- In case you haven’t noticed: There’s a bit of a messy civil war going on in the Democratic Party, and one of the more boisterous battles is between those who think it should move hard left in 2020, to chase a progressive base, or to the center, to woo the working-class voters whose support Donald Trump rode to the presidency in 2016. This fight, and all of the party’s disagreements, have an identity aspect, like everything in American politics: Should Democrats lean further into being the party of women and minorities or focus more on the white voters who turned out last time?
- But Brown seems, to himself and a growing group of fans, at least, like he could square the circle. He’s the rare surviving old-school midwestern Democrat who thrives among the kinds of workers who voted for Trump, and he’s among the most progressive senators — he wins in big cities. He was just reelected again in Ohio, after all, where most Democrats not named Sherrod lost on November 6. That night, he called his campaign a “blueprint for America in 2020.”