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And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Ax Files, with your host, David Axelrod.

There's hardly a more authentic or asidious member of the United States Senate than Sherrod Brown, the gravely voiced populist Democrat from Ohio.

As his state is very much in play and his issues are rising to the fore, I sat down with Senator Brown this week to talk about the election and beyond, and of course, his life and career. Here is that conversation.

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Senator Sherrod Brown, it's great to be with you again. Here we are 26 days, I guess, now. 26 days, 27 days before the election and you're sitting there in Ohio and everybody is looking at Ohio now with interest because polling shows the right way.

Very close, some polls have Vice President Biden up and it's important because no president has won the presidency since John F. Kennedy without carrying your state.

So tell me what's going on there. I know you have your ear to the ground.

I remember a dozen years ago that you in the Senator from Illinois flew to Ohio the Sunday night before the election because it was really the swing state in those days.

Because 2016 was, if not an outlier, it certainly kind of too many people took Ohio out of the toss up category, but it never really was. It's always been a toss up state for years. It's been a swing state.

And Ohioans feel Biden is a pro worker candidate, not afraid to use the word union. He is, he will be campaigns through the eyes of workers contrasted with trumps, just regular betrayal of workers.

And that has really come through. I think there is, there's excitement in the suburbs among educated with especially there are workers that voted for Trump in 16. Some of them are coming back where I would hope they come back to to us and they are.

And I think African American turnout while it's not going to do as well as it did in eight and 12 with Barack Obama, the leading top of the ticket will do better than it did in 2016.

In 2018 in my Senate reelection, we had the highest black turnout in the Midwest in Ohio. So we know how to do it here. African American engagement is always deep and broad here and that's going to pay off this year.

Yeah, the suburban piece obviously is a story nationally. I mean, we've seen this trend in Ohio is obviously part of that. Have you talked to the Biden folks? They they they've invested, I think, three million dollars in television and communications in the state, which is sort of a halfway.

Have you have you been in touch? You must be I know you because I used to get calls from you at the White House regularly about the things in your state that you needed and you were the as you were more as a citizen any senator.

There was about pursuing interests in your own state, which I always appreciated. You must be those same instincts must be a play here. You must be bugging the hell out of them to.

Thank you for saying you appreciated that because I know that I annoyed you too, but it was part of the job. No, no, you know, I mean a very good way. Well, thank you. I I've talked and talking to the Biden people regularly.

I'm a handful of people in the campaign and different functions, some sense about June and pretty intensively and at first they didn't you know they they don't need to Biden doesn't need to hire to win. He wins to Michigan Pennsylvania Wisconsin doesn't really need Florida doesn't really need North Carolina or Ohio or even Arizona if he wins those states, but obviously want to do better than that.

If he wins Ohio and I really think he's going to it's a landslide, Electro College landslide and we know the importance of the Electro College landslide in two ways. One is that that it will it will more even more pull away will more take the legs out from under anything Trump tries to do and challenging the election as we know he will it will look it will look even stupider and more futile when Trump tries to do that.

If we get to 320 electoral votes or whatever the other thing it does is it makes it easier to govern in 2021 that when an Electro College landslide so Ohio is absolutely in play as it as is Arizona has is a number of these states that that Barack Obama carried.

But I mean I know he didn't carry Arizona the earth Carolina once and so we can win these states and I just think the contrast between Biden and and Trump is so vivid increasingly and voters in my state are seeing that.

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