The 2024 elections went okay for Republicans. Trump won all the swing states. The party kept the house. And they flipped the Senate from the narrowest possible Democratic majority (50-50 with Kamala Harris as tie-breaker) to 53-47.
One of the reasons is the departure of West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, the bane of progressive activists who spent most of Biden’s term complaining about Manchin as Senator and failed a basic political IQ test. With Manchin’s retirement, Jim Justice will be a wealthy Republican member of the Senate (he will not be taking office for a few days to serve out the rest of his term as Governor), and it’ll be a lesson to Democrats that Manchin was one of their most valuable members.
Senator Joe Manchin
Some Democrats thought he was corrupt, although that never made sense to me. If there are objective standards that can be applied to all members of Congress, that’s one thing but it seems that criticism about his boat-for example-was more about people who didn’t like him and were looking for an excuse, rather than people who would care about this if they liked his voting record. If anyone really does believe he was motivated by greed, this means all that was standing between them and their policy preferences was someone figuring out how to provide a seventy-something West Virginian more money than he would get by voting against a spending bill that would make a lot of people richer.
Krysten Sinema
Arizona Senator Krysten Sinema received a similar level of blame, although I treat it a little differently because she comes from a swing state. That said, much of the rhetoric about her was gross; the activists chasing her to the womens room should have been treated by the media and the Democratic party the same way they would treat right-wing activists trying to intimidate moderate Republicans like Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski.
There was an assumption that every Democratic Senator would have supported controversial legislation if it weren’t for Manchin or Sinema, which I don’t buy. Would swing-state Senators have abolished the filibuster or worked to make abortion legal until a woman goes into labor, or was it a convenient excuse for politically vulnerable politicians to just blame two people the base already hates when it comes to the failure of potentially controversial legislation? Sinema and Manchin did vote to make Chuck Schumer Senate Majority Leader. They also regularly vote with the party, as shown in an Associated Press fact-check.
With Sinema it shows that every time many on the left praised McCain for being a maverick, they were lying by omission by not mentioning that they would prefer a generic Democrat above all else. I’m unaware of any situation where her vote alone had scuttled Democratic plans, but there might be a sense that she gave Manchin cover. She likely has fans among other Democrats who think the party’s going too far, but were just too nervous about upsetting the base.
The Blue Dogs
There used to be a contingent of moderate Democrats who sometimes bucked the party: the “blue dogs,” although they pretty much disappeared after the 2010 and 2014 midterms. Left-wing activists will argue that “blue dog” Democrats stood in the way of necessary legislation, but they would stop laws only if Democrats to their left don’t have a majority.
If there are 61 Democratic Senators, and 8 of them are blue dogs, the other Democrats don’t need their votes. If there are 52 Democratic Senators, and 5 of them are blue dogs, Democrats are probably happy that the blue dogs are responsible for the majority. Fortunately, the 47 Democrats in the Senate (counting two Independents who vote regularly with the party) will not hampered by any blue dogs.
One argument is that blue dogs are okay in swing states, but not elsewhere (IE- It’s one thing to have a blue dog Senator in Florida or South Carolina, where Republicans frequently win, but someone in Delaware or Oregon should consistently vote the party line) although nationally that doesn’t send an appealing message to swing voters.
A different view is that parties should vote consistently, so that voters know the agenda they’re supporting, which might help in the swing states. Maybe if Senator Joe Manchin wasn’t allowed to be so independent of the party, Democrats would have lost the opportunity to be represented in the Senate in the most conservative states (until there’s a major political change there) but it would have helped in the most competitive states.
The problem is Biden won 25 states in 2020 in a good cycle for Democrats. He won Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by less than three points. To grow the Senate, Democrats need to win the states he lost in 2020, and a message that every Democrat is expected to vote in unison doesn’t help there.
The idea that a party should be able to count 100% on a standard legislator represents an interesting challenge. Legislators are supposed to have agency, and should be willing to express disagreement.
Manchin VS AOC
One of Senator Joe Manchin’s most prominent critics is congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who was featured in the documentary Knock Down the House, along with Paula Jean Swearengin, who ran a primary challenge against Manchin. AOC was the only one in the documentary to win that cycle, although Swearengin won the Democratic party’s nomination in 2020 and then lost to the incumbent Republican with 27 percent (not by 27 percent, but 27 to 70 percent.)
If the view is that political parties should be more unified, neither Manchin or AOC would have a place in the Democratic party. Manchin couldn’t ever be the Senator voters in his state tolerate, and AOC wouldn’t be allowed to challenge a member of congressional leadership in a primary or develop a voting record different from a generic Democratic Senator like Kristen Gilibrand.
Why Senator Joe Manchin Was So Valuable
Trump won West Virginia by a margin of 40 points, so it seems unlikely that anyone else would have been able to win the state for Republicans. Manchin was still to the left of any Republican in Congress, so it’s really hard to argue that he wasn’t one of the five most valuable Democrats in Congress for his tenure. Most others could be easily replaced. If Elizabeth Warren suddenly quit, she could have been replaced by a typical state senator from Massachusetts and it wouldn’t affect votes. If Joe Manchin had quit, Mitch McConnell would have been Senate Majority Leader one last time.
As a Republican, I would consider anyone on the right complaining about a Republican Senator from Hawaii or California (where Trump’s margins are better than those of Democratic presidential candidates in West Virginia) to be severely misguided.
A lesson from January 6 is that we can not lie or mislead about politics, and the subtext from the left’s arguments against Trump seems to be that politicians who lie about serious issues should be sent to jail by any pretext possible. This is undercut by the treatment of Manchin. One of the things he did to piss off Democrats was that he wouldn’t let them lie. He said that he had a max on how much he was willing to spend, but his fellow Democrats didn’t go for it, except with gimmicks.
I don’t think Manchin took the people who despised him seriously, and there may have been something symbiotic. Every time a progressive criticized him it helped his reputation with West Virginia swing voters. However, the dishonest way progressives spoke about him undercut their arguments against Trump. Now he’s back in the White House and a rich buddy with a cute dog will be the next Senator from West Virginia.
Will Senator Joe Manchin be sorely missed in the Senate? If you liked this piece check out The Democrats Nomination Problem and How to Fix it.
