CARTER AND ELLIS: What Progressives Can Learn From Former Dem Lawmaker Who Lost In 2024 

Former Democratic Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, who lost his seat in November but may attempt a comeback for Senator or Governor in 2026 in a state that has now transformed into a reliable Republican domain, recently published a long 4,000+ word essay in the New Republic magazine in which he offers the Democratic Party a new path forward.

In the article, Brown writes, “Democrats must reckon with how far our party has strayed from our New Deal roots. How we see ourselves—the party of the people, the party of the working class and the middle class—no longer matches up with what most voters think.”

One of his situational remedies is that “Democrats need to become the workers’ party again. To do that, we need to better understand workers and their lives, and we need to have ordinary workers more actively involved in the party and its decisions.”

While Brown’s message toward the working class may have political attractiveness, this same theme landed on deaf ears throughout the very areas of Ohio that his revised message targets. In the 2024 Senate race, which he lost to Republican Bernie Moreno 50.1% – 46.5%, the then-incumbent Democrat could only manage to carry eight of the state’s 88 counties.

Seven of those eight domains, all in Ohio’s metropolitan counties and containing the cities of Akron, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Toledo, also voted for Kamala Harris. In fact, the only rural, coal county that both Harris and Brown carried was Athens County, found along the West Virginia border. The lone county that Brown won, where Harris lost, was Lorain County, a western suburban Cleveland entity that Brown represented during his seven-term tenure in the U.S. House. All of Ohio’s other 80 counties voted for both Messrs. Trump and Moreno.

Mr. Brown might be on the right track in terms of where the Democratic Party needs to position itself in the future: not supporting illegal migrants, men playing in women’s sports and increased government spending to further empower Washington.