Manchin leaves Democratic Party, files as independent

man unwilling to compromise or negotiate in good faith blames everyone else for not compromising

DINO becomes extinct.
- If only
- Only after a METEOR

Don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya

Fifty bucks says he caucuses with the Republicans.

https://thehill.com/homenews/3469975-manchin-said-hed-caucus-with-gop-if-thune-were-senate-leader-book/

He is continuing to caucus with the Dems. The senate will remain 51 / 49 in favor of the Dems.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna154885
- It's the way he gets to be a one man Senate.
He's not running though? This is him changing his personal party choice for voting.
- He's not running as a Democrat. The deadline for filing as an independent in WV is August 1, and your application can be challenged if you changed parties in the last two months. So this move was purely to preserve his ability to step into the race for Governor or Senate at the last minute, if he thought he could win.
- He’s not running, but his party will change in the senate, and he can elect to caucus with the GOP if he wanted. Which would put the Senate at 50 / 50.

Fuck that guy.

The real question then is whether the dems are willing to run someone solid and progressive against him, and whether that person would have a shot...

Democrats are not willing to run someone progressive for his or any other seat, regardless of that candidate's chances of winning.
- There are a handful of progressives in the Democratic party, against the party's wishes.

Well… bye

Good riddance. Fucker.

Another spoiler for Republicans, same as RFK. I can't see any Dems voting for the guy who fucked Biden's agenda so much over the last four years, but it's totally believable that there would be Republicans who don't want to vote for their convicted criminal nominee but also are too brainwashed to vote for Biden.
If Manchin runs as an independent, I predict he'd have the exact same result as RFK: more Republicans would vote for him than Democrats.
- I can't see any Dems voting for the guy who fucked Biden's agenda
  Really? Because all of the people I've ever seen defending him were Democrats claiming that he was the least awful senator West Virginia would ever vote for.
  Hell, even Biden himself gave Manchin the pen used to sign what was left of one of the bills after he'd hollowed out the carcass!
- Possible exception would be Ohio, but that state isn't in play really, so it would change nothing.

I don’t know why he’s doing this. It changes nothing.

he’s still caucusing with the Democrats for the useless remainder of this session
he’s still likely leaving in 6 months
if he were to change his mind and decide to run one last time, he’s still likely to lose to Republican Governor Jim Justice.

This is like trying to put salt and pepper on sandwich someone threw in the trash. It doesn’t matter. No one was going to eat that thing, and it’s going into the landfill tomorrow.

Presidential run in four years? Can claim to be the most centrist-y centrist that ever centrist-ed?
- Had to check, he's 76. Will be 80 by then. Please no.

Hell hes been a monkeywrench in there for as long as i can remember. Let him screw the other guys for a while

Surprising no one. A repub in dem’s skin the whole time. Besides him and Sinema (sp?), there was this other lady who ran as a dem but clearly lied about positions and flipped without announcing a party change once elected. I don’t remember who, just saw a repost of a Tok about her. They are shameless in their lies and facades.

Most important thing to note, he is still caucusing with the Democrats, and the Senate is not going 50 / 50. It will remain 51 / 49.

Won't last.

About time.

Fantastic news for democrats. He was going to retire and the seat definitely would've gone to a republican. Now the status quo is maintained.

I wonder if the DNC offered him something to run again, but not as a democrat?

Centrists gonna pretend they don't still love him.

Your point would be correct if you didn’t go around Lemmy labeling everyone as centrists.
Actual centrists love the guy.
- A lot of very vocal people on the online left (particularly those around here on Lemmy and twitter) love to scream that they are the true leftist and all others are centrist or worse liberals. (I'm sure you've seen people "on the left" calling people they don't like liberals around here, I see it all the time. They use it in the same breath of calling people fascist.)
  It's stupid as hell and is so prevalent that it seems like an organized effort to make leftist spaces online unfriendly to leftist so that they can't actually unite on anything.
- Lemmy has a few folks that like to label anyone being pragmatic as a “centrist.”
  Anyone that looks at West Virginian’s voting records for federal, state, and local offices knows that Joe Manchin’s seat is almost certainly going Republican in 2024.
  I only like Manchin because his existence helps put Chuck Schumer on top of the senate.
- Gatekeeping centrism. That's a new one.
The pragmatist argument for him was that he is probably the most progressive thing you’re going to get out of state that overwhelmingly voted for Trump.
Does he suck? Yes. But when he’s gone, that state is highly likely to vote R when an incumbent isn’t on the ballot. Progressives don’t win a lot of seats in West Virgina. The state senate and house is 90+% republican.
He’s a butt in a chair that allows Dems to have a majority and caucusing with the Dems prevents the GOP from controlling the legislation that is brought to the floor in the Senate. His voting record it’s shit. It’s only about 75% in favor of the most progressive stuff brought to a vote. The other dems vote with the party over 90% of the time.
- And now he's abandoned you, and you're still defending him.