Lots of Democrats, and frankly too many journalists are freaking out the past 24 hours. The “OMG! The Democrats are going to lose a Senate seat from WV!” is entirely misplaced. If Chuck Schumer and the DNC haven’t been planning for the loss of Manchin’s seat for at least a year (longer in fact) by putting resources elsewhere then shame on them. I guess it’s news that Manchin made it official he’s stepping aside, but it sure as hell isn’t news that Democrats were going to lose his seat next year whether he ran or not. That’s been obvious for quite some time now.
So again, I for one wasn’t the least bit surprised that WV Senator Joe Manchin announced his retirement from the Senate when his current term ends. I don’t have much, but I’d bet it all that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wasn’t the least bit surprised either. For the record, in 2003 when I dropped out of the DC Beltway rat-race it was to look after a friend’s farm (racehorses) in the eastern panhandle of WV. I’d live and work there until I transferred to NC in 2014, so I have familiarity with Joe Manchin and frankly was never all that impressed by him. In fact, the more I learned about Machin the less I thought of him. I find him (and his family) sleazy and even corrupt.
As for WV, when I moved there the area I lived in felt like I’d moved back to my native southern Illinois. In both the good and bad ways. Anyway, despite transferring (I wanted to) to NC in 2014 I’ve kept an eye on things in WV just as I have in Virginia where I lived for a long while. His Wikipedia entry notes Manchin’s electoral history. In a state that was turning blood red politically despite what voter registrations indicate Manchin won the Governorship handily. He (as the link notes) only won the special election to replace Robert Byrd with 53% of the vote but when he ran for a full term in 2012 he got 61% which was impressive. Alas, for Manchin and the Democratic Party (in WV) things have been downhill ever since. The state govt. became GOP controlled, and it’s three Representative in Congress have been Republicans as is the other Senator.
Manchin was the lone Democrat who seemed to be able to win there but the handwiting spelling out the end of his career was on the wall after the 2018 election. He win, but couldn’t even get 50% of the vote! Had he not had the power of incumbency and his seat on the Energy Committee he’d have been done years ago. However as I said the trend wasn’t good and his political sunset was a coming. Deep down he knew it and so did many others. Oh, he tried to curry favor with an electorate that was rabidly pro-Trump. But he came across looking like exactly what he was – a panderer. Weak. Rumors about him switching Parties hurt too whether there was ever any real consideration of it or not.
However popular he once might have been, the shine had worn off long ago. Scandals with his family (his daughter Heather Bresch in particular) didn’t help either. Between the scandal over her inflated resume (her “MBA” had daddy’s influence all over it) or her role as CEO of Mylan Pharmaceuticals and the Epi Pen price gouging her being connected with her father the Senator didn’t go over well. Hence that barely getting re-elected in 2108 thing.
My point (again) is that while some had (unrealistic) hopes Manchin, even though he’s a pain in the ass sometimes and often when it matters most might once again pull a rabbit out of the hat next year were at best misplaced. He’s in his 70s. Thanks to decades of shady dealings he’s quite well off financially and he’ & his wife are at a point (and so is his daughter who seems retired – young – too) where they are rich, particularly by WV standards it might have been time to go anyway. The longer he stayed in office, especially representing a ruby red state the more the odds of GOPers there initiating the kinds of sustained investigations he’s dodged and wants to avoid.
Add in that he knew he was going to lose next year and has long known it (his dalliance with No Labels should have told you his internal polling showed he was toast) it for a long time and he was a goner. Sadly, he never seemed to lift a finger to try and make the Democratic Party viable in WV again. HE had what HE wanted with his Senate seat and like a Republican adopted a “I got mine – f**k all y’all” attitude. So again Schumer and other Democratic Leaders should have been working for at least a year, if not close to two years on the assumption that Manchin’s seat was going to turn Republican after 2024.
Manchin is out. His seat will be filled by a GOPer. Deal with it. Fast. Because what everyone SHOULD be doing is focusing on holding our other seats, and fighting like hell to beat the odds and flip one or two others. It won’t be easy but it can be done. Time spent lamenting “OMG – Manchin’s the only Democrat who could win in WV and he’s gone. Bad as he was he was still better than any Republican. (sob)” is time wasted.
Focus on holding the other Democratic seats, and following the Party’s lead on where to help (however you can) to flip some GOP ones.
It was a coin-toss whether he’d resign or switch parties ala Sinema.
The Democrats are better off without him. He’s an embarrassment and only made them look bad. A true DINO in more ways than one.
Expect to see old Joe back soon as a lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry.
Technically, Sinema didn’t “switch” parties; she simply redefined herself as an “Independent” but she still caucuses with the Democrats (worth noting that the Senate’s other “Independent” members–Angus King and, um, that crotchety old fart from Vermont who ran for the Democratic nomination as President in 2016 and 2020 but steadfastly refusing to become an actual Democrat during either nomination bid, Bernie Sanders–also caucus with the Democrats; Sanders, for what it’s worth, in 2016 and 2020 became a Democratic “superdelegate” by virtue of his campaigns).
A “party switch” means you, well, switch PARTIES. If she’d declared herself a member of the Greens (not that they’d have her any more) or a Constitutional Unionist or a Communist or a Libertarian, then that would be “switching parties.” She could still offer to caucus with the Democrats, and likely be permitted to do so, but while she removed her name from being a Democrat, she did not make a formal announcement of joining another party.
He definitely seemed to be more trouble than he was worth.
“Sadly, he never seemed to lift a finger to try and make the Democratic Party viable in WV again.”
I’m not really certain he could have done much to make the Party “viable” in the state as long as the voters continue to vote against their own interests and voting for corporate interests in the state. It’s just like most of the Deep South; too many voters are misled by the GOP into voting against their own interests. They’re told unions are bad and that the union’s going to steal most of your wages but then the GOP turns around and implies that the people should be getting union-level wages but never quite explain HOW that can happen without unions (since corporations fight against paying workers better wages at every turn and the GOP is officially on record as being against the very concept of the minimum wage).
The GOP knows that most Southerners tend to be more conservative (in the old-fashioned, pre-MAGAt sense) on pretty much every issue so it tends to harp on “culture war” issues to keep voters with them; the fact that Southern Democrats tend to be voters of color only compounds the problem. Democrats are painted as “protecting minorities” to the detriment of white voters (e.g., a dollar spent on a minority/person-of-color issue is a dollar that’s not available to “deserving whites”) when the simple fact is that the GOP does very little to help white voters who aren’t in the upper economic levels (witness the refusal to expand Medicaid and Medicare or the limited resources available to families *after* a child is born). But, generations ago (when the post-Reconstruction racist) Democrats ruled the South, the lesson was learned: Make the poorest white person afraid that he would be seen as worth less than the richest Black person and you’ll get the poor whites to keep you in power (and when the racist Democrats–aka “Dixiecrats”–began moving to the GOP during the Nixon and Reagan year, the GOP adopted that policy without being quite so blatant but pulling out the dog whistles in every election).
When you watch commercials during a GOP primary season, it’s ALWAYS about who can claim to be the most conservative politician. Even when the incumbent is so far to the right of Jesse Helms, they make Helms look positively Socialist by comparison, the challengers will ALWAYS try to “out-conservative” the incumbent.
You are ignoring the fact that most white Southerners are evangelical Christians who do whatever their preacher bells them When a sermon is preached on the Sermon on the Mount, they claim it only applies to.Jesus’ brethren, i.e., white Christians and only their sort of Christian at that. Couple that with mediocre at best public schools compounded with unaccredited Christian schools, and you have an ignorant population who have been taught from.birth never to.question anything an authority figure ( straight white Christian conservative male) says.
No angst here. When I heard the news I cheered so much I almost drove off the road.