With his perpetually rumpled clothes, messy hair, and blue-collar talking points, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, has cultivated an everyman-at-the-end-of-the-bar image. Now add to that a belief in wild conspiracy theories.
Without evidence, the Ohio Democrat just spouted off about how Republicans cheat their way to victory. “If Stacey Abrams doesn’t win in Georgia,” Brown told a National Action Network gathering, “they stole it. It’s clear. It’s clear. I say that publicly. It’s clear.”
“If @StaceyAbrams doesn’t win in Georgia, they stole it. It’s clear. It’s clear. I say that publicly. It’s clear.”
— @SherrodBrown pic.twitter.com/cbetNmD3Jo— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) November 14, 2018
Except no, it isn’t clear. There is no evidence that Republican Gov.-elect Brian Kemp did anything other than beat Abrams fair and square. All there is to say otherwise are wild allegations pushed by disappointed Abrams allies.
The consolidated polling places that caused longer lines for voters? It wasn’t Kemp’s call, and he even opposed the consolidations as secretary of state. The purged voter rolls? Kemp removed voters because he was following the state’s “use it or lose it” law. The delays caused by voting machines without extension cords? Kemp didn’t steal the extension cords, which were eventually found by red-faced poll workers.
Reasonable people can argue about the appearance of electoral impropriety. Perhaps, for instance, Kemp should have stepped down as secretary of state before the election. But reasonable people cannot argue that Republicans actually kept legitimate voters from voting or changed voter tallies.
Of course, Brown doesn’t care much about being reasonable, perhaps because he wants to be president and being reasonable isn’t a qualification in the Democratic primary.
Calls for Brown to run for president have reached “a crescendo,” the senator said Monday on MSNBC. “We’re hearing it increase, so we’re thinking about it as a result,” he said. “We’re not close to saying yes.”
Attempting to delegitimize democratic elections is all the rage these days, and Brown is simply following the example set by the last Democratic presidential nominee. Hillary Clinton grumbled on Tuesday that “if she had a fair election, [Abrams] already would have won.” Never mind that just two years ago, when then-candidate Donald Trump wondered aloud whether to accept the election results, Clinton said his words were “horrifying” and destructive.
Clinton isn’t horrified anymore and Brown is taking things a step further. He didn’t just accuse Republicans of cheating in Georgia. He accused Republicans of cheating everywhere: “They can’t win elections because there are way more of us than them. They can’t win elections fairly. They win elections by redistricting and reapportionment and voter suppression.”
Whether or not that kind of crazy appeals to presidential primary voters remains to be seen. It is obvious for now though that Brown won’t wait around for evidence before smearing his political opponents en masse.
