George Will's odd column about Sherrod Brown and progressives

[alp227]

"Sherrod Brown is the odd man out with Democrats," says the 2nd-rate Todd Akin. Because:

Sherrod Brown won’t be considered because the Democratic Party’s activist core is incurably devoted to identity politics — the proposition that people are whatever their gender is (or their race or ethnicity or sexual orientation or whatever seems stupendously important at the moment). And the party’s base seems determined to nominate and elect a woman, thereby proving that what has occurred in Britain, Germany, Israel, India, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and other nations can happen here. Feel the excitement.

Brown, however, looks, sounds and acts like a real, as opposed to faculty club, leftist. Although he is a Yale graduate, he has the rumpled look and hoarse voice of someone who spent last night on Paris barricades, exhorting les miserables to chuck cobblestones at the forces defending property. And he is not just talk.

He has sponsored legislation to codify, with caps on insured deposits, the principle that a bank too big to fail is too big to exist. He is impeccably wrong, meaning progressive, about free trade. He is for “fair trade,” a.k.a. protectionism disguised in Pecksniffian sanctimony demanding that less-developed nations adopt stronger labor and environmental standards. And in 2012, a sign outside the Ohio Democratic Party headquarters proclaimed: “Only vehicles assembled by union workers in North America are welcome in this parking lot.”

As a congressman in 2003 on what was then the House Committee on International Relations, he, unlike Sen. Clinton, was impeccably right in opposing what became the worst foreign policy blunder in U.S. history, the invasion of Iraq. He was unpersuaded by the supposed evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and said President George W. Bush had not answered questions about the war’s cost, the occupation and probable Iraqi civilian deaths (which turned out to be more than 125,000).

And he ends with this bizarre closing statement:

Are progressives so preoccupied with gender that they prefer Clinton’s risk-averse careerism, or Warren’s astonished tantrums about the obvious dynamics of big government, to Brown’s authentic progressivism? Yes.

This guy...why is he still employed with the Post?

[MannyGoldstein]

1. Like most writers of opinion these days,

Will is basically Chance the Gardener with a good vocabulary and a reasonable grasp of sentence and paragraph structure.

[Cosmocat]

13. One of countless psuedo intellectual "conservatives"

it always mystifies me when the right screams about intellectual elites - I see more highfalutin crackpot republican mouthpieces like Will than I can even begin to try to keep track.

It is still the same for these clowns - they work from their end point, the evil liberal boogyman, and build whatever rationalization they can to justify the nonsense they cling to as their "conservative principles."

[UCmeNdc]

2. It is like George Will is cracking up.

His whole article is just mystical BS
It is almost as if he realized his view on conservatism is wrong and he does not know what to do,
so let's write some crazy stuff just to fill up my column.

[FSogol]

4. He's just floundering. He looks to the future and sees several years of promoting Jeb Bush, Paul

Ryan, or Rick Perry and it terrifies him. Wonder if one day we'll be reading about FBI the digging up his backyard?

[reACTIONary]

6. I read WaPo every day...

... so almost every day I have to make the choice to read or not to read G. Free-Dreck Swill. Every once in a while I take a peek at the first sentence or so... and that cures me of my curiosity.

[stuffmatters]

3. I'd love to see Sherrod Brown in the White House

George Will is kind of damning Brown with faint praise here, but Will's barbed praise shouldn't detract from the fact that Sherrod Brown has been an awesome and consistent populist senator. He'd be a terrific president.

[Cosmocat]

12. YEP

for the most part, he is what a Democrat SHOULD be ...

[sendero]

5. I hope that when I get old..

... if I live that long, I don't get stupid like this douche nozzle. Frankly, I'd rather be dead.

[JHB]

7. And if Brown were the current likely front-runner, he'd be accusing liberals of...

...hypocritical sexism for snubbing two prominent women.

BREAKING: Liberals don't act in the way George Will thinks they should act! Film at 11!

[alp227]

8. Quick! What's Georgie's DU handle? Nt

[HughBeaumont]

9. George Will: Tries the Stopped Clock, but just keeps on ticking with the bullshit.

Fair Trade is not "protectionism lite". That's cliche Steve Forbes/Thomas Friedman False Dilemma nonsense. The data released since the late 80s proves that this scheme has NOT been a net/net win for workers.

http://economyincrisis.org/content/free-trade-fair-trade-whats-the-difference

http://www.epi.org/publication/trade-pacts-korus-trans-pacific-partnership/

http://www.citizen.org/documents/flawed-NAFTA-deficit.pdf

http://citizen.org/documents/press-release-NAFTA-at-20.pdf

[lanlady]

10. Anyone who uses the phrase "pecksniffian sanctimony"

Is guilty of pecksniffian sanctimony.

(Now, what the hell is it?)

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

11. It baffles me why no one ever considers Brown for 2016

Seeing as Warren has made it clear she doesn't want to run, people should try to draft him.

[brooklynite]

14. He won't be considered because...he doesn't want to run either

I know his family; I asked.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

15. I've often wondered if the messy divorce in the 80s might hold him back

Even though the person who made the allegations is on good terms with him and even campigns with him, it might be something he doesn't want the GOP to spew 24/7 in a national campaign.

[TheKentuckian]

16. He isn't considered by most Democrats because Brooklynite asked?

Interested also has nothing to do with consideration. Warren has stated she isn't running on several occasions but is often considered.

I think he might have hit blind squirrel mode a little bit. There is an identity bias with some and little focus on policy some others.

[brooklynite]

17. Consider all you want...it'll be another fantasy choice like Warren...

I have no problem with anyone who wants to run against Clinton. But the more the anti-Clinton folks dream of candidates that aren;t going to step up, the more disapointed they're going to be when the voting starts.

[TheKentuckian]

18. Okay, thanks for the advice but beside the point.

The point being Brown seems the much better bet if you are going to Draft someone. We are talking a multi term Senator from a key swing state with a hell of a track record going back to terms in the House and Warren is a former Republican greenhorn from Massachusetts.

That isn't an attack on Warren, it is a comparison of the birds in hand. Just as a hypothetical, pretend both are interested, why would Warren be preferred over someone who has proven they can win statewide in Ohio multiple times with his track record on the issues pretty much across the board? It isn't rocket science.

[TeamPooka]

19. Fuck George Will. nt

[bklyncowgirl]

20. Has George Will been spending time in Colorado checking out the marijuana brownies?

I'm a woman and a progressive (of the populist variety) and I would vote for Sherrod Brown over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary.

[danriker]

21. What about Brown as Clinton's running mate?

I like Brown a lot, but I don't know a great deal about his background. So, I don't know if there are things - one mentioned in this thread - that might preclude this. But I think he would make a great running mate for Clinton.

I am not advocating Clinton. I would prefer a true progressive, but if she is inevitable, as the polls seem to indicate, a progressive running mate would make sense, particularly one from Ohio. The Democrats need to win Ohio and this might go a long ways towards doing that.

This idea had not occurred to me until I read Will's column, which I thought smacked of mischief making of some kind, but I don't know what that might be. He also wrote a column about that idiot doctor running against Merkley here in Oregon in which he suggested she had a real chance to win. I don't think there is any chance of that happening, but the Kochs certainly are trying to make it happen.