Originally published at: Kamala Harris Gives Sherrod Brown A Fighting Chance To Win
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is in the fight of his life. The incumbent won back his seat in 2012 and 2018, the latter race during a year that was a bloodbath for his fellow Democratic senators in Republican-leaning states. Brown’s margins grew much tighter, with his 15-point 2012 rout halved six years later. And now,…
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Is Brown doing anything different from Tim Ryan who lost to Vance? I certainly hope so.
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See, the difference is that Ohioans, with the exception of the MAGA crowd, generally like Sherrod Brown. And the negative aspects of Moreno’s background (a fake “rags-to-riches” story and wage theft accusations, to start) haven’t been hammered home yet. I expect they will be after Labor Day. I’ve been seeing Sherrod Brown TV ads for about a month now. I’ve yet to see a Moreno ad.
Having said all that, turnout will be essential.
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The bloom is off Trump and MAGA. This could be a good year for Democrats across the country. I am sick to death of journalists and professional Democrats dividing the country into Red States and Blue States. It is time for the Democrats to try to become a national pary again.
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There may be “synergy-energy” at work here!
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I’m just not sure the Ohio Dems can overcome their propensity for screwing things up. I live here and we’ve been disappointed again and again by their lack of coherent strategy, much less basic skills. Issue 1, the abortion rights constitutional amendment adopted last year, was on the back of local volunteers, with the Dems not really wanting to even push it until popular support overwhelmed them. Their 2014 candidate against John Kasich, who’d tried to shove an anti-union law down peoples’ throats and got spanked for it by voters, was Ed Fitzgerald. His campaign, if you remember, was blown to pieces by the release, 3 months before the election, of a story about a late-night incident in a car with a woman not his wife, when he didn’t even have a valid driver’s license, which had occurred 2 years before the race. Most of JD Vance’s crazy misogynistic rants and other creepy weirdness also happened BEFORE the Ryan race, and none of it came out then. As far as Ryan and the Dems were concerned, there appears to have been no oppo research done on Vance, or if it was done it was completely mis-handled.
The good news is that Brown’s run strong campaigns before, and the Issue 1 vote last year demonstrated that Ohioans aren’t always voting for the Repubs. Brown’s got people working on the ground here and they seem sharp. Some hope is warranted.
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The thing is that Sen. Brown and Sen. Tester are running against people, not polling trends. And even when polls are well done and vigorous, they can’t tell you who people are actually going to vote for.
And if the choice is a person who has represented the state well and effectively and a convicted felon supporting meh, more people are giing to pick the quality guy vs. the Goppers.
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I want to say something about Senate projections and right wing hack media outlets that cherry pick polls and ratings of races.
On the RealClearPolitics (RCP) Senate map, Florida, where by its cherry picked polls show the Republican senate candidate up by just over 5%, is rated as "leans Republican.
Those very same RCP cherry picked polls show the Democrat senate candidates leading in Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania by just over 7%, 6%, 5%, 5%, and 7% respectively and are all rated by RCP as “tossups”.
I guess it just proves the old accountants’ ditty that while “figures don’t lie, but liars can figure”.
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Even the goobers in my little former road wide spot know what trump is. They may be repubs but they aren’t into dictatorships
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I hear what you are saying. Ohio is treated the same way most states the national party treats states they have given up on. For a party to be effective it needs to be doing things between elections. It needs to be training candidates and key workers. It needs to target potential opponents and start doing opposition research. It needs to be growing its bench so you aren’t stuck with some guy who has a DUI and a history of not paying his child support, just because he has some money to fund newspaper ads. You can’t put that together at the last minute. That requires an organized party.
We don’t have real party organization in red states these days because the national party decided they needed to focus money on protecting blue states and going after a handful of swing states they got embarrassed about a few elections ago. During the Reagan era that might not have been a bad strategy but Reagan is long in his grave and it is time for the Democratic party to reemerge from his shadow.
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I’m in SW Ohio, near JD’s stomping grounds. The Harris-Walz ticket has dropped some money into the Youngstown (east very near PA) and Toledo (northwest near MI) markets. I have also seen a few ads for Harris. If, somehow, there was time for them to split up and take ONE day (Harris in Columbus, go to “The Shoe” after classes start) and Walz could head to both east and west to talk to the rural folks, and bring Sen. Brown, folks might be really surprised at the outcome. Republicans here are corrupt and out about it, and folks are sick of it. Fingers crossed.
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Clinton (Bill) won Ohio twice
Obama won Ohio twice
The Abortion ballot measure won
Brown has won
It is possible for Democrats to win statewide contests in Ohio.
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Co-sign on all of this. The local and national Dems and the Harris campaign MUST get turnout up and that means juicing it here and elsewhere that’s reliably blue! Look at how dire things have gotten and the 2022 midterms may have been even worse. This is what some people don’t want to hear: After Cleveland Voter Turnout Sags In 2020, Democrats Weigh What's Next | Ideastream Public Media
We are facing systemic apathy, voter suppression and disenfranchisement (voter purging and much more). Harris and the Dem party from top to bottom needs to get us very sturdy lifelines and fast.
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In regard to Bernie Moreno; this is from his Wikipedia page:
I> n 2023, Moreno settled over a dozen wage theft lawsuits prior to launching his U.S. Senate campaign. He was ordered to pay over $400,000 to two former employees. He was rebuked by a state judge for shredding documents potentially related to the case.
A 2024 report found that Moreno had faced two lawsuits alleging gender and age-based discrimination; Moreno’s campaign responded by saying both employees who sued him now support his Senate campaign.
In the run-up to the Republican primary in March 2024, an Associated Press report found that an account on adult website Adult FriendFinder had been created by someone with access to Moreno’s email, soliciting “men for 1-on-1 sex”. In a statement provided to the Associated Press by Moreno’s lawyer, a former intern said he wrote the post and described it as an “aborted prank”.
Abortion
Moreno opposes abortion, describing himself in a 2022 interview as “Absolute pro-life. No exceptions”,[22] In 2023, Moreno’s campaign revealed that he had personally donated $100,000 to Protect Women Ohio Fund, the campaign against Ohio’s 2023 abortion-rights referendum.[23] At a March 2024 Republican primary debate, he voiced support for exceptions for rape, incest and when the mother’s life is in danger.[24] At that debate, he also expressed support for access to contraception.[25][26] He later expressed opposition to the Right to Contraception Act and said that he would have voted with U.S. Senate Republicans to block the bill. A spokesman said Moreno “supports comprehensive access to birth control for women but not the far-left gimmicks in this bill.”[27] He supports a federal 15-week ban on abortions.[28] Moreno has argued against federal funding of Planned Parenthood.
LGBT community
Before his Senate campaign, he expressed support for the LGBT community, with his business sponsoring Cleveland and Akron’s hosting of 2014 Gay Games. In a 2016 interview, Moreno credited the TV series Modern Family as having changed perceptions on gay marriage, noting that his eldest son was gay. During his 2024 Senate run, he accused LGBT activists of advancing a radical agenda of indoctrination.[29]
Energy
Moreno has said energy is a top priority, expressing support for using coal, and oil, extracting natural gas, as well as building more nuclear plants.[30]
Immigration
On immigration, Moreno has expressed support for building a wall on the United States Southern Border, deploying military personnel on the border, and designating Mexican cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs). Moreno has also repeatedly called for an end to birthright citizenship.[31][32] In 2016, he expressed support for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, saying “we need to help them come out of the shadows”,[33] but now supports deporting them.[34]
Foreign policy
Moreno has called for an end to U.S. support for Ukraine in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War. He has expressed support for Israel and has said Israel needs to “end Hamas — end it like we ended ISIS.” After the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, Moreno argued Israel does not need any additional funding from the United States.[35]
Donald Trump
Moreno in 2016 described Trump as a “lunatic invading [the Republican Party]” and said he could not support a Republican Party led by “that maniac”.[36] He wrote in a tweet that he had written in a vote for Marco Rubio in the 2016 presidential election.[37] During a 2019 radio interview said, “there’s no scenario in which I would support Trump.” In 2024 Moreno said, “I wear with honor my endorsement from President Trump.”[38]
Other positions
After the 2020 presidential election, Moreno criticized those denying the results of the election, but in 2021 expressed his belief that the election had been “stolen”.[37]
Moreno previously expressed support for background checks for gun owners and in a 2019 interview said “What gun do you need with 100 bullets in it?” When asked about these remarks, a spokesperson for his campaign said in 2024 it was “unequivocally” not his position today.[34]
In 2023, Moreno said that reparations should be paid to the descendants of Civil War soldiers who helped to free slaves.
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If you can, this is a good time to donate to and volunteer with GOTV efforts in Ohio and Montana.
If Dems don’t have the Senate, we can’t stop John Roberts from shredding the rest of the constitution for his rich, christofascist friends.
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Moreno for Windsock 2024
It’s amazing the crooks and scam artists who come out of the woodwork once they see that the government is no longer capable of defending the political system from crooks.
John Roberts rang the dinner bell. Trump and Santos and Moreno came running.
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The Democratic party’s answer to Reagan was to elect a Repub-light in Bill Clinton who passed NAFTA and shipped union jobs from Ohio and other rust-belt states to Mexico. Ford F-150’s are now built in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico. The trains bringing them in come right through south Tucson.
TMF hypocritically, but effectively, beat Hillary over the head with NAFTA. He was able to do that because Obama never came out and fought for unions, so the formerly union states continued to drift to the right. Now, forty years after the Reagan union-screwing, Joe Biden helped lift the union cause. Harris and Walz are keeping it up. I’m heartened, but I’m also aware that the Democratic head-shed regularly proves its incompetence.
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A 50 state campaign is how Obama won. As a PS, I lived in northeast Ohio in the 60s and 70s. The Republican Party was quite moderate then,
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