What Joe Manchin Can Teach Democrats
At a recent town hall at the West Virginia state fair, Joe Manchin lamented how divided the country has become. “You saw what happened in Charlottesville,” the Democratic senator told the assembled crowd, referring to the white nationalist rally in support of a Confederate statue that led to violent clashes, and the death of 32-year-old counterprotester Heather Heyer.
“If you told me we could remove the hatred with the statues, take ‘em all down,” Manchin said. The crowd seemed unsure how to react until he tacked on a generic plea for unity. “We’ve got to start working together, and bringing this country together,” he said, to a smattering of applause.
The message didn’t go over well with everyone. “Those statues, and monuments, the Confederate flag, or anything like that, that’s not discrimination. That is history,” one man yelled out, asking the senator why he felt the need to mention the statues at all. “I can’t tolerate bigotry at all, any way, shape, or form,” Manchin said as he attempted to respond to the objection. Eventually, Manchin told the crowd that states and towns will “make their own decisions on how they handle this.” Finally, he conceded, “I don’t have an answer, I really don’t.” But, the senator concluded, “to have the KKK, to have the neo-Nazis, to have the white supremacists come out, emboldened, is not correct. That’s not who we are as a country.”
A day earlier, Manchin had called on President Trump to “not leave any ambiguity about these hate groups—there aren’t two sides, there is only right and wrong” after the president blamed “both sides” for the violence in Charlottesville. But when I asked Manchin after the town hall if the president’s handling of the tragedy made it harder to work with him, he immediately dismissed the idea. “No, I’m not putting that barrier up at all. My job is to do the best I can to represent the state of West Virginia, the people here, the interests they have, and how they need assistance. So for me to say, ‘Well he said that, and I’m just mad as hell, and I’m not going to do anything,’ I’m not taking that position.”
This is what it looks like, in 2017, for a Democrat to try to win over voters in Trump country. Manchin, the Senate’s most conservative Democrat, is up for re-election next year in West Virginia, a state the president
