I once slammed Joe Manchin. I regret it

[DemocratSinceBirth]

A Democrat is always better than a Repugnant.

He might not be the senator from West Virginia we want but he's the Democratic senator we need.

Have a nice evening.

[skylucy]

1. I agree with you. We need every Democratic Senator we can get to

take back power from McConnell.

[JI7]

2. he is the only type we would get in that state

[Funtatlaguy]

3. Same is true of Tennessee. Those angry at Bredesen will be sickened by a Senator Blackburn.

[redstateblues]

4. As a red stater it is frustrating when blue staters complain about

Senators like Manchin. They don't realize what it takes a Democrat to win in a red state. I'm hoping that TN will elect a Democrat named Phil Bredesen. He may not be a progressive's dream but he would be a solid Democrat in a red state.

[a la izquierda]

11. I'm a red starter (thank heavens not for long)

In fact, I’m a Manchin red-stater.
And he sucks.
He feels which way the political winds blow and goes with it to save his own ass.

[still_one]

22. It is that mindset that contributed to what happened in 2000 and 2016. It is what I call the all or

nothing principle.

There were those with the same mindset with the ACA, ignoring the fact that we didn't have the votes for Medicare for all or a public option. It was either have something, and get one's foot in the door, or have nothing.

Howard Dean had it right his 50-state strategy, where he realized West Virgina is not California

Changing people's views does not happen over night

[Bradshaw3]

5. Like it or not, it is about the numbers

51 senators, 218 representatives, 270 electoral votes. I believe in core values, sending strong messages, etc. but in the age of dump the only thing that matters is winning control of the government and saving our democracy by reaching those numbers. Surprisingly some on DU either don't understand or don't care about that fact.

[TheRealNorth]

6. Getting 60% of what we want from Manchin and Bredesen

Is better than 0% from a Republican.

[Polybius]

7. Trump has a +29 approval rating in WV

That's more than any other state. Manchin has no choice being a conservative Democrat.

https://morningconsult.com/tracking-trump/

[Snotcicles]

55. The Democrats in W VA want a progressive. Bernie Sanders proved it.

He won every county in the 2016 primary there.[link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_Democratic_primary,_2016|

[Polybius]

63. Key word "primary"

Sanders would never win a state-wide election in WV. I am very grateful for having Manchin. I may not vote for him in a NY primary, but in WV he's an asset.

[mcar]

74. ...

[George II]

75. But in a General Election Democrats, republicans, and unaffiliated vote, not just Democrats.

[FBaggins]

8. No reason not to "slam" him when he screws up...

... but you have the right perspective. He votes with us more than he votes against us AND (more importantly) he votes with us for majority leader and organizing the senate.

[George II]

9. A Democrat who votes with Democrats 70-80% of the time is a better alternative than a republican....

....who would vote 0% of the time with Democrats.

Joe Manchin has never been a deciding vote when voting with republicans, and he hasn't voted with republicans nearly as much as some would like us to think.

As you point out, he's the Democratic Senator from West Virginia, and in next month's election he will be the Democratic candidate. We should ALL support him.

The time to support someone running against him is in a Democratic primary (when the opponent would also be a Democrat), not against him when his opponent is a republican.

Thanks for the sentiment and opportunity for me to chime in.

[JCanete]

13. yes, that was the time. Do you remember the tone of such an idea that was floating around here then?

[George II]

14. No.

[JCanete]

16. Hehe...exactly. nt

[melman]

19. Amazing isn't it?

The way some can just pretend inconvenient things never happened. Truly amazing.

[JCanete]

21. frustrating, and likely recyclable the next time midterms come up. nt

[George II]

40. If "they" happened, perhaps you can direct me to where they happened? Not just one or two...

...since I'm sure there were a few of the 250,000 DU members who may have done so, but certainly not in reasonable numbers.

I'm watching the Red Sox game, which will go on for about two more hours. I'll be online waiting until then.

Thanks melman!

[George II]

65. Red Sox ahead late, off to bed now. I guess "inconvenient things never happened"....

....oh well.

[melman]

67. Not sure why you think I'm obligated

to play this game and chase down posts for you...but I'm really not. So sorry.

[George II]

76. It's not a "game" - you claimed that I "pretend inconvenient things never happened". So.....

....all I did was ask you WHEN such "inconvenient things" happened. Simple. But if you don't want to do so, I could say pretty much what you said, in reverse.

BTW, Red Sox won last night, they're going for the clincher tonight.

[JonLP24]

10. The only person that should be regretting anything is Joe Manchin

[George II]

15. I don't recall anyone here saying that primaries are bad. I'm sure there were a smattering...

...who did (there are 250,000 members here) but it certainly wasn't a pervasive attitude nor was it a day to day topic of discussion.

[JCanete]

18. Really? You don't recall anybody saying "now is not the time?" over and over and over?

[George II]

33. No.

[JCanete]

69. nor the framing that was repeated over and over of any primiary challenger that that person or

the organizations backing that person were "campaigning against democrats?"


Bully for you dude. I don't even know what to say to that.

[pnwmom]

17. He is the ONLY Democrat among all the Congressional office holders from his state.

He is only in that position because he was a popular Democratic Governor.

No DU-style progressive could have both beaten him in the primary, and gone on to win in the general. If we'd somehow succeeded in the primary, we'd have failed miserably in the general -- a state where Trump beat Hillary by 68% to 26%.

The issue isn't how many R's would vote for Manchin -- it's how many centrists and independents. And he has a chance with them that a DU-approved progressive would not.

[JCanete]

20. My issue with this thinking is that for one, it has arrested us in these states for decades. We

don't and can't make progress there, because we don't have much of a progressive ground game that educates voters on these issues. Then we saddle ourselves with candidates who make solid progressive issues impossible to promote because in too many ways they undermine our own candidate's record and rhetoric.

It remains an open question how well we could actually do if we promoted an unapologetically progressive pro-worker pro-union message in red states that actually goes after the real elites. Obviously anybody doing so without significant financial backing may as well be shouting in the wilderness, and grass-roots movements in these states, in my opinion, have been stunted by our lack of trust in our ideals to actually excite voters. Instead, what we do is go with the candidates who play nice with the financial powerbases in these states, since they have the significant power to make or break a politician. And what we get in return is watered down, corporately palatable progressivism.

[George II]

38. Manchin was opposed in the Democratic Primary by a progressive, she was endorsed by....

..."progressive" Justice Democrats, she was supported by several members of Sanders' 2016 campaign, and she lost by 39%. Presumably she educated voters on "these issues" (you didn't specify what they are in West Virginia).

Manchin won the Democratic nomination by Democratic voters in West Virginia who trusted THEIR ideals and who were excited by his candidacy.

[JCanete]

68. are you serious? You know it takes money coming from somewhere right? Particularly

when we're talking about a state-wide campaign. Like money from folks like us who want to donate to give visibility to these candidates. You actually presume that people got well and acquainted with her?

As you said already the time to challenge Manchin was in the primary, but again, that takes resources, and again, the din here(I don't know how you missed it) was that primaries were bad and the common theme was that candidates like Swearingen(though really she was almost completely ignored) were "campaigning against democrats." I just find it predictable that now after he's let us down, people are like "it sucks but he's all we've got. The time for change was the primaries."

[George II]

77. I don't think I missed "the din here".

I know in some cases in the past (not West Virginia, which is what we're discussing) certain groups and factions of Democrats have primaried and campaigned against very popular and progressive incumbents. In those cases the primaries were divisive, and I pointed that out. It wasn't the fact that they were challenged in a primary, it was the manner in which the challenger campaigned. Big difference.

And in just about every one of those cases, the incumbent was chosen by the Democrats of their state/district anyway.

[JHan]

25. If West Virginia Democrats and their choices upset you, you could always move to West Virginia.

Register Dem, along with thousands of other like-minded progressives, and directly impact the primaries.

[melman]

26. Yes of course

No one should ever say anything about anybody unless they live in that place.

[JHan]

27. It's just a suggestion. :)

[George II]

34. No need to move there, but you could have contributed to Manchin's DEMOCRATIC primary opponent....

....and campaigned for that opponent. Did you do either?

I know that his opponent was endorsed by Justice Democrats (but no contributions, they don't contribute very much to candidates) other progressives and she was defeated by Manchin 69.8% to 30.2%.

The Democrats of West Virginia chose their Democratic candidate by more than 2-1. That's the way it works, and that's good enough for me.

[EffieBlack]

23. My concerns about Manchin

1. He did not need to vote for Kavanaugh in order to save his seat. As is obvious in the reaction he got from the trumps and others, his vote for Kavanaugh did not gain him any Republican votes and I sincerely doubt he would have lost any conservative Democrats if he had voted no. Any voter who would vote against a Democratic candidate because of his support for Kavanaugh probably would not have voted for the Democrat anyway - they would more than likely have just voted for the Republican in the first place

2. His behavior flies in the face of the argument that we need to allow him to vote against us in some instances so that he can vote with us when it really matters. The Kavanaugh vote is an example of a vote that really matters, but he wasn't there with us. So other than being part of a head count, what good is he doing us if ee can't count on him when we really need him?

3. I don't trust him any further than I can throw him and would not be surprised if he switched to the GOP after the election if they manage to hang on to the Senate it if it stays very close.

I'm not going to beat up on Manchin at this point because we do need him for the headcount. But when we get to a point where we have enough numbers on our side that we don't need him, I wouldn't give him the time of day. If he's going to vote like a Republican, even on our most important issues, let the Republicans have him.

[musicblind]

70. I don't know about that first one.

Heidi Heitkamp voted her conscience, but they are taking it out on her at the polls. Which I hate. It's sad to see someone go down for doing the right thing.

While we don't know that Heidi Heitkamp will lose, and are still hoping and fighting for her victory, we also don't know how much of the vote Machin would have lost.

[EffieBlack]

73. Heitkamp was already pretty far behind

A yes vote would probably not have garnered enough votes for her to catch up.

I don't think Manchin got much out of it - especially considering within an hour or so after his vote, little Donnie Jr. mocked him and re-endorsed his opponent.

[Hortensis]

24. Agree, DemocratSinceBirth. I'm not crazy about Manchin,

but then I'm a hard-core liberal, not exactly his typical WV constituent. I've read he's a pretty good match in ideology for his state, which itself can be red, blue, or purplish depending.

538 gives him a 60.8% Trump score right now, as opposed to "93.2% predicted," which is calculated using the margin by which Trump won in WV. Down 32.4 points, not too bad for an election year. Unless it throws his senate seat to a Republican, of course.

[tymorial]

28. This is really quite simple

His D is included with all of the other Ds when counted. We need that total to be 51. If the situation were different and Democrats held a large majority then the situation may be different
Sadly this isnt the case so we need him. We need all of them. Some people ignore this reality in the name of purity. That is the wrong position at this time and it is a damaging message. That is all.

[George II]

35. Precisely, when the number is 51, Mitch McConnell isn't Majority Leader any longer....

....the Senate's agenda, calendar, etc. are established by Chuck Schumer.

The chair of each and every committee becomes a Democrat, the majority on each and every committee is Democratic. I don't understand why some don't see the importance of getting DEMOCRATS elected, even if they don't agree 100% on every position and vote of the Democrats.

[tymorial]

41. By George I think you got it

Too perfect not to take the opportunity

[George II]

44. Touche...

[redstateblues]

30. Actually it does-for committees, for getting bills to the floor, for investigating, issuing

subpeonas etc. Ideological purity will not work in my red state. Bredesen will vote with the Democratic party a high percentage of times. I will take that over Marsha Blackheart any day.

[asiliveandbreathe]

32. I agree with you regarding Bredesen..M Blackheart should never be a

senator of anything..my specific gripe is with Manchin..he doesn't vote with Dems..but, again, you are right re committees...where a majority is important..this all is so galling....but then again, manchin??vote with Dems on investigations???? Or issuing subpoenas???/ -

I strongly believe he is a DINO...

[George II]

36. What constitutes a "DINO" in your mind?

[asiliveandbreathe]

47. In the current atmosphere - ANY Democratic Senator who votes 60% with this

POS in the WH...

[tymorial]

42. In terms of setting the agenda, you bet it does.

[GulfCoast66]

43. Respectfully, you are flat incorrect.

A Democratic majority, even one with the Senator from WV will not confirm anymore Trump SC appointments. Because it will never get to the floor.

[asiliveandbreathe]

45. Okay okay - lets give Manchin 6 more years....you think that is going to change where

the senate is now???? With all due respect...

We are going to give the Senate 6 years with a real Dem Kyrsten Sinema D AZ...and work tirelessly to move on Kyl out in 2020..I have looked at the numbers....

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/senate/?ex_cid=midterms-header

BTW - thanks for the respect.....seriously...

[George II]

46. Joe Manchin and Patrick Morrisey are on the ballot in 20 days. Who would you vote for?

[asiliveandbreathe]

49. I understand....there is NO choice for WV....it is too bad Manchin has been able to

get away with being a DINO...and will continue to do so for the next 6 years...and he knows it!!! We need his head..for a head count....I just don't like turncoats....

[George II]

51. Well, I don't consider DEMOCRATIC Senator Joe Manchin a "DINO" or a turncoat. We disagree.

[asiliveandbreathe]

52. Okay..then, I will agree to disagree.....but then....

Manchin has voted with Trump more often than any Democratic senator.

[George II]

64. And against trump more often than any other republican senator.

[asiliveandbreathe]

54. and this...Manchin said, "it was a mistake politically" to endorse Clinton.

Some Democratic senator there.....disgusting..."Mistake, Politically" - you betcha<<<

[GulfCoast66]

48. I want all Democratic Senate candidates to win.

The fact that we may get a win in WV an even IN is staggering to me.

The Majority leader runs the show as McTurtle has demonstrated.

Were we to win the Senate, which I think unlikely, no more trump appointees would win confirm unless truly qualified.

And the investigations and legal public disclosure of information would be staggering. Even with moderate Democratic members.

[asiliveandbreathe]

50. SO do I...but for Dems to give this guy 6 more years...and then watch Heidi Heidkamp

put her head on the chopping block because she voted against kavboy..she demonstrates she has the chops to DO the right thing!!!

[GulfCoast66]

53. At the risk of sounding brutal...

Politics is a cruel game. And winning is what’s matters. Once Collins showed her true colors the game was over. Heidi did what she thought was right. But in the end it made no difference. If we lose her seat what does that get us?

Unlike many on DU, I think winning the house is a very heavy life. The Senate? If I were religious I would be praying.

[asiliveandbreathe]

56. That is tame compared to some who comment..I enjoy a good debate...

Politics is a cruel game...Collins is a Republican, she will not run next go 'round...I respect those who DO THE RIGHT THING. Collins did not..big money payout..pathetic...Heidi did the right thing...maybe she wins, maybe she doesn't..we still don't have the senate..and we have a manchin until 2022...we need big numbers 2020...and make him a minor player...

Winning the house, although not cast in concrete....we have a shot...unlike the senate...2020 is our year for the senate....

[GulfCoast66]

57. I disagree with nothing in your post

I live in a district that is so gerrymandered it will never go Democratic. There are way too many just like mine.

[asiliveandbreathe]

58. I live in Maracopa County AZ..talk about being a petunia in an onion patch...

Thank goodness for Mayor Stanton, Phoenix..running for Rep and Rep. Kyrsten for Senate...Positive messaging is going a long way ..

We kicked out Arpaio..no one thought it could be done.....just a thought..

[GulfCoast66]

60. I am not totally pessimistic

We passed a redistricting amendment last election. If we elect Gillum as governor he may appoint Supreme Court judges who insure it is enforced.

[aeromanKC]

59. Obamacare ACA does not pass without DINO's

DINO's are needed if the Dems want the gavel back.

[musicblind]

71. It does make Chuck Schumer in charge.

And that is what we need right now.

[vi5]

31. My issue is not with a smattering of conservative Democratic Senators....

...but once we are in the majority and have the power we have to come up with a better way of handling those handful of conservative Dems rather than doing what we have essentially done in the past which is given them de facto veto power over all legislation and handing control of our party over to their re-election campaigns.

Part of what I hear from a lot of non-voting but Democratic friendly types is that even if they are voting for a really liberal candidate, who best represents their district, or their state or whatever......the person they are voting for is only going to be allowed to be as progressive as the Dem caucuses most conservative members allow them to be.

The fact that Max Baucus and Blanche Lincoln were handed almost complete control of what our healthcare bill was and was not allowed to have in it, is one of the reasons it was so piecemeal and tenuous in strength and thus so easily painted as bad and eventually dismantled.

So absolutely. I'm fine with Manchin and/or any other conservative members in our caucus. But their comparatively minuscule numbers should not dictate what the rest of the party is or is not allowed to do, especially with slim margins in place to begin with.

[BootinUp]

37. Recommended for common sense. Nt

[Gothmog]

39. We need to win this race is we want to control the senate

[zipplewrath]

61. it's all about the goals

The issue with "conservative" democrats is that just about the time the 'liberals" or "progressive" democrats are about to achieve a goal, the"Blue dogs" in effect "caucus" with the GOP. Not literally of course, but that is the effect. So middle of the road legislation that might get passed by any congress,(liberal or conservative), in one form or another, is passed on the conservative side. But anything that might look "purely" liberal is blocked with the help of the blue dogs. Strangely that is a way of empowering the conservative side by giving them the facade of "bipartisanship" (that by the way is a democratic/Obama/centrist) goal.

Think of the public option. In essence that was stopped by democrats.

We are currently are being governed by a minority and until we recognize that, we aren't going to understand our battle.

[BlueTsunami2018]

62. I don't regret slamming him.

But I also recognize that he’s still better than any Republican.

[mvd]

66. Same here

There are some things you need courage on, like the Kavanaugh vote. And he is one of my least favorite Democrats. But I don't think we will do better in WV yet. A progressive just tried. Until a candidate persuasively stands up to the coal companies, we are stuck.