IT'S TIME TO ABANDON JIM CROW MANCHIN'S DEMOCRATIC PARTY

The DINO That Is Joe Manchin

What times these truly are. Today’s Republican party, which has clearly lost its

mind to the whims and ramblings of Donald Trump, is up against a Democratic

party that currently holds sway in Congress, just, and also the Oval Office

(although with a drastic slump in its approval rating for the president after just

one year). After four years of conservative chaos, or just simply chaos, the

Democrats now find themselves in a precarious position where they can

fundamentally alter the political direction of the country. Which sounds

wonderfully refreshing after the misery years of Donald Trump.

However, at

that point (cue the drum roll), enter one Joseph Machin III, senior senator from

the coal state of West Virginia. Aka, DINO – Democrat in Name Only,

Manchin is what one might call an “old school” southern-style Democrat.

More Dixie than progressive, he is true to his conservative DNA first and

foremost. His Democrat party membership card is nothing more than a pass to

poison the growing American progressive movement. That he holds get-

togethers in his spare time with the likes of Lindsey Graham is more than

telling. After all, you judge the character of someone by the company that

they keep and is this case the judgment is both cringeworthy and damning.

On top of that, Manchin has just declared that he will not be supporting the

Build Back Better program, thus condemning the will of the majority of the

American people who want actual, tangible government funded improvements

and enhanced socio-economic safety nets across the length and breadth of the

land, but now seemingly can’t have that. Manchin is one of the many reasons

in an ailing American society that we can’t have nice things. And here’s how

he is allowed to get away with it in such a bare-faced, shame free fashion.

The US has long prided itself on being the paradigm of democracy, a beacon of

what is supposedly politically righteous to the rest of the world. And while its

democratic intentions are clear, its actions are far from. Pretty much from the

get-go, American democracy has consisted of a two party, two sides of the

same coin, set up. It now oscillates back and forth between Republican evil

and Democratic evil-lite. But then, beneath that rotten veneer, there is the

Congressional potential fault-line of a single Senator exploiting a razor thin

party majority for his own specific gain.

As is the case with old coal boy Joe.

Manchin, despite his supposed Democrat credentials, hails from the

conservative leaning state of West Virginia. He holds many political points of

view that are more conservative than anything else. That’s because he has one

eye on his majority conservative West Virginian electorate more so than he

does of the needs and wants of the nation at large. To state the obvious,

Manchin only holds his Senate position because of the votes of West

Virginians. And here’s the real kicker – West Virginians make up approximately

0.75% of the population of the USA.

Manchin knows all too well, that with a Senate split 50 – 50, Democrat /

Republican, he can play merry hell in the Senate and effectively insert his

conservative will, or withhold his support, regarding national legislature as he

sees fit. Yet, his decision to not back Build Back Better not only damns

Manchin himself, but also the current “broad church” approach to policy that

the Democratic party stands for.

All of this is clear as day evidence that Black, Brown and Progressive Americans

should abandon the Democrats, if they have not done so already, because the

Manchin situation is simply another intolerable display of conniving political

gamesmanship. If you voted for a particular party because of the ideals of AOC

or Rashida Tlaib but end up with the conservative DINO take of Joe Manchin

and Eric Adams above all else, then just what sort of democracy do we labor under? Why on

Earth do we continue to endure this sort of nonsense?

We have to stay focussed on breaking the mold of the outdated, outrageous

American two-party political system that not only allows the likes of Donald

Trump to run amok for four years, but also allows for tunnel-visioned

reactionaries such as Joe Manchin to foil actual meaningful change in a country

that is screaming out for something different, something better.

The Democrats are never going to change. But we can change. We can stop keep

holding our noses, voting Democrat and hoping for something better that

always, inevitably never comes.

Let’s do something better and dump the Democrats for good.