Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, after coasting through his 2018 re-election largely due to Ohioan’s fears of Trump and Republican attacks on healthcare, has decided that his tried-and-true method of paying lip service to real people’s needs while doing nothing to help is still just what the doctor ordered. Yesterday, The Hill published an article quoting Brown as saying Medicare for All is not a “practical” idea.

“I know most of the Democratic primary candidates are all talking about Medicare for all. I think instead we should do Medicare at 55,” Brown said.

What a great point from the Senator. After all, it’s a well-known fact that people from ages 0-54 never have health problems.

“I’m not going to come and make a lot of promises like President Trump did… I’m going to talk about what’s practical and what we can make happen. And if that makes me different from the other candidates so be it,” Brown said to The Hill.

Coming after the ‘practicality’ of Medicare for All may seem like a strange argument to make, given that 32 out of 33 countries classified as ‘developed’ have universal healthcare (you get three guesses which country that 33rd one is), and 15 of them have single-payer. Medicare for All is about as far from a ‘radical new idea’ as one can get, and significantly less affluent countries have it – Iceland, for example, has a GDP 23.91 billion, compared to the United States’ 19.39 TRILLION. Why is Brown so caught up in the age-old conservative adage of “this would be nice, but how do we pay for it?” It’s very clear that Medicare for all is not only achievable, it’s borderline easy. We have 15 other countries to model from, for God’s sake.

Even more bizarre is how clearly this is a betrayal of the Ohioans that Brown claims to represent. Northeastern Ohioans overwhelmingly support Medicare for All – 60 percent want a single-payer system, and people from all demographics view healthcare as a human right.

The people of Ohio – and the people of America – need single-payer. We need abortion-inclusive, trans-inclusive single-payer healthcare for all. 79 million Americans have unpaid medical debt. In 2015, one million people went bankrupt from medical bills. Americans’ life expectancy dropped last year for the third year in a row – the longest period of decline since World War I.

All of that makes it seem like, in order to have said these things yesterday, Brown must surely have hit his head on something before giving that interview. There are, however, a few explanations.

1. Brown is a corporate stooge just like pretty much everyone else in Congress.

Sherrod Brown has gotten literally millions of dollars from the healthcare industry, insurance industry, and pharmaceutical industry. So when he says ‘practical,’ he’s not talking about what’s practical for his constituency, he’s talking about what’s practical for his donors – what will cost them the least money and not put their profits in harm’s way.

2. Brown is considering a run for President.

This is not news. Let’s repeat one of the quotes from above:

“I’m not going to come and make a lot of promises like President Trump did… I’m going to talk about what’s practical and what we can make happen. And if that makes me different from the other candidates so be it.”

‘Different from other candidates’ makes it pretty explicit that he’s intending to be a candidate. He will likely join the ranks of the million or so Democrats vying to be the one to defeat Trump. But if his strategy is to backpedal on healthcare to make himself more appealing to centrist voters, he should ask how that worked out for others in his state.

Danny O’Connor lost the special election to Troy Balderson last spring. His words on healthcare to the Guardian were embarrassingly meager: “I think what we have right now is something that’s worth protecting. I think there are small tweaks we can make.”

Aftab Pureval also lost his election in Ohio’s 1st District and avoided endorsing Medicare for All.

Betsy Rader, running for Ohio’s 14th District, avoided Medicare for All. Lost her race.

Susan Moran Palmer, running for the 16th, said that she agreed with the goals of Medicare for All, but “I think our first priority needs to be stopping Congressional Republicans and the Trump Administration from driving up healthcare costs and abandoning millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions.” She also lost.

The common thought is that if you’re running a competitive race, you must stick to the middle of the road to catch the center voters. In the context of a broad ‘Blue Wave’ last fall in which there was huge progressive energy behind the Democrats, and yet all of these Democrats failed to flip a single Ohioan seat. Surely this must cast some doubt on this strategy.

The reality is that Sherrod Brown coasted through his re-election on his own name recognition and the broad desperation to beat Trump and the Republicans. If he runs for President, he’ll lose the primary very quickly.

And for his betrayal of Ohioans, he deserves it. Brown has ignored the chief desire of his constituency in favor of pleasing his corporate donors and paving the way for his own career. Ohioans need an alternative, politicians who aren’t bought-and-paid-for Democrats.

The working people of Ohio need real change, and it won’t come from a corporate stooge, disgrace of a politician like Brown.