Can a socialist ex-marine fill Joe Manchin’s seat in West Virginia?
theguardian.com
Zach Shrewsbury faces an improbable task to replace the conservative Democrat in the face of a Republican onslaught – but he won’t be put off
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West Virginia has pretty equal numbers of registered Democrats and Republicans (36.5% & 36.8% respectively) so this will be a battle over turn out and convincing the remaining voters. We'll see where his numbers are in six months.
Comparing party registration is a useless exercise. In states with open or semi-closed primaries unaffiliated/independent is always going to be a sizable bloc, and those voters almost always vote with one party or another (i.e. they're not truly independent swing voters who can be swayed). Just because WV has a huge chunk of independent voters doesn't mean the partisan lean of voters is anything close to even. West Virginia is an R+22 state, and the battle will be much less about turnout than it is about messaging and recapturing the attention of the working class.
And I fully intend to hold centrist Democrats responsible for their turnout or lack thereof. The party is as entitled to their votes now as it was when it was demanding progressives' votes for Manchin. And I'm not expecting the candidate to do a fucking thing to please centrists. They're not Republicans. That was enough when it was Manchin. Remember, progressives vote with the party 95% of the time!
Bernie took w Virginia over Hillary, I think if he raises enough money and communicates his message well people will respond to him. My gut says that Jim Justice will get the Republican nomination and he will be a difficult candidate to beat. He's won governor races as a Democrat and a Republican. Trump likes justice and Trump won west Virginia handedly. The odds are stacked against Shrewsbury but I still think he has a good chance if he can establish his own story and not let justice paint him as some crazy Marxist.
Maybe. But the centrists will need to vote blue no matter who, like they've been screaming at any progressive who is less than pleased with people like Manchin.
We'll see. Turn out for the last election was the best since 1960. I think turn out will go down next year unfortunately. I truly hope I'm wrong. But I think next year is going to be a democratic massacre. People like Shrewsbury might actually turn that around. Who knows.
Well, it's clear that people like Manchin can't.
Joe manchin did win three Senate races he was also a secretary of state and governor of West Virginia. That's a lot of wins for a Democrat in West Virginia where Trump beat Biden by something like 39%. I'm not trying to tell you to like him or anything but that's impressive to me.
He's not running for re-election because knows he can no longer win. Moving to the right has failed.
Well neither one of us knows what he's thinking and neither one of us has a crystal ball but this race is going to be a difficult run for any Democrat. Justice may very well have been able to out-Manchin Manchin. I think it's a good idea to make this a contest of completely different world views. Neither one of knows right now who would win Manchin vs Justice or Shrewsbury vs Justice.
I mean, his entire career leads me to believe that he's doing what is best for himself and only himself. If he thought he had a chance of keeping a job in which he can tell the president to kiss his ass and seriously expect him to comply, why would he instead be openly considering a run as a third party nobody?
Considering one is running and the other isn't, I'd say the one who is running stands a more favorable chance against Justice.
I don't know what's in Manchin's head. I don't think he wants to run as a spoiler for Biden. I think he's looking to run as a spoiler for Trump. Then again he could be talking about a presidental run just to stay in the limelight. Who knows.
I don't like saying, "manchin knows he can't win so he's not running" because I don't know that. There could be some alternate reality where he runs and beats Justice. Maybe Sanders could have beaten Trump. Maybe Trump would have beaten Sanders. My point is there's no way for us to know any of these things.
We're not in that reality. Manchin's time in the senate is over. And here's hoping he never holds any office ever again. He's a corrupt nutsack on his best day.
Sure. He's totally that altruistic. He wants, in order to spoil in favor of the guy whose agenda he blocked, to abandon his ability to continue to block it.
The simplest answer is he knows he won't win.
It's very popular among the left wing of the party to hate manchin. But I'd rather have a manchin than a markwayne mullin or a josh hawley.