It really is that the election was the best case outcome of our collectively very dark view of the state of US politics. It was as good of an outcome as we could get within that framework, but that’s not good news because we all wanted to be wrong and it actually dumped a ton of really strong evidence that we’re right big picture.
I’m not going to lie I really wanted this forum to be a big echo chamber with very little attachment to reality. I was pretty sure it wasn’t because of how tightly the COVID thread was tracking what was happening, and how we seemed to know what orange was going to do before he did it a lot of the time…
Then came election week. We’re right and it sucks.
My point is significantly broader than the current state of affairs. Look at Trumpers, they mainline Fox and derp radio, it’s all complaints. It’s part of the human condition. (My point is not that complaints are never justified or inherently suspect.)
Hell, think of Suzzer’s recent comment about the monkey who gets mad when he gets lettuce (think it’s actually cucumber) when the other monkey gets grapes.
Yeah… this isn’t Manchin’s fault. That state should have two full throated Trump supporters. The man is from WV and will vote yes on raising the corporate tax rate.
If you want to be mad at a Senator be mad at someone from a safe blue seat who also won’t pack the court or end the filibuster. The reason Manchin is going out and saying it is because it helps him politically and if one of the real shitty senators does it will cost them politically.
Manchin is easy to hate but in terms of value above replacement he’s one of the better Senators. Sorry not sorry.
Not @ProxyOP you, just pointing out that this is a fucking sad indictment of the current Democratic party. That raising the corporate tax rate is considered a ‘win’ from a Senator in fucking West Virginia just shows how badly the Democrats have lost labor, which should be the backbone of their fucking party.
Raising the corporate tax rate should be a slam dunk win for Democrats that gives them leeway to do other important things that may not be quite popular in a state like West Virginia. Instead, getting to raise the corporate tax rate is the compromise because somehow Republicans own both issues–getting the support of working-class people from West Virginia AND keeping corporate tax rates low.
I’m not blaming Joe Manchin. Just reporting what I saw. If anything, I’m blaming the voters of Maine, the voters in Iowa, the voters in North Carolina, for putting us in this crappy situation.
I mean I feel this on a super deep level obviously. Most of my living relatives are poor whites from KY/WV/TN. Even my grandfather, who I’ll freely admit is at least semi-racist, who worked his whole life in education and finished his career as the main negotiator for the teachers union is a Republican.
These people deserve plenty of blame for being gullible rubes distracted by racism and other shiny objects, but in this case I don’t want to miss the opportunity to heap blame on the Democratic party for losing the working class so badly that we end up in situations like this.
Yeah, Manchin has proven he’ll get on board when we actually have the votes to do something. We don’t right now. We have to remember he’s doing the work of making sure we have one less complete nut job in the Senate.
When Joe Manchin loses his reelection to WV state senator Q McQington in 2024 by 40 points I’m going to come back here and dunk on the “he’s not so bad” takes if I can get out of my reeducation camp for the weekend.
We still will have had Manchin instead of WV state senator Q McQington for 4 years. Manchins seat should have flipped 2-3 terms ago. No matter how long he holds out it’ll have been better than what would have happened.
If you’re counting on the last surviving Dixiecrat to pass the left side of your agenda you get what you get and you shouldn’t be upset.
Joe Manchin is the closest thing the Democratic Party has to Mitt Romney (crossed with a certain other Senator from Maine who is at the other end of the spectrum VORP wise). Do you hate Mitt Romney too? Because he’s probably in the top 5 senators in VORP right now with Manchin.
You want to hate a Senator hate the WOAT Dianne Feinstein. She’s the worst Senator by VORP and the next one is a long long way off. A living example of the awful results of the idea of seniority.
Also: Newsflash… Manchin saying that a bunch of stuff Republican voters are afraid of is already dead helps us win in GA a very improbable second time. Hopefully he’ll demonstrate just how much he has in common with Susan Collins and be very troubled as he gives us a vote we need to unfuck the courts or blow up the filibuster. All he needs is cover. You have to cover for guys like Manchin because if you don’t they’ll 1000% be replaced by some Q anon fuckwit. Let him do his thing, he knows a lot more about WV politics than we do.
Even if Joe Manchin himself was a RWNJ and voted exactly the same as Capito (the R Senator from WV), he would still be vastly preferable to another R Senator because he has a D next to his name, and therefore brings Democrats closer to a majority.
Without a majority, we have nothing. Even if Joe Manchin plans to vote against all their policy proposals, if the D next to his name brings Dems to 50 Senators, then they at least have a chance of getting some stuff through by winning over Collins, Murkowski, Romney.
Every competent person is by definition an opportunist. Big wins don’t come from your own brilliance they come from exploiting the other guys fuck up to the maximum degree. All of us have a story about a sick hero call we made, but all of the money we all withdrew from poker came from degens who sucked at poker.
Joe Manchin voted to convict Donald Trump, consistently opposes attempts to repeal Obamacare, is against privatizing Social Security, and voted against Trump’s tax cuts.
He’s certainly not a progressive, but I’d say he’s also clearly not a Republican. I don’t particularly like that he’s a fiscal conservative who cares too much about balancing the budget, but he votes Democratic on the key issues of maintaining and expanding the welfare state, including opposing tax cuts that make it harder to pay for.
If I was a Republican I’d fucking love Susan Collins. Joe Manchin is our Susan Collins. If I could clone two localized versions of him for every deep red state we have 0% equity for Senate in I would and I’d donate to them over their prog primary challenger.
If we want people in red states to elect the kinds of politicians we like we have to sell them a new world view. If you don’t want to bother to convert those people the only viable move remaining is to, if you are very lucky, find a Joe Manchin. Unfortunately one of the biggest reasons Manchin keeps winning is that he’s the deepest dug in incumbent on gods green earth so this approach probably won’t work… but you have more than zero equity which is where we are now.