Comments by "wvu05" (@wvu05) on "Are Manchin And Sinema Toast?" video.

For those who think that replacing Manchin with a Republican is a lateral move, remember this: in his entire Senate career, literally every Democratic Senator has been to the left of every single Republican Senator. (The last Republican to be to the left of any Senate Democrat was Olympia Snowe vs. Ben Nelson in the 2007-08 term.)
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 @oldsesalt8496 So, you don't like that Ketanji Brown Jackson is on the Supreme Court?
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Sinema will definitely lose. That is a gain, because we can replace her with someone better. Manchin probably will lose (in all honesty, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he decides to retire), but if he does, he will be replaced by someone who is far worse. Our goal should be to find the candidate farthest to the left who can win. Like it or not, someone who only votes with you half the time the best you can do in a state that voted for Trump by 42 and 39 points. Sinema is in a state Biden won and has another Democratic Senator to her left. She has no such excuse.
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@tommymoore8892 No, the message will be that there is no sense of strategy. The goal is to build a majority. Nominating unelectable candidates doesn't do squat for that end, and most West Virginia Democrats know that as frustrating as Manchin is, you aren't doing any better. And given the way the Democratic Party rolled over after losing the legislature, you won't see another WV Democrat in the Senate for decades. You deal with someone like Manchin by having enough Senate Democrats that you don't need his vote for much of anything.
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@thesun6211 Name one. The terminally online think it is just so easy to pick some random lefty, but often don't do the work or understand the electorate. So, who can a) beat Manchin in the primary, b) win the general election, and c) be suitably left for you?
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 @javierrolon9972 Ketanji Brown Jackson has entered the chat.
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 @greenbluemonkey So, instead of a doomed primary challenge, the answer is to elect those other candidates in greener pastures.
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 @taranullius9221 Exactly. Thank God that the terminally online are too lazy to do any actual work to cut their nose off to spite their face.
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@tommymoore8892 And how did "setting an example" work in the 2000 and 2016 Presidential election? Like it or not, you can't get a majority by subtraction, and getting rid of the one person who can win statewide in a state where Trump won by 42 and 39 points doesn't help you with that. Objectively speaking, Manchin votes with Democrats about half the time. If you actually use your brain a little bit, that is way more than you'd expect in a state this red. If Manchin wasn't there in 2021-22, we wouldn't have gotten the Inflation Reduction Act or Ketanji Brown Jackson on the bench. It sounds like you don't want any red state Senators at all, so there goes the majority (get rid of them, all of whom are up for re-election next year, and Republicans control the Senate 52-48). Great work!
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@tommymoore8892 The example was not voting for Gore or Hillary to convince candidates that they needed to move more leftward in order to "respect the base" (actual words that I heard at the time from accelerationists and others who think that you add by subtraction). "A bit of an overstatement, don't you think?" No, because I actually looked at the voting record. Now, you might argue that Manchin slows a lot of stuff down, and you would be correct, but at least as often as not, he does tend to get to Yes.
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@tommymoore8892 "We've tried it your way" President Gore, President H. Clinton, Senator Barnes, and others show that you clearly haven't. Your way got us five of the six members of the right-wing bloc of the Supreme Court appointed by people who lost the popular vote. The accelerationists have had a tantrum for over 20 years, and because they keep self-sabotaging complaining that they don't win, then insist "we tried" whenever they don't get their way right away. You are like children who don't understand that building political power is a process that takes decades. It took the Goldwater people 16 years to take over politics in this country, and they had money on their side. You end up doing nothing and getting mad that everything hasn't worked out.
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@tommymoore8892 So, you don't like having Ketanji Brown Jackson on the bench? You didn't like getting the $1400 check in 2001? You don't like Bermie having the gavel of the HELP Committee or the Budget Committee in the previous Congress? I'd say those are very meaningful. I would much rather not need Manchin's vote, but the best way to make his vote irrelevant is to make it superfluous.
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