Odd that Joe Manchin doesn’t have an R next to his name, because he’s not only a not so crypto Republican, he’s an overt racist. George Wallace would have loved this guy.
Don Winslow Films just released this ad and it’s actually a misnomer to call it an “ad” it’s more along the lines of a micro documentary. A lot of powerful imagery and truth packed into one and a half minutes.
We must pass the #ForThePeopleAct. Pass it on. https://t.co/gLJQ4luYb8
— ReallyAmerican.com ?? (@ReallyAmerican1) June 15, 2021
Manchin represents a state with a population of less than 2 million people, almost all white, tucked away in the Appalachian Mountains. And he’s going to determine the history of this country. Wrap your head around that one.
If George Wallace is watching from the beyond, he loves this.
I dunno about Ol’ Joe……it it looks like a Republican, walks like a Republican, sounds like a Republican, acts like a Republican, is an obstructionist like a Republican, and votes like a Republican you’re tellin’s me he’s a DEMOCRAT??!!??!!??!!
……you’re greenin’ me rite???
Comments like that make it a hell of a lot easier for Manchin to decide “the Party left me” and become a full-fledged GOPer and that leads to another term of Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority Leader.
And, let’s not forget how tens of millions of Democrats WILLINGLY supported a NON-DEMOCRAT as their presidential candidate in not one, but two separate presidential campaigns. A non-Democrat, by the way, who consistently refused to join the Party during those campaigns. Every single vote he cast in the Senate during his campaigns were marked by “I” or “Ind” rather than “D.”
But Manchin gets chastised for being less than what SOME people demand of a Democrat.
And you seem to miss the point. Manchin is doing everything to SUPPORT the Rs. He’s going against the D leadership. And he’s not scoriing points even with the people in WV.
So what the F is he getting out of it beside ego-boo?
Good question. Too bad nobody is addressing it. See my other comment in this thread for a fuller explanation.
Not as bad as the typical Republican of the past few decades isn’t much of a reason to vote for someone like Manchin (if you’re a Democrat) but that’s where things stand in WV. Having lived in that state for the better part of eleven years (fall of 2003 to summer of 2014) my feeling about the guy is he’s always been a sleazebag and like so many in WV politics at least a little corrupt. Of course, having lived my first 26 years in Illinois (and having kept up with goings on back home) I know more than a little about political corruption in high places. By comparison WV isn’t nearly as bad BUT there’s a ton of incompetence in that state’s government. And Manchin, who was Governor there before he got himself elected to fill Robert Byrd’s old seat was part of that. If you dig a little into the stuff about his daughter and her own sleaziness and corruption it’s fair to argue it’s a Manchin family trait.
He wouldn’t be jack-shit back in WV or anywhere else without his position of U.S. Senator. Everyone including Manchin himself knows it. He’s also not going to pull in much in the way of small dollar donations so he’s more heavily dependent on old-school political fundraising than most, and by old-school I mean well-to-do people that can max out the legal limit but also write bigger checks to PACs. Those folks are his constituency. I’m not saying WV isn’t a racist state. It most surely is.
However, there’s a bitter irony in the fact that for all his posturing on Biden’s agenda, and in particular now voting rights polling shows that even in WV, support for the For The People Act is damned near 80%! That means damned hear four in five WHITE people support it, but not Manchin. The whole thing makes me sick to my stomach. If I still lived up there I’d be spending a fair amount of time standing outside his Martinsburg office with a sign(s) that would be (shall we say) less than flattering!
Denis, maybe that support for the “For the People Act” isn’t nearly as real as you say. After all, back in the early 90s, polling of Coloradans suggested they heartily opposed the amendment that would effectively allow discrimination against gays, and the amendment was approved by some 8 percentage points. And, back in 2008, polling said that Californians were in favor of same-sex marriage by more than 10 percentage points; when election results came in, it turned out more Californians opposed same-sex marriage (by a narrow margin, but a loss is a loss).
What NEEDS to be done is for Manchin’s phone lines to be ringing off the hook with support from WEST VIRGINIANS. His email box needs to be filled with supportive comments from WEST VIRGINIANS. His Senate offices need to be swamped with supportive letters from WEST VIRGINIANS. All the “poll numbers” mean absolutely NOTHING if there’s not some on-the-ground real evidence. Polls NEVER get the opinions of EVERYONE. They SAMPLE a group of people (typically less than one or two thousand at most) and use that sample to extrapolate how the larger public feels. But to think that 800-1600 people (out of 1000-2000) will always be an absolutely faithfully accurate representation of some 1,148,792 registered voters (per Wiki’s “Politics” sub-heading in the article on West Virginia) is just absurd. (FWIW, polls in Alabama before the 2020 Senate election showed Tuberville was going to win but his best showing was in ONE poll 58% the last weekend before the election that polled less than 300 people; he ended up winning with 60.1%. In almost every other poll, he was held to between 50 and 55% support, still winning–and with Jones behind anywhere from 8 to 15 percentage points. But, Jones was out there with ads pretty much non-stop for the entire race while pro-Tuberville ads were pretty invisible; I don’t recall a single ad for Tuberville.)
Your point about polls is well taken. There are plenty of examples of them being off. Hell, I remember 1989 when (having left active duty and changed my formal residency to Virginia) the polls showing Doug Wilder would win the Governor’s race by a comfortable margin even though it was the Virginia of old and not the increasingly blue state it’s become in recent times. Given Wilder’s race, it was difficult to believe he’d win by severa percentage points (or more) and sure enough it was a nail biter – less than half a percent. It went to a recount which confirmed Wilder’s win but there were plenty of questions about polling including uncomfortable ones about white Virginians not wanting to admit to pollsters there was no way in hell that, even if they were Democrats they’d vote for a black guy.
So, as you’ve noted in other cases sometimes voters say one thing to a pollster while thinking and intending to do something else. Pollsters (good, reputable ones at least) attempt to control for this in their sampling and design but aren’t always able to do so. However, in this case in WV on this issue we aren’t talking five, or even ten percent fudging their answer to a pollster. Given it’s WV (very similar to southern Illinois which is where I lived my first 26 years) a number in favor of the For The People Act like even sixty percent in favor would have had me thinking maybe that was a soft number. But 79%? That’s way above the fifty percent mark. I can see ten percent or more of those polled lying, but not what polling showed. Even if you assume closer to fifteen percent lied and the poll was off by that much, that still leaves damned near two-thirds support. That’s still a number that should give Manchin pause. Especially given how close his last race was.
If the GOP puts up a good candidate next time Manchin is toast. We’ve seen again and again that conservatives like candidates who are firm in their positions and have little use for “GOP-Lite.” Unless someone has been truly round the bend conservatives will go for authentic GOP over a Democrat trying to play GOP-Lite every time. And we are now in an era where “round the bend” is an actual selling point with a disturbingly large block of GOP voters. In a state as white as WV, I still say Manchin’s best bet to keep his place as a “VIP” by remaining in the Senate his best best is to pay attention to where its voters stand on issues and if in a couple of areas he bucks them to support his own freaking Party then stand firmly behind his decision. The voters there who are pissed off by it will at least respect him for it and if he gets enough of his shit right will vote for him again.
Manchin supports the goal of the bill, just not that particular bill. He has yet to clearly and coherently articulate why, but other analysts say the bill is flawed. Public polling may ask people if they support the bill, and like Manchin, they support the goals of the bill. They, like most of us have very little real understanding of the particulars of the bill itself. We need analysis that is far deeper than the simplistic “Manchin won’t toe the party line”. Manchin has said he supports reauthorization of the seminal Voting Rights Acts and passage of the John Lewis Act. Why not go ahead then and bring both of those up for a vote? The very real possiblity that the GOP will not allow them to come to a vote is not an argument, because the same applies to the For the People Act. So the real question is whether the FTP Act is flawed and those other two options are better, and if so then fight for those other two options. Another question no one is addressing is whether Dems really want to bequeath a no-filibuster Senate to the GOP to use the next time they have the majority.
When we speak of George Wallace in these terms, we think of the “schoolhouse door” Wallace. We should not forget the George Wallace who repented and apologized to a church full of black citizens, and then went on to run again as governor and made his administration one of the most inclusive and progressive administrations ever.
It’s hopeless, Steven. I’ve pointed out that very fact on MANY occasions and it doesn’t seem to do any good. They seem locked into their own prejudices and refuse to recognize how Wallace reformed. People like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond basically went to their graves doggedly fighting racial progress but their names don’t seem to come up in the “____ would have loved this [racist]” comparison. Wallace ran his first race for Governor with the ENDORSEMENT of the Alabama chapter of the NAACP–and got his ass handed to him by a guy who had the OPEN endorsement of the KKK. But, Wallace winds up as “The Racist” forever.
It is yet another example of simplistic thinking, similar to the simplistic thinking most people are applying to Manchin. I explain more fully in another comment in this thread.
The republiQanons complain about RINOs, RepubliQanons in name only. Well, Manchin and his ilk are DINOs, Democrats in name only! Time to kick the DINOs out!! Time to let these DINOs know that they vote with the rest of the Democrats, or they can change parties, and decide RIGHT NOW or the decision will be made for them!!!
Do you think the GOP should say the same thing to Cheney, Romney, …?
All this banter is interesting, but doesn’t matter. He & the Bimbo will be the undoing of democracy. What a piece of hypocritical crap. Bipartisanship? What a phucking joke! He was there for all the authoritarian crap McConnell has pulled & publicly states he plans to do. Kissing his ass to keep the D after his name means nothing when he stands with the insurrectionists. The Rs plan to meet in the back room of every state they can to decide who wins what. Wake the phuck up.
The way it works in politics in places such as WV – you have to pay to play to get a seat at the table. This is what Manchin has been brought up in and he’s another prime example of big (dark) money being able to buy anything. He receives big $ from wall street, law firms, dark money PACs, big insurance, big health care, big oil, …. and they own him and his vote. But for Manchin, it goes way beyond selling one’s self and getting rich in return. He personally enjoys having the power to be the deciding vote when the vote comes down to straight party lines. Fully expect he will follow what Jim Justice did, who ran as a D in 2016 to win as WV Governor; and then ran as an R in 2020 to win again as Governor of WV. Manchin will switch to whatever party gives him the most personal leverage/power, which then of course continues to attract the big $ donors. We the people’s interests come last. Until laws like Citizens United gets repealed, our system will continue to produce and reward the most slimy politicians who are owned by the highest bidder and who are extremely corrupt and operate as person over party and party over the best interests of the common good.
Lawyers turned politicians are leading us into an authoritarian government. Sometimes the truth IS SIMPLE. Turncoat Joe is on the other side. The wrong side. Parsing arguments is what allowed Hitler to take over europe. Then us soldiers were SIMPLY told to go get killed to save democracy. Maybe if more citizens had to put their collective asses on the line instead of sitting in law school, dreaming of riches & power, then we simply could believe our eyes & ears. Instead, the acting attorney general, top law enforcement official in the land, doesn’t know what ‘suggest’ means, & now we know Trump directly ordered him to usurp the election result. Doesn’t law school have a dictionary somewhere? Or an ethics class?
Democracy killed by a white southern Democrat. Why does this not surprise me?