ‘The pull on me was always do my work here and fight for these issues,’ Brown told reporters after a vote on an Ohio judicial nominee whom he vigorously opposed. As the announcement of his decision about 2020 went out, Brown was on the Senate floor delivering an impassioned speech, walking up and down the center aisle listing the judicial nominee’s alleged transgressions.”

He said that he is not one of those politicians who has pined to run for president. (“Brown, who had never seriously considered a presidential bid until urged to do so after the 2016 election, found that he did not have the same investment in a run as other Democrats.”)

Political watchers are loath to accept explanations at face value. (Maybe he couldn’t raise money! Maybe it means Joe Biden is getting in!) However, we forget that running for president is a ludicrously grueling experience – and that the odds are overwhelming that you’ll lose. Nevertheless, the surprise stems in part from a recognition that Brown has a lot of valuable qualities for the Democrats.

Listen, I disagree with him on a bunch of issues, especially on trade, but there is no denying that he is a mature person who does not feel the need to go racing after every half-baked idea the far left comes up with. He made clear he’s for expanding health-care coverage but not Medicare for all, for strong measures attacking climate change but not the pie-in-the-sky Green New Deal.

Moreover, he is talking to voters, both white and nonwhite, about a critical topic, in a rather conservative way. His “dignity of work” is, on one level, about the widening inequality and crushing financial pressures on the working and middle classes, but it’s also about the value of work. He’s not creating a minimum guaranteed income plan to pay people who don’t work; he’s talking about measures to encourage and reward work. You can argue with his solutions, but the problem he identified is critical, and the way he discusses it draws on widely held, unifying values.

At a time the party is dominated by coastal liberals, Brown also provides an anchor to the heartland, to the Upper Midwest, specifically, which Democrats must reclaim to win the presidency. He harks back to a time when the FDR coalition – working people, farmers, immigrants, African Americans – formed the backbone of the party. The emphasis on economic fairness and upward mobility is politically sound in an era when a billionaire president, surrounded by a Cabinet of millionaires and billionaires, is most proud of huge tax cuts for the rich and corporations. Maybe other candidates will fill his shoes, but unless and until they do, Democrats will be struggling to find their voice and a winning message.

Jennifer Rubin writes reported opinion for The Washington Post.


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