politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect!
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Good riddance. I'm sure his successor with be much worse, but I'll welcome this news for now.
Worth noting that his successor will likely control the Senate come 2025, as Democrats have a snowball's chance in hell of holding it after Manchin retires.
edit: Not sure why y'all are knee-jerk downvoting a statement of fact that the 2024 Senate map is awful. Democrats would have to win all toss up races to keep 50 seats, so I'm not expressing some kind of personal judgment here, and downvoting doesn't make that truth go away. Do something more productive with your downvote fingers.
I agree they shouldn't be downvoting you, the math is not good for senate Democrats. But it wasn't good last time, either, and they gained a seat.
Anything can happen.
I haven't actually looked at the Senate races this year, but let's take a look!
20 Democrats, 11 Republican
And one of those Democrat seats is WV. While Democrats like to complain about Joe Manchin, he is probably the only Democrat who could win any statewide office in WV. His decision to not run makes keeping his seat nearly impossible for Democrats. And the 11 Republican seats are all quite safe. Rick Scott in FL and Ted Cruz in TX are the only ones Democrats have any shot at all at.
The best Democrats can hope for is to keep the rest of their seats, which will leave the Senate at 50/50 (leaving control up to whoever the VP is).
Synema in AZ is the one I have no clue how it's going to go. Nobody likes her.
Remember she's technically an independent now, and the Democrats are running someone against her.
Last time I read anything about that race, I believe the Dem was leading polling in a potential 3 way race there.
I would have to imagine that if Synema did not run, that would overall help the Dem candidate.
Fingers crossed.
Yeah. I've voted for him every general election, and usually against him in the primary but people really need to understand this - your choices are Manchin or a Republican, not Manchin or a different Democrat.
WV was a safe blue state until 2000. But it was a blue state because of the unions. And Gore was the one who really started pushing hard against the largest union industries in the state, which is why the state flipped so hard and so suddenly.
This is a huge thing that a lot of people, especially young people (millennials included here), tend to miss.
I may not have narrowed it down to Gore specifically, but at some point between, say...1985 and 2000...the Democratic party really seemed to just take unions and blue collar workers for granted...people who'd been a historic pillar of the party.
I'm not sure why this happened, but I suspect deep pockets of donors in big business had a part in it. Regardless, that decision may have had its desired effect in the short term, but in the long term, it basically put the Rust Belt in play. PA, OH, IN, MI, WI, and MN could/should be solid bets to break blue in every national race, but now you have these states full of registered Democrats who have voted Republican in at least half of the last six elections.
I always thought that WV was more about coal, but the union angle makes a ton of sense as well, and through that lens, it makes perfect sense to include them as maybe "Rust Belt adjacent".
They backed away from unions and started putting more emphasis on identity over that period, but for WV it was Gore attacking the coal industry that triggered the switch over. WV was only Democrat because of the unions and the largest union industry was the coal miners. It doesn't matter if you pay lip service to supporting unions if you're also expressing a dedication to shutting down the biggest union industry in the region.
The two are fundamentally linked. What do you think the biggest union in WV was? There was never a solid Democrat support of coal, but so long as they were pro-union and didn't actively attack coal they were going to keep WV. Instead they went increasingly