To Understand Joe Manchin, Look at West Virginia's Transformation - Seib
In the 1996 election, Democrat Bill Clinton carried West Virginia by 15 percentage points in the presidential race. Democrat Jay Rockefeller was re-elected to his Senate seat with a stunning 77% of the vote. Democrats won all three of the state’s House seats. Fast forward to 2020 and the results showed a 180-degree turn. Republican Donald Trump won West Virginia in the presidential race by almost 40 percentage points. Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito won her re-election by an even wider margin. Republicans carried all three of the state’s House seats.
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The shift from blue to red also explains the position of Joe Manchin, the state’s Democratic senator, who has become the bane of his party’s progressive base for his refusal to go along with their plans to end the Senate’s filibuster and push through a voting-rights bill without Republican votes...Yet there is nothing particularly surprising about Mr. Manchin’s position. His insistence on bipartisanship, which strikes some as both naive and anachronistic, isn’t merely part of his political makeup; it’s what is required for a Democrat holding on in West Virginia.
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Without Mr. Manchin, the Democrats wouldn’t be in charge in a Senate split 50-50 with Republicans, with the difference being the tiebreaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris. They would be in the minority in a Senate run by Republicans. That is because, in West Virginia, the alternative to Joe Manchin isn’t a more progressive Democrat, but a more conservative Republican. It is probably no exaggeration to say that Mr. Manchin is the only Democrat in the country who could hold his seat for his party. He wins as a singular figure, despite his party affiliation rather than because of it, and because of the standing built up over a long career as a state legislator, secretary of state and governor before moving to the U.S. Senate. And even the formidable Mr. Manchin isn’t holding that seat comfortably; he won re-election in 2018 by a 50% to 46% count against Republican Patrick Morrisey.
The Democratic Party’s bigger problem is that it has lost its grip on the kinds of voters who form the backbone of the West Virginia electorate: blue collar, downscale economically, tied to traditional industries such as coal and logging. Once upon a time, these voters didn’t simply vote Democratic. They represented the base. In West Virginia, they became Democrats because of Franklin Roosevelt, and, for the most part, stayed bolted there for almost two generations. Democrats have lost their allegiance because of coal and culture. A Democratic Party moving hard against fossil fuels appears threatening to the state most dependent on coal. And as Democrats have moved left on cultural issues, including abortion rights, they have lost their hold on many traditional Democrats.
But are those voters lost to the Democrats forever? Maybe not. The coronavirus pandemic and its attendant economic downturn illustrated the appeal of Democratic economic policies to some of these voters. Indeed, West Virginia’s Republican Gov. Jim Justice (himself a former Democrat) supported a big federal pandemic relief package, has generally backed President Biden’s push for infrastructure spending and voiced sympathy for raising the minimum wage.
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To many progressives, Mr. Manchin and his state represent the past, while states that are turning more blue (Arizona, Colorado, Virginia) represent the future. For now, though, we all live in the present, where the states and voters that the Joe Manchins of the world have held on to aren’t only important, but can be decisive.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/to-understand-joe-manchin-look-at-west-virginias-transformation-11623681011 (subscription)
(Gerald Seib is the non-rabid political columnist of the WSJ)
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