The departure of the pro–fossil fuel, pro–Big Pharma senator from West Virginia is not the tragedy many Democrats think it is.

The thing is, Democrats have always had zero margin for error heading into 2024. Manchin was always unlikely to hang on to his seat. In West Virginia, the likely Republican candidate for Senate in 2024 is Jim Justice, the current governor of the state. Justice was elected governor as a Democrat, but switched parties at a Donald Trump rally in 2017, just a few months into his term, in one of the more pathetic “kiss the ring” maneuvers you will ever see from a full-grown adult. Manchin was most likely toast the minute Justice declared for the seat, and some polls have Justice beating Manchin by over 20 points.

Manchin was going to lose, and Democrats who hoped that he’d help them hang on to the Senate were simply fooling themselves. Frankly, instead of a conservative “Trump-lite” Democrat, the party should go find the most pro-abortion, pro-labor city commissioner in Wheeling and try to run a single-issue campaign on reproductive rights. That kind of candidate can lose just as hard as Manchin would have, but with a lot more dignity.

  • spaceghotiOPEnglish
    11·
    1 year ago

    Second, if he is running for senator, he isn’t running as a spoiler 3rd party candidate for president.

    FTA:

    Still, even Democrats who belatedly accept that Manchin was never going to help them hang on to the Senate now worry about Manchin throwing his jawline into the presidential race as a third-party candidate—perhaps with the “No Labels” party, perhaps as a running mate to Mitt Romney—and hurting Biden’s reelection chances that way. I am not concerned. If anything, Manchin’s candidacy would be more likely to take votes from Trump than Biden. There just isn’t a lot of data to suggest that there are Republicans who are willing to vote for Biden because of Trump’s unique threat to democracy but would throw their democracy-saving vote away on a third-party candidate. And the kind of Democrats who hate Trump but also hate Biden are generally on the more progressive end of the spectrum and hate Manchin most of all. Moreover, there is simply no evidence that Manchin is well positioned to appeal to any distinct block of third-party voters. The myth of Manchin as some kind of independent iconoclast has always been more powerful than the objective reality of Manchin: a coal lobbyist nobody trusts who lives on a houseboat.

    So even then, he’s likely to hurt Trump more than Biden as a political spoiler.

    • derf82@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      1 year ago

      Never underestimate the stupidity of the American people. Lots of people hate both Trump and Biden.