AKRON, Ohio – While U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown has no plans to endorse a Democratic presidential candidate before Ohio’s March 17 primary, he told an Akron crowd Friday that he expects Joe Biden to snag the nomination and go on to defeat Donald Trump in the general election.

Speaking to a crowd of about 700 at an Akron Roundtable event at Quaker Station, Brown discussed the state of the presidential primary races, his reflections on the impeachment process and the subject of his talk, his most recent book, “Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America.”

“Biden is considered certainly the front-runner now, and Bernie [Sanders] is going to criticize Biden as being part of the Democratic establishment – whatever that means, considering that Biden got all these votes from African-American women and from people in labor, from a lot of elected officials, from a lot of people that really see this race as, ‘Who is the most likely to win?’ And I think that’s probably why Biden has that status now, as the frontrunner,” Brown said.

Over the week preceding Brown’s talk, several Democratic presidential hopefuls -- billionaire Tom Steyer, former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, billionaire and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts -- dropped out in quick succession.

All but Warren and Steyer have endorsed Biden.

“I expect that Biden will be the nominee and I expect that Biden will beat Trump,” Brown said.

In addition to critiquing Sanders’ campaign platform of taking on the Democratic establishment, Brown said Sanders failed on his promise to turn out young voters.

“Bernie certainly excited a number of people in that generation, although turnout hasn’t been up as much as either he promised or we all hoped,” Brown said. “But I think that we appeal to young people especially on issues of diversity and climate and cost of education.”

Brown raised no criticisms of Biden during the 40-minute talk, which included questions from the audience and moderator Michael Douglas, former editorial page editor of the Akron Beacon Journal.

Brown also predicted that Ohio will be in play in the general election.

“You do know from four years ago that Trump won Ohio by eight points, and won the three states that are considered the ‘blue wall’ – Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin – by one,” Brown said. “Those are the three states that are going to get the most attention, but this will be a very real race in Ohio. I think it will be close in Ohio.”

The majority of the discussion focused on his book, “Desk 88,” which tells the stories of eight senators who previously occupied Brown’s mahogany desk on the Senate floor: Alabama’s Hugo Black, Rhode Island’s Theodore Francis Green, Idaho’s Glen Taylor, South Dakota’s George McGovern, Tennessee’s Al Gore, Sr., Wisconsin’s William Proxmire, and New York’s Herbert H. Lehman and Robert F. Kennedy.

Brown has used the desk since joining the Senate in 2007. He previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2007 and as Ohio secretary of state from 1983 to 1991.

Brown said he worked on the book for about 10 or 11 years, having brought what he thought was a final draft to his wife, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz, about five years ago, who suggested it was about “half-done.”

The senator read about 160 books to study the histories of the eight men and their political legacies, while interspersing his own reflections and comparisons to contemporary politics.

Brown defined a progressive as “somebody that believes strongly that they use the force of government to do good, and to make differences in people’s lives, whether it’s through social insurance like unemployment comp or Medicare or social security, whether it’s always, always standing up for civil rights and gay rights and human rights. It’s really believing in having government work to move the country forward.”

All of the subjects of Brown’s book, he pointed out, are white men – but he expects that to change with future occupants of Desk 88.

“If someone 50 years from now – I assume I’ll be retired in 50 years – if someone 50 years from now holds that desk, it will be a progressive and it will likely be a woman, it will likely be a person of color,” Brown said.

Brown said progressive eras, such as President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s agenda in 1933 to 1936 and President Lyndon B. Johnson’s reforms in 1964 to 1966, don’t happen to often in politics. He called President Barack Obama’s first term as a “progressive era, sort of.

“Progressive eras: they don’t happen often… but when we win, we do big things. So in 2009, Obama tried to do big things, probably not quite big enough things, and we didn’t do the politics very well,” Brown said.

Progressive politicians and other Democrats may struggle to win elections, Brown said, because their legislative efforts aren’t focused on maintaining power in the same way as Republican politicians.

“When Republicans win, they do things like voter suppression, campaign finance changes that allow more corporate special interest dollars, attacks on labor unions to weaken labor unions,” Brown said. “When Democrats win, we do things like the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank. So that’s one reason why Democrats don’t win as often.”

When Douglas asked Brown what can be done to encourage young people to run for office, Brown responded with a popular millennial and Gen Z phrase.

“It’s sort of, ‘OK, boomer,’” he said. “We’ve had our change in this generation, and look what we failed to do on climate, and look what we failed to do on race. I mean, race relations, maybe they’re better than 20 years ago, maybe they’re not, but they’re not what they should be.”

After the luncheon, which was sponsored by State & Federal Communications, Brown signed copies of his book for audience members.

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