Free trade’s just a dandy concept/Advertisers tell us so/Don’t you question, don’t you doubt it/You’re so stupid. You don’t know.” So goes a song Sherrod Brown composed on his guitar back in 1993

Democrats’ messaging remains consistent to this day.

Democrats’ leftward lurch on economic policy

Consisted of telling people who were suffering to be happy that billionaires were doing so well.

Even in 2024, Mr Brown felt he weathered attacks over transgender athletes and illegal immigration. “The ad that beat us,” Mr Brown says, was one that declared a vote for Mr Brown to be a vote against Mr Trump. “There was no really good answer for that,” he says.

The answer Democrats settled on has been to abandon trans people rather than embrace workers.