West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, in name, anyway, to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, on the upcoming Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation vote: “kiss my you-know-what.”
Great calculus there from Manchin, who of course faces a tough re-election battle this fall, in a state that went a million percent for Donald Trump in 2016.
But Manchin is a self-styled centrist Democrat, a label that he, and others who share it, take to mean that they can do things to get Republicans to vote for them.
Like, for example, voting to confirm a nominee to the Supreme Court whose main qualification seems to be that he was an aide to Ken Starr during his investigation of Bill Clinton in the 1990s who now thinks that presidents should be considered above the law, rather convenient for the man nominating him, whose presidential campaign is the focus of an investigation that has to date secured 20 criminal indictments and five guilty pleas.
But anyway, we have Schumer, aiming to get his 49-member Democratic caucus in line, the goal being to pluck off one Republican senator in the effort to block confirmation.
Manchin’s response: “I’ll be 71 years old in August, you’re going to whip me? Kiss my you-know-what.”
Tough guy, sure, but also, so smart!
Because here’s what your average West Virginia Trump voter is no doubt going to think in November.
Huh. So Manchin is a Democrat, like that Crooked Hillary, like that Kenyan Barack Hussein Obama, but he voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. He must not be that bad a guy. Yeah, I’ll go ahead and vote for him.
Manchin honestly thinks this, which, wow.
This is why Democrats are doomed in November. Even if guys like Manchin, gals like Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, also facing a tough re-election battle in November, and vowing “to vote the way I’m going to vote regardless of what the leader says” on the Kavanaugh confirmation, are re-elected, and Democrats somehow get a majority, what difference is it going to make?
They’re not going to upset the apple cart, which is one way of saying, you know, pressing the accelerator on things like undoing the mess the Trump administration has created in healthcare, immigration, race relations, the environment, consumer protections, international relations, the economy, because, hey, there’s another election in 2020, and maybe if we soften our stance, bend over and say thank you, however you want to phrase it, we can get more of those Trump voters on our side.
Lowest common denominator politics, at its best.
Column by Chris Graham
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