tell me why any Democrat should support Manchin now
because the Republican he’s running against is far worse and Democrats need to retake the Senate, period. You can’t do anything without a majority, that’s just how the whole thing works
Normally I would very much agree, but like…if a “Democrat” habitually votes with the Republicans, then how are they actually Democrat? Manchin’s voting recording is scarcely better than that of Rand Paul and Susan Collins. If you can’t rely on a politician as a Democratic vote, then you don’t have them as part of your potential majority. What good is a vote you can’t rely on?
The Democrats having a majority means they control all committees, which means they control what legislation comes *out* of committees and gets a vote, and what never comes to the floor. They have final say over the rules of parliamentary procedure. They can block Presidential nominees. Controlling Congress, even because of one shitty conservative Senator, basically gives the Democrats the institutional advantage and ability to influence legislation that they completely lack right now, which is why we’re in such constant crisis. People are constantly urging them to fight harder, as if this will materialize a majority out of thin air. If they don’t control either the House or the Senate, they are virtually powerless.
Manchin represents a state that voted 68.5% for Trump, which was literally his largest margin of victory. In West Virginia, Manchin is consistently attacked for being “too liberal.” And like, let’s not forget that “scarcely better” than Rand Paul and Susan Collins still means something, because there’s still a lot of room between the most conservative Democrats and “moderate” Republicans these days. Last summer, Manchin voted against the ACA repeal, while Paul voted for it. Manchin voted against the tax bill while Collins voted for it.
Also, the primary is over. In November he’s up against a Republican, not a more progressive Democrat. It’s going to be one of them seated in the Senate in 2019. Even if control of the Senate were not in play, there is no way anyone on the left could honestly look at his opponent Patrick Morrisey’s positions and conclude it would be better to have him in the Senate. I hope that Manchin gets sidelined in a Democratic controlled Senate, but I’m not willing to risk everything just to punish him for this cowardly, disgusting vote.
Kids, this is strategy not philosophy. You need to look at this at a very, very base level, and that base level is: every red tick in the Houses is an obstacle, every blue tick in the Houses is, at the very least, A LACK OF OBSTACLE.
This is called “hold your nose” voting. Hate Manchin a lot? That’s totally legit. If you’re in the appropriate area, right now it is absolutely also a good idea to start looking for a Democratic challenger to get rid of Manchin for NEXT time. And you should do that now, because it may well TAKE all the rest of the time working to get the right momentum to unseat Manchin. But that’s next time.
For this time, you don’t have another Dem option. You have Manchin, or a red tick. A red tick is REALLY. REALLY. BAD. Manchin is kinda crappy.
If it’s NOT MANCHIN then it will be THE RED TICK. There is no “neither” option. That option is not available to you. There is no “neither”. There is Manchin, or part of the GOP machine.
Is it crappy that this is where things are? For sure. Should it be different? Yes. It will take a lot of work to make it different, and that work does not start by handing that seat to a Republican because Manchin sucks. In fact, that will prevent the work from being done.
Triage. Prioritize. You are trying to get to a point where you will have the breathing room to do real work: to try and bring the landscape up to where you can have better options than Manchin. If a Republican takes that seat, YOU WILL BE FURTHER FROM THAT PLACE.
Voting Manchin in DOES NOT MEAN you’re saying “I approve of everything they do and think shit is solved if Manchin gets elected”. You can (and SHOULD) vote Manchin in AND THEN KEEP PUSHING.
But in this mid-term you have two choices. One of them adds strength to the GOP machine that is a problem. One of them doesn’t.
One of them means your bigger project of Changing Things stops dead in the water or worse, gets pushed backwards. One means it doesn’t, even if it doesn’t help.
That’s a no-brainer.
Please do not let Evil win because Good is too effing stupid to be able to set up a long-term ongoing strategy to effect our goals.
people on the left love the concept of “harm reduction” when it comes to public health, but often struggle with embracing it when it comes to voting.
You don’t run a needle exchange for addicts because you think it is awesome that people are injecting themselves full of dangerous narcotics and you think the opioid epidemic is neat. Running a needle exchange isn’t a mark of fealty for intravenous drug use. It just means that you know running a needle exchange means fewer people die than NOT running a needle exchange, and evidence shows that it helps more people get into addiction treatment, and addicts using them are more likely to get other kinds of healthcare, and it reduces used needles in public, and it reduces overdoses, it saves a TON of money, it reduces the burden on first responders, and in general it is still not the best case scenario (no one being addicted to drugs) but it is light years ahead of the alternatives (HIV/AIDS/Hepatitis outbreaks, spikes in ODs, people dying of preventable conditions bc they are scared of going to health care providers, hospitals being overwhelmed with drug cases they have a limited ability to treat, etc etc).
You don’t vote for a Manchin because you think it is awesome that he sucks so much of the time or because he is your ideal candidate. You vote for a Manchin because even as bad as he can be, he is still light years ahead of what his Republican opponent would be and would cause and would enable. You vote for a Manchin so that someone can primary him next time, instead of losing YEARS to more Republican fuckery. You vote for a Manchin because Republicans are literally pro-rape fascists running concentration camps for children at this point, and keeping ANY more resources out of their hands is actually a moral imperative, way more so than whether or not you get to vote for someone you think is a “good” candidate.
Harm reduction is not a strategy for living in a perfect world, but it is one that works to mitigate damage and destruction in the broken systems that we actually have. It is one that gets us closer to building a world we want, and where you actually get to vote for people who represent you.