with hopes of picking up one instead of losing one

Manchin and Heitkamp.

and there the WH Comrade was today, urging people to vote against her, appeasement gets you nowhere

the Manchins in the party. nt

So we do need him until west virginia stops being so right wing.

It is not the point that
we should simply cede that seat to republicans. Manchin is better than a republican. It is that our leadership treats them with kid-gloves...treads lightly...certainly does not publically make this a problem. It impacts our party positioning when we coddle our least reliable Senators, presumably because of their leverage. Frankly, the party should suggest that it is willing to put its force behind his Challenger next time around...of course that's a LONG fucking way off now, but I would have no problem with a standing democratic policy that puts the DNC's weight behind the primary candidate most closely aligned with the party platform.

We don't need our Manchins, we need who ever can win the democratic base in West Virginia and sadly, money is typically the name of the game. But I see no value in preemptively coming to their rescue and decrying primaries against them, etc. rather than supporting primaries against them from the left. For some reason people here are cool on primaries and LOVE the incumbent, unless its Sanders or Gabbard, and I think this is just another example of how that reasoning falls down.

We aren't controlling shit WITH Manchin and Heitkamp.

If we can't win in West Virginia or North Dakota running DEMOCRATS, we need to focus on states where we can win with DEMOCRATS.

Right now they are propaganda props for Trump.

Edited to add that a fair point was made in their defense. These statement aren't saying that clearly that they will oppose whatever strategy Senate democrats decide upon. If they do, good for them.

That has always been the case.

said he's "open" to supporting Trump.

I'm expecting he'll jump ship and switch parties pretty soon.

Poor whittle Susie.

Try for clarity next time m’kay?

to top it off, Manchin gets a shit load of defenders here who tell us time and time again why we need to support him and why we need to be concerned about primaries for incumbents we find problematic. Its these kinds of moments that I thought were the reason we needed the Manchins.

they all play to the same white populist audience, and are useless to the true base of the Dem party which is the Obama coalition.

Having one more "D" instead of an "R" gets us closer to having a majority, which is a precondition to exercising any real power. But you knew that.

The problem for garland wasn't that he would not have enough votes in the end to be confirmed.

It was that they were not allowing it to come up in the first place.

When Democrats controlled congress there were many who were probably to the right of manchin. We have never had control where all the members were only left to moderate.

rarer for it.

Of course we take what we can get, but we should try to get better first. I understand that might come with alienating these guys and making them less our allies, but if they are sincere, then they aren't going to betray the things they care about out of pettiness. If they aren't...well we should trade them out when we can.

It means Democrats control committees and can make decisions there.

rather than the conventional wisdom to the contrary. I think we've been needing to foster a next generation of idealistic progressive voters in these states, rather than to give them a light shade of blue to contrast a dark streak of red as their only real alternatives. That becomes the normalized range of politics. Chicken and egg theorizing may come to different conclusions as to the root of this problem, but I think its cyclic and needs to be disrupted at some point.

And very racist.

What the fuck is that?

The USA is under attack, lady. Stand up and fight, coward.

this is depressing.

they might as well just go ahead and concede their races now. Don't give a crap if their states are republican. There is no chance in hell their getting reelected with republican voters alone unless they plan on switching parties which wouldn't surprise me.

They're only saying that the Senate has a responsibility. Heitkamp even says "Let's start" [with meeting and evaluating the nominee].

But all that aside, look, as a practical matter, Democrats probably aren't going to able to block the illegitimate occupant of the White House from filling the seat. We're in the minority because we've run a few poor campaigns (last cycle's race in PA, for example) and had some strange results (like last cycle's re-election of Ron Johnson in Wisconsin). We need Manchin, Heitkamp, and Donnelly in order to get the majority back. That's more important, believe it or not, than this SCOTUS seat.

But whether you agree with that or not, sit back and see what happens before beginning the circular firing squad routine at Manchin et al. It gets old.

“I was taught that two wrongs don’t make a right" What does that have to do with anything? She's basically saying she supports doing two wrongs. All these things the way they act comes off as a person/people that are corrupt.

The same goes for people that try to deflect from draining the swamp.

with us on important issues like SCOTUS...

A moderate Dem (in contrast to a DINO) is one who votes sometimes on less important/inconsequential issues with the right to protect their seat... but they must vote w/Dems on the important stuff.

the existence of Trump-lite DINOs like Manchin/Heitkamp bear the heavy cost of having to dilute our message, instead of appealing hard to what is our true/future base, the growing and diverse constituencies that make up the Obama coalition.

Which is what Kennedy and Trump want with this BS

to not even let it come to a hearing until after the election, let the people speak.

WV and ND are now safe Republican states.