Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now."
The Kingston Trio, 1963. The Youngbloods, 1967
Joe Manchin is America's most conservative Democratic U.S. Senator. He is "Democratic" on some issues: Judicial appointments and Trump's impeachment. He is Republican-friendly on budget cutting, support for coal and fossil fuels, and gun rights.
A committee has already formed to draft a Romney/Manchin presidential ticket. I don't expect a Romney/Manchin joint ticket to take place, but its formation shows that support and money could emerge quickly. Neither man would want second chair. Still, talk of such a unity ticket, while Manchin travels the country making speeches, may cause of viable third-party candidacy to emerge.
Manchin thanked West Virginians then announced he would do what presidential candidates do, start "traveling the country, and speaking out, seeing if there is a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together."
He spoke directly to the camera:
Every incentive in politics in Washington is designed to make our politics extreme. The growing divide between Democrats and Republicans is paralyzing Congress and worsening our problems. The majority of Americans are just plain worn out."
Manchin then went on to list the problems in America -- problems that would sound familiar to Fox News viewers, but here spoken in matter-of fact-tones, not as sneering snipes at a feeble Biden or straw men targets of the left. Manchin cited inflation. Then immigration at the southern border. Then national debt. Then crime and safety. He cited our "critical aid" to allies then warned of "being pulled into a major war ourselves."
Those are, indeed, serious issues. Democrats know that. Manchin went on:
These are not Republican or Democratic challenges. These are American challenges. . . . I know our country isn't as divided as Washington wants us to believe. We share common values, of family, freedom, democracy, dignity, and a belief that together we can overcome any challenge.
Manchin's comments do not split the difference between Trump and Biden. They sound like Biden. Biden summarizes his speeches with words of unity. America can do anything if we do it together, Biden says. The Republican message is different. America is in crisis. America is carnage. America is in decline. Biden says that Trump attempts to change our system of government. Trump says darned right he will change it, better and faster this time, because it is corrupted by deep state enemies in the Democratic Party, among RINOs, and among career federal employees. He plans retribution, and is proud of it.
My experience with a conservative third party effort in the 2022 Oregon gubernatorial race makes me think a third-party run by Manchin will fizzle and die. Oregon voters had a Manchin-like alternative candidate in the form of long-time Democrat Betsy Johnson who ran as an Independent. She is pro-choice and she opposed the Trump overthrow of the 2020 election -- Democratic litmus tests. She is pro-gun, pro-timber harvesting, pro-agriculture, pro-rural-Oregon, and gives off a rural populist vibe as she criticized politics in Portland. And -- as would Manchin -- she had access to enormous amounts of money from people who are traditionally Republican donors.
Early polls showed her being popular, but then it faded. Voters realized that a vote for Johnson helped the Republican candidate for governor. The Republican candidate did not condemn Trump, so she was tarred by the Trump-ist GOP election-denying brand.
Meanwhile Republican partisans could not get past the fact that Johnson said the election was not stolen and that Johnson favored abortion rights. She may sound like a rough, rural, no-nonsense populist, but she failed the GOP litmus tests.
Betsy Johnson was politically homeless. So will be Manchin. We have seen that GOP voters do not tolerate criticism of Trump. It is a deal killer for them. Trump is the over-riding issue for Democrats. Trump will stay in the news saying wild things, and that is a Democratic turnout motivator. "A vote for Manchin gets us Trump" will be a strong message.
Let's see if Manchin runs a write-in campaign in New Hampshire. It is too late to get onto the ballot there, but it is not too late to make a point that Americans want political peace. Insofar as Manchin spreads the message of political peace, this helps Biden.
Compared to Trump, Biden is the peacemaker.
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4 comments:
Note to commenters:
I have some reservations about publishing some comments. The obscene ones that voice the pedophile imaginings of a well-known local Trump-supporting troll are easy and quick to delete.
The ones that copy and paste from conservative news organs are instantly identified and deleted. I try not to publish plagiarism.
I welcome intelligent criticism and comments that point out flaws in my arguments.
The ones that are hard are ones that are critical of me, but which totally mis-read my post. When a post say I say "ABC" but in fact I don't say it, and sometimes am saying the direct opposite, then I tend NOT to publish it, but do so reluctantly. I want comments that inform, not ones that intentionally mis-inform and might cause quick readers to mis-remember my post and remember instead its misinterpretation.
I got another example of that today, with a person who expresses several imaginings of my positions or "real" intent. Let me give a head's up to commenters. It is bad argumentation to posit the intention and motives of others. Better to describe behavior than motives--even if motives are obvious based on multiple iterations of behavior.
For example, I don't have absolute proof of the motives and interior mental state of the Trump-supporting local troll. I know that his proposed comments make repeated references to illegal sex acts with children and to male genitals. He writes about it constantly, but I cannot accurately say that I know he daydreams about it. I would never trust him around children. But good form in a comment is to describe his actual behavior, not his motives.
I received this proposed comment quoted below, which posits my motives. I will publish it in this form, as an example of what I prefer NOT to publish. The writer errs by writing in ignorance about my motives and by misreading the post he or she is responding to. Anonymous posts have a higher bar than do ones signed by real people. Here is foolish, misleading comment:
**
"Keep dreaming. You won't be happy until Joe Biden loses, which you are trying your best to accomplish. Then you can brag, "I told you!"
The haters are working overtime to bring about a self-fulfilling prophecy. The haters probably will be promoting the political demise of President Biden up until Election Day 2024.
The Democratic JB haters are just like MAGA. They still can't accept the reality that Biden/Harris won. They are sore losers and traitors to their own party. Pete the Younger, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana (LOL) and a graduate of Hah-vahd LOST. The better candidate WON.
The haters would rather see the former Occupant re-elected than admit that they were wrong in 2020 and support Biden/Harris in 2024. Anger, denial and bitterness are a toxic combination."**
There are apparently people who equate acknowledgement of the limitations of age as “hate” or “ageism.” Biden deserves credit: He usually makes sense when he speaks, he can usually walk without falling and as far as we know, he’s still continent. They should put a rocking chair on the portico of the White House for him and when President Harris goes by, she could ask for his counsel if she needs it.
In the U.S., money is “free speech.” Our campaign finance system amounts to legalized bribery. The marriage between money and politics in our republic has turned it into a government of the wealthy, by the wealthy and for the wealthy. By keeping us at each other’s throats over hot-button social issues, this remains under the radar. It’s an ancient strategy: Divide and conquer. As a result, we have a government that can’t even agree on how to remain open, much less how to address such existential issues as the national debt or climate change.
The good news is we have the best government money can buy.
It's probably a good idea to reconsider what a unity candidate, a middle-of-the-road candidate, or whatever name one wants to characterize Joe Manchin should be. The notion that a candidate likes some things Republicans like and some things Democrats like in my view doesn't qualify as centrist in a meaningful way. The real standard is what position takes on each issue.
For example, Joe Manchin opposes gun regulation. That is an extreme position, one that has wreaked havoc on this nation. A centrist position would be to affirm gun ownership but ban private ownership of military-style weapons and require background checks for purchases. If that be true, then there are many centrists among Democrats and no centrists among Republicans.
Or take climate change. Joe Manchin, who opposes efforts to transition away from fossil fuels because his personal fortune derives from coal, is surely what we must call an extremist on the issue. The other extreme on the issue hardly has a champion in Washington. Biden has surely indicated that he is a centrist, putting significant money into green energy yet approving oil leases and gas pipelines.
There is a centrist position on abortion, which in fact was laid out in Roe v. Wade. Abortion on demand at any stage of a pregnancy and abortion bans are the extreme positions.
Because Manchin doesn't try to lead people to centrist positions on the issues, but instead goes with Republicans on some and Democrats on others, he is inherently unqualified to bring us to common ground. A much better case can be made for Biden as a centrist who has tried to bridge divides and with about as much success as is possible now.
Because the sad fact is that, on the salient issues, there is nothing but extremism among Republicans at the federal level and also among the base. The party is not interested in governance, only power. What would it mean to find common ground on public policy with people who want to defund the IRS?
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