As someone on the left half of the Democratic Party, I don't understand how anyone could want Manchin to get primaried by some ultra-progressive anti-coal liberal. When choosing a candidate, I would take a Blue Dog Democrat with a 75% chance of winning over someone I ideologically agree with more with a 15% chance of winning.
Exactly!
Well Manchin is basically a Republican. He's a man who literally said the EPA should not be involved in coal regulation.
While manchin is a conservative the only reason he votes so conservatively is so he can win re-election. Manchin has voted with the democrats 77% of the time which helps the democrats with desperately needed votes https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/liberals-would-be-foolish-to-target-joe-manchin/
Voting with you 77% of the time is better than voting with you 0% of the time
as Al Franken puts it in his book
"Friends of mine ask me why we tolerate Democrats like Ben Nelson (a conservative democrat from Nebraska). I tell them he's the only kind of Democrat we can get elected in Nebraska, and we need as many democrats as we can get." (Al Franken Giant of the Senate pg 253)
I used to be in favor of primarying manchin but when looking at the facts it reveals that its not the smartest decision
He's a far left idealist who is not even from America. Too ignorant to look at the overall stats and see that Manchin is the one of the only practical choices for the party to keep this seat. Plus, if he knew how to look at overall voting and bill records, he would see that at the end of the day, Manchin is still a democrat, just a common-sense moderate one.
