It’s Time For A Targeted Surgical Boycott. It’s Worked Before.

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I’m sorry, but I have had just about enough of Judas Joe Manchin. Since the day that Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff were sworn into the US Senate, giving the Democrats a razor thin majority, Manchin, a room temperature quality Senator, has decided to cash in on his status. He has decided to use his sudden status as a swing vote to force the rest of the caucus to fawn over him.

Which is unutterable bullshit. After all, it’s not like Manchin is in some kind of elevated special position here. Manchin is nothing more or less than one of 50 democratic Senators. Any one of them could decide to let their temporal position of power go to their heads, and start being total dicks. Manchin’s problem is that none of them are! They are toeing the party line to get necessary legislation done. Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema has flirted round the edges, but so far has been little more than a distraction.

It’s not like Manchin is some newbie on a power trip. He’s been around the Senate, and he’s lived through the GOP’s metamorphosis in terms of governance. Sweet Jesus, it took Joe Biden about a whole week to realize that the word bipartisanship had to refer to voters, and not congress. And yet Manchin continues to remain faithful to a long gone wish for Senate comity, and an allegiance to a useless 60 vote cloture rule that cost the Democrats and the country a SCOTUS seat. Enough of this bullshit is enough.

Also he’s a prickly little shit to boot. At the start, Schumer tried some gentle pressure from the left, including West Virginia state party voices, as well as eventually their turncoat GOP Governor to turn Manchin back onto the path of the angels. And Manchin responded by making it clear to the caucus that his allegiance had its limits. It’s clearly time to go the El Rushbo route with this ass clown.

Does anybody here recall this blast form the past, Sandra Fluke? She was a Georgetown law student who testified in front of congress, and emphasized the importance of the ACA continuing to cover contraception, not just for women who didn’t want children, but for people like her with medical conditions that required contraceptives as a part of their treatment.

Arch conservative shit-for-brains Rush Limbaugh immediately turned her into a conservative cause celebrity. He repeatedly called her a slut on his daily rants, and made snide jokes about her sexual life and preferences, about which he knew absolutely nothing. And in the process, he made her a Joan of Arc for liberals. And then the activism starte4d.

Flush Rush! became an instant sensation. They didn’t bother to go after Limbaugh personally, nor his personal LLC. They didn’t even bother to go after his blanket broadcasting company sending out the national feed. Instead they went after the local media markets where his voice was heard. And not the local stations either. They followed the money.

They suffered through the sins of the damned day after day, listening to his broadcasts, in order to obtain a list of his advertising sponsors. And not just his large, national corporation sponsors either, although they were top on the list. They went after mid size and smaller companies as well.

And it worked. Flush Rush was a goliath with a massive presence. Companies large and small were deluged with angry e-mails, texts and tweets, threatening a boycott if they didn’t stop advertising on his program. Donors fled, and local affiliates couldn’t find suitable replacements. Some affiliates dropped Limbaugh’s show, forcing the network to find smaller, less profitable outlets. Limbaugh even ended up with 40 and 60 second stretches of blank air on ad breaks, since even Public Service Announcements wouldn’t allow their ads to be aired in his time.

Joe Manchin is a sitting US Senator. As such, he is required to file Quarterly FEC filings, which includes a list of donors. It’s time to modify the Flush Rush model. Contact those corporate and business donors, and threaten a national boycott of their products if they don’t get Manchin to see the light, reform the filibuster, and vote for the progressive agenda he signed on for.

At this point, we have nothing to lose. Left to his own devices, Manchin will milk this for all it’s worth. The sooner we start putting the pressure on his pocket book, the better chance we have of convincing him of the errors of his ways. Anything less just stalls the entire agenda.

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27 COMMENTS

  1. Target is one of the stores that a person can still buy clothes. And Walmart who is connected with this is I really bad situation because they have so many things besides groceries that a person would like to have so there usually miles away like ours is 30 miles away in New York is 30 miles. But something has to be done with the CEOs and the hired help that helps with this smuggling children it’s got to stop

  2. Joe Manchin is a Democrat representing mostly Republicans. That is why he trues to be bipartisan. This article reminds me of the old communist manifesto- if they dont think like I think – kill them…

    • Actually, it is the GOP who fits your characterization of “the old communist manifesto” far better. They are threatening to primary anyone who doesn’t kiss Trump’s ring.

    • Are you KIDDING? Did you notice how ALL republicans failed to impeach Trump even after he tried to destroy our country and become king? What are you, another freaking Russian-Putin-lover like the rest of Trumps dumbass followers? You traitorous fools are the real Putin loving commies, jackass, so grow a brain.

  3. Manchin has the right and I hope he sticks to it do we dont end up with a mad mob running the country. All you people want is free stuff. GO MANCHIN!!!

  4. I’m not at a point where I’m overly annoyed at Manchin quite yet, lol. I’m not sure what his end game is…he makes a lot of statements I’d find annoying if they truly stall us out, but I’m never sure whether he’s posturing or not.

    I see him and Bernie as really similar, to be honest. Which might sound controversial because almost anyone reading that will either really like one of them or dislike on of them or love one and hate the other. I don’t particularly love or hate either of them, but appreciate that they’re often team players when it matters. So we’ll see.

    But hold his feet to the fore by going after his donors? Sure, I’m on board. He wanted to be a representative of the people, he can take the people nipping at his heels, LOL.

  5. I’m on board with this. We didn’t elect the Dems to just get rid of the rotten GOP and Trump. We elected them to get progressive stuff done. And we didn’t get this far so some Senator can show his ass. It’s pretty pathetic to find out that the GOP Governor of WV has to plead with the Democrat Senator of WV to stop being such a dick and endorse the relief package.

  6. Looking at the list found here: https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/joe-manchin/contributors?cid=N00032838&cycle=2020&recs=100&type=C

    The majority of his big money donors are capital and investment groups.

    Companies that do not sell consumer products (Dominion Energy, Northrop-Grumman) also make up a large percentage.

    Large corporations (Walmart, Amazon) give nominal amounts, as do others such as law firms appearing to be local to West Virginia.

    I do not see any of these donors bowing to public pressures which cannot affect their bottom lines.

    For example, am I going to tell Pfizer that I won’t take their Covid vaccine because they are a Manchin donor?

    Instead, pressuring our own democratic representatives and majority leadership to threaten stripping him of committee assignments for failing to advance democratic legislation, etc, might have a better effect at curbing his grandstanding bullshit….GQP censured for less.

  7. I get your, well, ire with Manchin but you gotta remember one salient little fact: If Manchin is primaried from the “left,” his Senate seat becomes a permanent GOP seat.

    For better or worse (and, actually “worse” is the case), West Virginia has been turning redder and redder over the past couple of decades. The state does not, unfortunately, have enough voters who understand when they vote for the GOP, they are literally voting to hurt–even kill–themselves. Mining accidents (and even deaths) that COULD have been prevented if the mining companies had been forced to improve working conditions? Sorry. The GOP officials (for whom many of the miners and their families voted) just turn the other way and let the companies operate with the most minimal of safety conditions and merely offers more of the typical “thoughts and prayers” for the injured and the dead. And when Democratic administrations try to step in and demand the companies clean up their act and follow proper safety standards, the companies go whining to State officials who quickly attack DC officials for “overreaching.”

    During its first half-century, the state bounced back and forth in Presidential elections between the Democrats and the GOP. Each party would be “locked” for three or four elections before the other party won for three or four elections. But, beginning in 1932, West Virginia became a solid Democratic outpost for the rest of the 20th century except for outliers in 1956 (when the state “liked Ike” as much as everyone else) and 1972 and 1984 (in the Nixon and Reagan landslides). But in 2000, WV began its current run of voting for the GOP candidate; there used to be an observation that no Democrat can win the White House without West Virginia (which was laid to rest in 2008 when Obama did just that and, apparently, the observation has had the stake driven into its heart and had its head cut off after Biden won the White House last year) and that trend against the Democrats has been incredibly horrid during the primaries. In the last two major primary campaigns–2008 and 2016–the state’s Democrats have flocked to the candidate who did not win the nomination (going with Hillary Clinton in 2008 by a 67-26 margin over Obama then with Bernie Sanders in 2016 by a 51-36 margin over Clinton; in 2016, Clinton’s comments about “ending coal” certainly hurt her but nearly 40% of Sanders’ primary voters would later express an intent to vote for Donald Trump in November).

    In the US House elections, Democrats last year couldn’t do better than get 37% of the vote (in the District 2 race) with the other two candidates barely making 30%. And last year’s Senate race saw Capito’s Democratic challenger getting a mere 27% of the vote (the Democrat, Paula Swearingen, certainly had the “progressive” vote–getting endorsements from Sanders and former Presidential candidate Andrew Yang and the Sierra Club and Progressive Democrats, etc). In the 2018 Senate race, Manchin BARELY kept hold of his seat (he’d also faced a primary challenge from Swearingen that year) winning just 49.6% of the total vote against the State’s GOP AG, Patrick Morrisey who got 46.4%.

    Manchin’s political career is literally on life-support and he’s got little chance of winning re-election in 2024. But I’d still be willing to bet that, if you ask the average voter in WV who they’d vote for in 2024 in a multi-part challenge of “Any GOPer vs Joe Manchin” and “Any GOPer vs Any Progressive Democrat” and “Any GOPer vs Any Centrist Democrat,” the “Any GOPer” would win in all three situations but Manchin would likely outperform the other Democrats with the “centrist” outdoing the “progressive” (I’d also bet that the progressive would likely face a major bloodbath just in the polling–maybe pulling in a top of 25%). Granted, polling among just Democrats, with Manchin vs “Any Progressive” and/or “Any Centrist,” Manchin would probably be lucky to pull out a win but I also think that a poll question about “Who’s more likely to actually defeat a GOP candidate, Manchin, any centrist or any progressive,” thoughtful Democrats would probably pick Manchin.

    • His seat is going to be a G.Q.P. seat regardless of what anyone does and Manchin has been mulling the option of changing parties for a few years. What good is it having him in the democrat’s column if he isn’t actually going to support democrat ideas?

      • This is what Manchin said about changing parties three months ago.
        “I’m still a proud West Virginia Democrat who loves my proud West Virginia Republicans. We get along. At least we used to. I hope they don’t push us apart.

        But I intend to stay where I’m at. I can work. I’m very comfortable. And we will just have to see what happens. But I’m — the pressure doesn’t mean — I’m too old to be pressured. My goodness, what are they going to do to me? ”

        So no, Manchin has no intention of changing parties.

  8. Looking at it from the sidelines, I get the impression that Manchin is more committed to keeping his well-paid job than he is to supporting an act that would actually benefit the people who voted for him.

    Afterall, if he gets voted out next time round he might actually have to go and work

  9. Progressives are just as bad for this country as the alt right. Progressives don’t care about anyone’s rights, INCLUDING their own. The alt right don’t care about anyone’s rights EXCEPT their own.

    • Is this comment apropos of anything in the article? I agree that there is a problematic faction among the progressives, but your little canard is too glib by half.

  10. I believe Manchin likes his little petty position of power and he’s going to use it every chance he gets. He might not have to primaried by a Democrat. He might just lose to a GOP candidate because he’s a bigger jerk than his opponent. I say put the pinch on him as Murph describes!

  11. Manchin has been hearing from his constituents, and he’s blowing them off, too. He has power, and he likes it. Using it to help people isn’t crossing his mind.

  12. I’m at the point where I AM overly annoyed with him. IF the DNC or Senate re-election funding mechanisms are giving him any money whatsoever, I can guarantee you I will cease to give the Dems one dime from here on out. The guy has not been a reliable democratic ally for years and now is quite frankly damned nearly a Magat.

    Manchin has no chance of re-election regardless of what he does or what the democrats give him money-wise to get him re-elected. Best to cut bait now and spend money in other states and on other candidates where it will do some good. This needs to be a good lesson to folks like Tester, Sinema, etc.-“see what happens when you don’t support the party’s important items…”

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