Manchin is the name. Ridin’ the trail to who knows where.
Luck is his companion, reaching across the aisle is his game.
Do we Republicans suddenly like mavericks? Only when they vote with us, of course. Too many of my rightward friends still pour hate on John McCain’s grave — even to the point of slandering the heroic POW as a traitor. From people for whom a face mask is cruel and unusual punishment.
But we shore do love Joe Manchin these days for a) vowing to vote against the HR 1 pre-emption of state election oversight and b) safeguarding the filibuster. He’s what some would call a moderate Democrat. His party uses words like “Traitor,” proving that Trumpites have no copyright on the term. The left is waving the bloody flag of racism. It’s what you do when you don’t have fact or reason in your data set.
Woke Atlantic magazine journalist Jemele Hill tweeted, “Record number of black voters show up to save this democracy, only for white supremacy to be upheld by a cowardly, power-hungry white dude.” (Standing alone against your party and your President is “cowardly”?)
“Knifing Black Americans in the back,” The Nation bleats.
“Joe Manchin cares more about ‘bipartisanship’ than fighting Jim Crow.” The senator says he won’t back a crucial voting rights bill because it’s too “partisan.” What he means is that white conservatives don’t like it.
Nor do a growing number of minorities. McAllen Texas, hard on the Rio Grande from Mexico, just elected an hispanic mayor — a Republican!
The great re-awokening?
There are emanations that some Progs are awakening from their Woke stupor.
White people don’t see themselves as an identity group. Critical theorists on the left say that is a form of privilege. But therein lies a problem for Democrats — the more white people vote as an identity group, the less they’re going to vote for the party that tells them they’re oppressors who must pay reparations.
That’s out of the self-same Nation magazine, wherein David Bromwich warns, “A restrictionist mentality is taking over certain segments of the left,” in a piece titled “When sensitivity becomes censorship.” Like, the Werkes would note, the office staff staging a hissy fit to prevent Mike Pence from publishing his book. (Then again, some consider Pence a traitor for not usurping the Constitution. Funny how that works!) Or Dave Zweifel demanding Defund the Republican Party.
Bromwich asks: “Do you really think the rich suburban secular soccer mom is going to go along with punishing her family and, in particular, her kids because of the color of her skin or because someone she’s not related to did something two hundred years ago?”
Blaska’s Bottom Line: In Madison WI we really think they will.
Madison crime 2020
