Jerry Brown: Democrats ‘not ideological,’ must focus on ‘making America great’ to succeed

California Gov. Jerry Brown says the Democratic Party must focus on “making America great” and reject a litmus test on abortion policy if it plans to successfully govern at a national level.

Mr. Brown, speaking Sunday with Chuck Todd of NBC’s “Meet the Press” about the state of the Democratic Party, insisted the party is “not ideological” when confronted about a “litmus test” on abortion.

“You’ve got some inside the Democratic Party, some major Democratic leaders from a senator in New York, Kirsten Gillibrand, to others who think, you know what? The Democratic Party, should not support — abortion should be a litmus test, should not support Democrats who are not pro choice on abortion,” Mr. Todd said, Real Clear Politics reported.

“The fact that somebody [who is pro-life] believes today what most people believed 50 years ago should not be the basis for their exclusion [from the Democratic Party],” Mr. Brown replied. “In America, we’re not ideological. We’re not like a Marxist party in 1910.”

The 79-year-old governor said it was counterproductive to expect Democrats in California to be as ideologically pure as those in Mobile, Alabama.

“If we want to be a governing party of a very diverse, and I say diverse ideologically as well as ethnically country, well, then you have to have a party that rises above the more particular issues to the generic, the general issue of making America great, if I might take that word,” Mr. Brown said.

Mr. Brown said Democrats should only expect candidates to meet a certain intelligence threshold and possess a fidelity to “caring about, as Harry Truman or Roosevelt used to call it, the common man.”