BROWN'S VOTE. Surely Sherrod Brown's vote in favor of the detainee bill was one of the more notably dispiriting to behold this week. As it happens, Jim McNeill has a profile of Brown in the new print issue of the Prospect that sets up his race as the test case for a certain kind of (very Prospecty) political approach -- the bet that amped-up economic populism can trump social and security issues in red states. But certainly this week showed that Brown isn't above casting a compromised vote on a security question if its profile is sufficiently high.
These political questions were actually hashed out at some length at the Prospect breakfast event with Brown back in March. The transcript of the discussion is here, and I think it's highly worth taking another look at. There's much about Brown that impresses, but his answers touching on both the substance and politics of national security really nicely capture, I think, some of the continued pathologies that afflict Democrats in that area.
UPDATE: On the issue of Democrats and the detainee vote, I strongly agree with Scott Lemiuex's point here.
--Sam Rosenfeld
