Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Ohio by more than 450,000 votes in 2016. Yet Ohio could well lead the blue wave in 2018.
Senator Sherrod Brown, a progressive who was once a key target of Republicans, is up by 13 to 17 points in his re-election campaign, depending on which poll you follow. Former Attorney General Richard Cordray, who also served as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is leading in the race for governor.
Several House seats could also flip. In their extreme gerrymandering of Ohio, Republicans got so greedy that they distributed likely Republican voters rather thinly—so that in a state where the popular vote for Congress hovers around 50–50, the result was 12 seats for Republicans and just four for Democrats. But in a wave election, where swing voters switch to Democrat, there aren't enough Republican voters to go around, and several of these designer seats could fall to the Democrats.
Brown, as much as any progressive Democrat in public life, emphasizes pocketbook issues. He is also a down-the-line progressive on social issues such as abortion and LGBT rights—but he leads with the economics. That’s why socially conservative blue-collar voters cut Brown some slack on the avant-garde social stuff. They know he is on their side. The rest of the party could learn something from Brown.
So, for that matter, could political commentators, who keep blathering on about the dangers of Democrats moving “too far to the left.” But you need to distinguish economics from social issues.
Progressive populism on economics is always a winning formula for Democrats. It is indeed possible to move too far left-fringe on social issues and scare off mainstream voters, but popular economics provides a lot of inoculation on issues like abortion rights, civil liberties, immigration reform, criminal justice reform, and civil and human rights broadly defined.
Commentators need to get it through their heads that there is a difference between left on economic issues and left on social issues. And of course Wall Street on economics and left on social issues is the worst of all worlds. RIP Hillary '16.
