I guess he could threaten to caucus with the RNC if he wanted to throw a fit. But, it’s also 5 months until the election and the senate is basically only campaigning right now. They’re not dealing with much legislation. Their schedule for the remainder of the year is kind of comical.
If this was supposed to be some sort of power play, the time for that was several months or years ago, not on his way out the door.
He's not running though? This is him changing his personal party choice for voting.
He's not running as a Democrat. The deadline for filing as an independent in WV is August 1, and your application can be challenged if you changed parties in the last two months. So this move was purely to preserve his ability to step into the race for Governor or Senate at the last minute, if he thought he could win.
Or if they'll pay him to split the D vote to ensure an R win.
Manchin isn't running for his seat again because he is going to lose to the same kind of asshole he is, but with the magic ( R ) after his name.
Democrats hate him, because every Biden policy that was blocked for the first two years of his term was Manchin's fault.
Manchin running as an independent isn't gonna split the Dem vote. In fact, I'll say the opposite: he'd split the GOP vote. Republicans who won't vote for the convict, but also won't hold their nose to vote for Biden, would probably find Manchin acceptable.
Democrats hate him, because every Biden policy that was blocked for the first two years of his term was Manchin's fault.
Some Democrats hate him.
He’s not running, but his party will change in the senate, and he can elect to caucus with the GOP if he wanted. Which would put the Senate at 50 / 50.
Fuck that guy.
The real question then is whether the dems are willing to run someone solid and progressive against him, and whether that person would have a shot...
Democrats are not willing to run someone progressive for his or any other seat, regardless of that candidate's chances of winning.
There are a handful of progressives in the Democratic party, against the party's wishes.
And the party establishment can and has changed over time, the Democratic Party of 1890, or 1910, or 1930, or 1970, were massively different parties.
The party has generally trended more progressive over time on everything except economics, and that's starting to change with the tepid integration of democratic socialists.
Well… bye
RFK Jr isn't working.
Bet he runs as the spoiler.
Another spoiler for Republicans, same as RFK. I can't see any Dems voting for the guy who fucked Biden's agenda so much over the last four years, but it's totally believable that there would be Republicans who don't want to vote for their convicted criminal nominee but also are too brainwashed to vote for Biden.
If Manchin runs as an independent, I predict he'd have the exact same result as RFK: more Republicans would vote for him than Democrats.
I can't see any Dems voting for the guy who fucked Biden's agenda
Really? Because all of the people I've ever seen defending him were Democrats claiming that he was the least awful senator West Virginia would ever vote for.
Hell, even Biden himself gave Manchin the pen used to sign what was left of one of the bills after he'd hollowed out the carcass!
It sounds like you're deliberately ignoring that there's a difference between actually liking him and being realistic that no other Dem is going to the Senate from a state where Donald wins by 39 points.
Yeah, because it's all just a binary were people vote by party only!
West Virginia is an extremely poor state, has the worst health of any state, is generally pretty pro-union and loves a political dynasty.
Joe Manchin is the nephew of a prominent WV politician, in favor of the ACA and pretty good at pretending to care about miners. THAT'S why he kept winning in a supposedly deep red state.
If we find a good progressive candidate who ACTUALLY cares about poor people and labor rights, is in favor of Medicare for All, and has a relative who used to be State Treasurer or something, that candidate would be able to win in West Virginia WITHOUT being a corrupt conservative ass.
I don’t know much about West Virginia, except that most of the people running it still havedeep political ties to the Hatfields/McCoys feud. I handled litigated coal miner’s lung insurance cases for a while, and that came up again and again, to the point that that our local legal manager would monitor the family ties of local defense firms and judges.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s really what got manchin elected, but it’s also something that could work for lots of potential candidates
In 2012 Mittens won WV by 27 points. Tell us more about how these ultra progressive union lovers will quit voting for Bain Capital guys as soon as the perfect socialist candidate comes along.
He is the least awful Senator WV will vote for. I guarantee you the next guy who sits in that seat will be an utter, abject shithead with Confederate and/or Nazi flags on his walls and a bible dogeared to all the parts that hates gays and advocates death to non-believers, with the pages that say love thy neighbours untouched and unstained because the shithead never opened his bible up to those pages because those are all liberal crap.
Possible exception would be Ohio, but that state isn't in play really, so it would change nothing.
Good riddance. Fucker.
I don’t know why he’s doing this. It changes nothing.
he’s still caucusing with the Democrats for the useless remainder of this session
he’s still likely leaving in 6 months
if he were to change his mind and decide to run one last time, he’s still likely to lose to Republican Governor Jim Justice.
This is like trying to put salt and pepper on sandwich someone threw in the trash. It doesn’t matter. No one was going to eat that thing, and it’s going into the landfill tomorrow.
Presidential run in four years? Can claim to be the most centrist-y centrist that ever centrist-ed?
Had to check, he's 76. Will be 80 by then. Please no.
Ah, yeah probably not then, didn't realize he was that old, all that oil money keeps a guy young I guess.
Hell hes been a monkeywrench in there for as long as i can remember. Let him screw the other guys for a while
Surprising no one. A repub in dem’s skin the whole time. Besides him and Sinema (sp?), there was this other lady who ran as a dem but clearly lied about positions and flipped without announcing a party change once elected. I don’t remember who, just saw a repost of a Tok about her. They are shameless in their lies and facades.
Most important thing to note, he is still caucusing with the Democrats, and the Senate is not going 50 / 50. It will remain 51 / 49.
Won't last.
About time.
Fantastic news for democrats. He was going to retire and the seat definitely would've gone to a republican. Now the status quo is maintained.
I wonder if the DNC offered him something to run again, but not as a democrat?
Centrists gonna pretend they don't still love him.
Your point would be correct if you didn’t go around Lemmy labeling everyone as centrists.
Actual centrists love the guy.
A lot of very vocal people on the online left (particularly those around here on Lemmy and twitter) love to scream that they are the true leftist and all others are centrist or worse liberals. (I'm sure you've seen people "on the left" calling people they don't like liberals around here, I see it all the time. They use it in the same breath of calling people fascist.)
It's stupid as hell and is so prevalent that it seems like an organized effort to make leftist spaces online unfriendly to leftist so that they can't actually unite on anything.
Liberals are not the same as fascists or conservatives. They are preferable to either.
But not as good as leftists.
Depends on how far left. Three lefts make a right, and I won’t stand for that
Absolutely on point. I actively debate with these knuckleheads to substantiate counterpoint for the more passive users. There’s no changing their minds, but I’m not leaving disinformation unchallenged just to linger and create misinformation through others.
Based take and something I try to do as well but there's so fuckin many of them out there.
It's like trying to walk up a raging river at times.
We all need to work together.
Many of those are fascists or authoritarians cosplaying as leftists.
"Everyone to my left is all the way to my right."
You're one of the ones who have inconsistent and conflicting viewpoints depending on the topic tho.
Lemmy has a few folks that like to label anyone being pragmatic as a “centrist.”
Anyone that looks at West Virginian’s voting records for federal, state, and local offices knows that Joe Manchin’s seat is almost certainly going Republican in 2024.
I only like Manchin because his existence helps put Chuck Schumer on top of the senate.
I've argued for years that while I don't like Manchin personally, he is far superior to any Republican he has run against.
He votes for the good of the country more often than "centrist" Republicans like john McCain or Lisa Murkowski ever have. He has been a blessing to this country and the world.
I don't know about "blessing" but he certainly is preferable to Senate Majority Leader McConnell.
I’ll say this, even if he voted against the party 100% of the time, anyone that caucuses with the DNC if a vote toward giving Chuck the gavel. That means no stupid Biden impeachment trials, no brining dumb legislation to the floor that won’t get signed, etc etc.
In 6 months Manchin is likely to be replaced with a GOP candidate who supports Trump’s coup attempt. That was always the alternative to Manchin, not some sort of West Virginian Bernie Sanders.
Lemmy has a few folks that like to label anyone being pragmatic as a “centrist.”
And no end of people who only punch left but call themselves pragmatists.
If you’ve got a way to ensure that West Virginia’s newly opening seat is filled by someone more progressive than Manchin, we’re all ears. A lot of us would love that.
Right now Governor Jim Justice (R), a coup supporter who just banned abortion for all stages of pregnancy, is polling at 60 to 70% for Manchin’s seat.
I haven’t heard any alternative solutions out of you.
Supporting Manchin isn't doing the trick either, is it?
Once again, in the spirit of an actual constructive conversation, how would you get someone more progressive into a West Virginia federal senatorial seat?
How would you pull that off in a state where the guy banning abortions is winning by massive margin in the current race?
Once again, in the spirit of an actual constructive conversation, how would you get someone more progressive into a West Virginia federal senatorial seat?
Why is your arbitrary bullshit goal the one I need to meet before I can level any criticism at your god?
Manchin is leaving the senate because he knows he will lose if he runs again. Moving to the right has failed. Democrats have no one who can win they can run in that state. There's none to Manchin's right.
So who would you run for that seat? You can't run Manchin, he can't win anymore and even he knows it.
I would work on getting progressives elected in better states. Manchin is wet dogshit on his single best day, and it's why centrists will always go to bat for him.
I would work on getting progressives elected in better states.
Exactly. And I’m just saying that it’s pragmatic to also get less extreme conservatives elected in conservative states while also getting real progressives elected in better states. You do both and take anything that moves the needle toward progress.
Waste of a perfectly good explanation, but I'm with you here.
Gatekeeping centrism. That's a new one.
If you stopped using your own perspective to define and belittle others, they’d be more likely to consider your opinions. Just food for thought.
The pragmatist argument for him was that he is probably the most progressive thing you’re going to get out of state that overwhelmingly voted for Trump.
Does he suck? Yes. But when he’s gone, that state is highly likely to vote R when an incumbent isn’t on the ballot. Progressives don’t win a lot of seats in West Virgina. The state senate and house is 90+% republican.
He’s a butt in a chair that allows Dems to have a majority and caucusing with the Dems prevents the GOP from controlling the legislation that is brought to the floor in the Senate. His voting record it’s shit. It’s only about 75% in favor of the most progressive stuff brought to a vote. The other dems vote with the party over 90% of the time.
And now he's abandoned you, and you're still defending him.
Literally nothing has changed except for a single noun. He’s still caucusing with the democrats, so the Dems still have 51 / 49 control.
They’d still have control with 50 / 50 + Harris, but the tighter the margin, the harder it gets to move shit forward.
And that said, there’s not even much of a need to push stuff through the Senate in the next 6 months. The politicians are now in campaign mode, not legislative mode.
Manchin can call himself whatever he wants. It doesn’t really matter right now.
We're back to actually calling it a majority again because Manchin needs defending. Neat.
It’s called a majority because 51 out of 100 is a majority. 50+1 people caucusing for the DNC gives the more progressive party the majority leader’s gavel and control over what comes to the floor.
Manchin’s desk could be filled by gorilla in a top hat, but as long as that gorilla is caucusing with the Dems, then it is a vote for a Democratic majority leader.
You have two options:
a conservative + a seat counting for a GOP majority leader + very few votes in favor of more progressive legislation
a conservative + a seat counting for a DNC majority leader + an occasional vote in favor of more progressive legislation
Those have been the two options out of West Virgina. That’s it. Gravity is real, the world is round, and West Virginians put super conservative people on the ballot.
Most people that want him in that seat don’t want him for his politics. They want him because of grade school arithmetic.
Hey man, don't forget to add some butter to that crustacean you're roasting.
When I criticize Democrats for getting so little of what they promise done, some apologist is quick to insist that the Democrats haven't had a majority in the senate and that Manchin doesn't count.
Now that someone's saying that your god is imperfect, he's crucial to what is conveniently a majority.
The argument is usually
we need more democrats or people caucusing with them in office if you want to see more progressive legislation getting passed.
electing more democrats is MUCH easier to do in the swing states. Electing someone more progressive in a Trump +40 state is going to be damn near impossible
I've had people straight up tell me that Biden never had a Senate majority to work with, right here on lemmy.
Now Democrats magically have the majority their numbers indicate, and it's all thanks to Manchin.
Nuance.
Does Biden have enough people caucusing with his party to win the majority leader gavel and prevent Mitch McConnell from dictating what gets brought to the floor? Yes.
Does Biden have enough progressives to get more progressive stuff passed? No. Two conservative democrats block that.
Arizona will be good place to fight for one of those seats, since Sinema is out and that is a swing state. West Virginia is NOT a swing state, and left leaning people need to look elsewhere for additional progressives. WV is redder than Superman’s underwear. The fact that they’ve elected anyone with a D is an outlier there.
Does Biden have enough progressives to get more progressive stuff passed? No. Two conservative democrats block that.
The party will always find just enough no votes, no matter how big a majority we give them.
man unwilling to compromise or negotiate in good faith blames everyone else for not compromising
DINO becomes extinct.
If only
Only after a METEOR
Don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya
Fifty bucks says he caucuses with the Republicans.
https://thehill.com/homenews/3469975-manchin-said-hed-caucus-with-gop-if-thune-were-senate-leader-book/
He is continuing to caucus with the Dems. The senate will remain 51 / 49 in favor of the Dems.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna154885
It's the way he gets to be a one man Senate.
I guess he could threaten to caucus with the RNC if he wanted to throw a fit. But, it’s also 5 months until the election and the senate is basically only campaigning right now. They’re not dealing with much legislation. Their schedule for the remainder of the year is kind of comical.
If this was supposed to be some sort of power play, the time for that was several months or years ago, not on his way out the door.
He's not running though? This is him changing his personal party choice for voting.
He's not running as a Democrat. The deadline for filing as an independent in WV is August 1, and your application can be challenged if you changed parties in the last two months. So this move was purely to preserve his ability to step into the race for Governor or Senate at the last minute, if he thought he could win.
Or if they'll pay him to split the D vote to ensure an R win.
Manchin isn't running for his seat again because he is going to lose to the same kind of asshole he is, but with the magic ( R ) after his name.
Democrats hate him, because every Biden policy that was blocked for the first two years of his term was Manchin's fault.
Manchin running as an independent isn't gonna split the Dem vote. In fact, I'll say the opposite: he'd split the GOP vote. Republicans who won't vote for the convict, but also won't hold their nose to vote for Biden, would probably find Manchin acceptable.
Some Democrats hate him.
He’s not running, but his party will change in the senate, and he can elect to caucus with the GOP if he wanted. Which would put the Senate at 50 / 50.
Fuck that guy.
The real question then is whether the dems are willing to run someone solid and progressive against him, and whether that person would have a shot...
Democrats are not willing to run someone progressive for his or any other seat, regardless of that candidate's chances of winning.
There are a handful of progressives in the Democratic party, against the party's wishes.
And the party establishment can and has changed over time, the Democratic Party of 1890, or 1910, or 1930, or 1970, were massively different parties.
The party has generally trended more progressive over time on everything except economics, and that's starting to change with the tepid integration of democratic socialists.
Well… bye
RFK Jr isn't working.
Bet he runs as the spoiler.
Another spoiler for Republicans, same as RFK. I can't see any Dems voting for the guy who fucked Biden's agenda so much over the last four years, but it's totally believable that there would be Republicans who don't want to vote for their convicted criminal nominee but also are too brainwashed to vote for Biden.
If Manchin runs as an independent, I predict he'd have the exact same result as RFK: more Republicans would vote for him than Democrats.
Really? Because all of the people I've ever seen defending him were Democrats claiming that he was the least awful senator West Virginia would ever vote for.
Hell, even Biden himself gave Manchin the pen used to sign what was left of one of the bills after he'd hollowed out the carcass!
It sounds like you're deliberately ignoring that there's a difference between actually liking him and being realistic that no other Dem is going to the Senate from a state where Donald wins by 39 points.
Yeah, because it's all just a binary were people vote by party only!
West Virginia is an extremely poor state, has the worst health of any state, is generally pretty pro-union and loves a political dynasty.
Joe Manchin is the nephew of a prominent WV politician, in favor of the ACA and pretty good at pretending to care about miners. THAT'S why he kept winning in a supposedly deep red state.
If we find a good progressive candidate who ACTUALLY cares about poor people and labor rights, is in favor of Medicare for All, and has a relative who used to be State Treasurer or something, that candidate would be able to win in West Virginia WITHOUT being a corrupt conservative ass.
I don’t know much about West Virginia, except that most of the people running it still havedeep political ties to the Hatfields/McCoys feud. I handled litigated coal miner’s lung insurance cases for a while, and that came up again and again, to the point that that our local legal manager would monitor the family ties of local defense firms and judges.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s really what got manchin elected, but it’s also something that could work for lots of potential candidates
In 2012 Mittens won WV by 27 points. Tell us more about how these ultra progressive union lovers will quit voting for Bain Capital guys as soon as the perfect socialist candidate comes along.
He is the least awful Senator WV will vote for. I guarantee you the next guy who sits in that seat will be an utter, abject shithead with Confederate and/or Nazi flags on his walls and a bible dogeared to all the parts that hates gays and advocates death to non-believers, with the pages that say love thy neighbours untouched and unstained because the shithead never opened his bible up to those pages because those are all liberal crap.
Possible exception would be Ohio, but that state isn't in play really, so it would change nothing.
Good riddance. Fucker.
I don’t know why he’s doing this. It changes nothing.
This is like trying to put salt and pepper on sandwich someone threw in the trash. It doesn’t matter. No one was going to eat that thing, and it’s going into the landfill tomorrow.
Presidential run in four years? Can claim to be the most centrist-y centrist that ever centrist-ed?
Had to check, he's 76. Will be 80 by then. Please no.
Ah, yeah probably not then, didn't realize he was that old, all that oil money keeps a guy young I guess.
Hell hes been a monkeywrench in there for as long as i can remember. Let him screw the other guys for a while
Surprising no one. A repub in dem’s skin the whole time. Besides him and Sinema (sp?), there was this other lady who ran as a dem but clearly lied about positions and flipped without announcing a party change once elected. I don’t remember who, just saw a repost of a Tok about her. They are shameless in their lies and facades.
Most important thing to note, he is still caucusing with the Democrats, and the Senate is not going 50 / 50. It will remain 51 / 49.
Won't last.
About time.
Fantastic news for democrats. He was going to retire and the seat definitely would've gone to a republican. Now the status quo is maintained.
I wonder if the DNC offered him something to run again, but not as a democrat?
Centrists gonna pretend they don't still love him.
Your point would be correct if you didn’t go around Lemmy labeling everyone as centrists.
Actual centrists love the guy.
A lot of very vocal people on the online left (particularly those around here on Lemmy and twitter) love to scream that they are the true leftist and all others are centrist or worse liberals. (I'm sure you've seen people "on the left" calling people they don't like liberals around here, I see it all the time. They use it in the same breath of calling people fascist.)
It's stupid as hell and is so prevalent that it seems like an organized effort to make leftist spaces online unfriendly to leftist so that they can't actually unite on anything.
Liberals are not the same as fascists or conservatives. They are preferable to either.
But not as good as leftists.
Depends on how far left. Three lefts make a right, and I won’t stand for that
Absolutely on point. I actively debate with these knuckleheads to substantiate counterpoint for the more passive users. There’s no changing their minds, but I’m not leaving disinformation unchallenged just to linger and create misinformation through others.
Based take and something I try to do as well but there's so fuckin many of them out there.
It's like trying to walk up a raging river at times.
We all need to work together.
Many of those are fascists or authoritarians cosplaying as leftists.
"Everyone to my left is all the way to my right."
You're one of the ones who have inconsistent and conflicting viewpoints depending on the topic tho.
Lemmy has a few folks that like to label anyone being pragmatic as a “centrist.”
Anyone that looks at West Virginian’s voting records for federal, state, and local offices knows that Joe Manchin’s seat is almost certainly going Republican in 2024.
I only like Manchin because his existence helps put Chuck Schumer on top of the senate.
I've argued for years that while I don't like Manchin personally, he is far superior to any Republican he has run against.
He votes for the good of the country more often than "centrist" Republicans like john McCain or Lisa Murkowski ever have. He has been a blessing to this country and the world.
I don't know about "blessing" but he certainly is preferable to Senate Majority Leader McConnell.
I’ll say this, even if he voted against the party 100% of the time, anyone that caucuses with the DNC if a vote toward giving Chuck the gavel. That means no stupid Biden impeachment trials, no brining dumb legislation to the floor that won’t get signed, etc etc.
In 6 months Manchin is likely to be replaced with a GOP candidate who supports Trump’s coup attempt. That was always the alternative to Manchin, not some sort of West Virginian Bernie Sanders.
And no end of people who only punch left but call themselves pragmatists.
If you’ve got a way to ensure that West Virginia’s newly opening seat is filled by someone more progressive than Manchin, we’re all ears. A lot of us would love that.
Right now Governor Jim Justice (R), a coup supporter who just banned abortion for all stages of pregnancy, is polling at 60 to 70% for Manchin’s seat.
I haven’t heard any alternative solutions out of you.
Supporting Manchin isn't doing the trick either, is it?
Once again, in the spirit of an actual constructive conversation, how would you get someone more progressive into a West Virginia federal senatorial seat?
How would you pull that off in a state where the guy banning abortions is winning by massive margin in the current race?
Why is your arbitrary bullshit goal the one I need to meet before I can level any criticism at your god?
Manchin is leaving the senate because he knows he will lose if he runs again. Moving to the right has failed. Democrats have no one who can win they can run in that state. There's none to Manchin's right.
So who would you run for that seat? You can't run Manchin, he can't win anymore and even he knows it.
I would work on getting progressives elected in better states. Manchin is wet dogshit on his single best day, and it's why centrists will always go to bat for him.
Exactly. And I’m just saying that it’s pragmatic to also get less extreme conservatives elected in conservative states while also getting real progressives elected in better states. You do both and take anything that moves the needle toward progress.
Waste of a perfectly good explanation, but I'm with you here.
Gatekeeping centrism. That's a new one.
If you stopped using your own perspective to define and belittle others, they’d be more likely to consider your opinions. Just food for thought.
The pragmatist argument for him was that he is probably the most progressive thing you’re going to get out of state that overwhelmingly voted for Trump.
Does he suck? Yes. But when he’s gone, that state is highly likely to vote R when an incumbent isn’t on the ballot. Progressives don’t win a lot of seats in West Virgina. The state senate and house is 90+% republican.
He’s a butt in a chair that allows Dems to have a majority and caucusing with the Dems prevents the GOP from controlling the legislation that is brought to the floor in the Senate. His voting record it’s shit. It’s only about 75% in favor of the most progressive stuff brought to a vote. The other dems vote with the party over 90% of the time.
And now he's abandoned you, and you're still defending him.
Literally nothing has changed except for a single noun. He’s still caucusing with the democrats, so the Dems still have 51 / 49 control.
They’d still have control with 50 / 50 + Harris, but the tighter the margin, the harder it gets to move shit forward.
And that said, there’s not even much of a need to push stuff through the Senate in the next 6 months. The politicians are now in campaign mode, not legislative mode.
Manchin can call himself whatever he wants. It doesn’t really matter right now.
We're back to actually calling it a majority again because Manchin needs defending. Neat.
It’s called a majority because 51 out of 100 is a majority. 50+1 people caucusing for the DNC gives the more progressive party the majority leader’s gavel and control over what comes to the floor.
Manchin’s desk could be filled by gorilla in a top hat, but as long as that gorilla is caucusing with the Dems, then it is a vote for a Democratic majority leader.
You have two options:
Those have been the two options out of West Virgina. That’s it. Gravity is real, the world is round, and West Virginians put super conservative people on the ballot.
Most people that want him in that seat don’t want him for his politics. They want him because of grade school arithmetic.
Hey man, don't forget to add some butter to that crustacean you're roasting.
When I criticize Democrats for getting so little of what they promise done, some apologist is quick to insist that the Democrats haven't had a majority in the senate and that Manchin doesn't count.
Now that someone's saying that your god is imperfect, he's crucial to what is conveniently a majority.
The argument is usually
I've had people straight up tell me that Biden never had a Senate majority to work with, right here on lemmy.
Now Democrats magically have the majority their numbers indicate, and it's all thanks to Manchin.
Nuance.
Does Biden have enough people caucusing with his party to win the majority leader gavel and prevent Mitch McConnell from dictating what gets brought to the floor? Yes.
Does Biden have enough progressives to get more progressive stuff passed? No. Two conservative democrats block that.
Arizona will be good place to fight for one of those seats, since Sinema is out and that is a swing state. West Virginia is NOT a swing state, and left leaning people need to look elsewhere for additional progressives. WV is redder than Superman’s underwear. The fact that they’ve elected anyone with a D is an outlier there.
The party will always find just enough no votes, no matter how big a majority we give them.
2008 begs to differ.