Michael Kazin: Sherrod Brown Should Challenge Hillary Clinton for President

[muriel_volestrangler]

(This isn't particularly my position, since I don't know too much about Brown. But he seems to be liked here, when he's mentioned, so I thought this worth putting into the mix)

At the risk of seeming ridiculous, I think Sherrod Brown should run for president. I know that, barring a debilitating health problem or a horrible scandal, Hillary Clinton is likely to capture the Democratic nomination. I realize too that Brown, the senior senator from Ohio, has never hinted that he may be tempted to challenge her. “I’m really happy where I am,” he told Chris Matthews last winter, when the MSNBC’s paragon of impatience urged him to run.

Yet, for progressive Democrats, Brown would be a nearly perfect nominee. During his two decades in the House and Senate, he has taken strong and articulate stands on every issue which matters to the party’s broad, if currently dispirited, liberal base. When George W. Bush was in office and riding high, Brown opposed both his invasion of Iraq and the Patriot Act. He has long been a staunch supporter of abortion rights and gay marriage, and is married to Connie Schultz, a feminist author who writes a nationally syndicated column.

Brown’s true mission, however, is economic: He wants to boost the well-being of working Americans by any means necessary. Brown has been talking and legislating about how to accomplish it for years before Elizabeth Warren left Harvard for the Capitol. During Obama’s first term, he advocated a larger stimulus package, called for re-enacting the Glass-Steagall Act to rein in big banks, and stumped for comprehensive immigration reform. He champions the rights of unions and the power of the National Labor Relations Board and criticizes unregulated “free trade” for destroying manufacturing jobs at home. He also led the charge among Senate Democrats that pressured Obama to drop his plan to appoint Larry Summers to head the Federal Reserve and appoint Janet Yellen instead.

On his lapel, Brown wears a canary pin to honor the workers’ movement that “gave us all food safety laws, civil rights, rights for the disabled, pensions and the minimum wage.” Like the canaries which miners once took with them into the pits to warn them of toxic gas, the pin symbolizes the need to stay on guard against any employers and politicians who threaten those gains.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120351/sherrod-brown-president-2016-he-should-challenge-hillary-clinton

[madokie]

1. I really like Sherrod Brown

on every issue I've heard him take on I am on the same side as he is

[merrily]

2. IMO, Brown would be an excellent addition to the primary. So would Feingold.

[RiverLover]

8. I forgot about Feingold. I'd also love to see him run!! ~nt

[Skidmore]

3. I would like to see Sheldon Whitehouse put up a challenge.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

4. He's a fantastic pro-labour type.

The only real problem I have is that all of our best potential lefty type candidates are Senators. We have to strip mine Congress for a President?

We need to start building name rec and trumpeting accomplishments of non-Senatorial lefty populist types. Union leaders, mayors, governors. People we can get into races that don't undermine what little pull to the left exists in the Senate.

[merrily]

11. Coming from you, I'm impressed. Go, Whitehouse!

I think New Democrats have praIctically been the Democratic Party for so long that a lot of Democratic Mayors and Governors are either Third Way or converts to Third Way. I'd go for a populist non-politician.

[brooklynite]

5. I know the Brown family personally...I asked...he doesn't want to run

[RiverLover]

6. That's a bummer...never say never though!

That's what EW says too, and I think that will change.

[merrily]

10. Did you ask if he wanted to run if Hillary decided not to? Or did you just ask if he wanted to run?

Because when you posted about approaching Schweitzer, it was only to run if Hillary decided not to run.

[brooklynite]

14. This was an open discussion, not relating to Clinton's status in the race.

Some people actually DON'T want to be President...

(nb - I did not ask Schweitzer to run if Hillary didn't; I said I would support him if Hillary didn't)

[geek tragedy]

7. #1 qualification for being president: really, really wanting the job

Sherrod Brown is someone I hold in extremely high regard, but the "xyz pol should run for president" genre always overlooks the fact that reluctant presidential candidates are a disaster (see, e.g., Fred Thompson).

[merrily]

9. Catch 22: No one who really, really wants that job should ever get it.

And Thompson would have been a disaster, no matter what.

[northoftheborder]

12. I like, respect, and admire Sherrod Brown.

However, he does not have the wide recognition necessary at this point to be elected President. He could run in the primary, to boost his chances for later possibilities. He is one of the few real progressives in the party.

[Proud Public Servant]

13. Stop thinking like a Republican

It's the GOP that seems only ever to nominate candidates who have first run and lost. Obama wasn't widely known before running, nor was Clinton, nor Dukakis, nor Carter, nor McGovern. Win or lose, we have never been a party that only ever nominates known quantities. I'd love to see Brown run, and feel certain he could win in the general if he were our nominee.