Should Biden let the Republicans have Manchin?

@MarkPaul Right make his stand and let Mitch block every Democrat bill with the filibuster. No Democrat Bills pass. That is Manchin's choice. He has the power to fuck the entire country. Stop all progress and then let Rich Mitch say Biden didn't get anything done in 2024.

@Pitchblue More Democrats need to be voted in instead of Baby-trump Republicans and then Joe Manchin won't have so much individual power.

@MarkPaul Manchin is also stopping Voting Rights Bills while the Republicans make laws to suppress Democrat votes. More Democrats cannot be voted in if Democrats can't vote.

@Pitchblue It's not that Democrats "can't" vote. Be careful about falling into zero-thinking traps. The Republicans are making it harder for everyone to vote. Hopefully, that will backfire on them.

@MarkPaul I've heard they didn't think about their older voters in Florida when they made mail in ballots harder to cast. A lot of Old Folks use mail to cast their votes in Florida.

Texas AG Ken Paxton said Trump would have lost in Texas in the 2020 election if Paxton's office had not successfully blocked counties from mailing out applications for mail-in ballots to all registered voters.

@Pitchblue "Old folks" are Republicans too. If the Democrats are smart and agile, they will get everyone worked up over being inconvenienced by the Republicans to vote. Most sane people don't like to be inconvenienced... and that crosses party lines.

@MarkPaul

Manchin is either quite disingenuous or needs to get his head out of the sand (or coal dust).

@beckyromero And, yet he "somehow" has won in a state that could easily vote Republican. So, he seems to have something figured out. Some might say, a Republican candidate might just as well win. While Manchin may not be ideal and his approach is frustrating and could turn out to be foolhardy, all things being equal, it's best that an insurrectionist-Republican is not in that seat.

@MarkPaul

West Virginia [i]should[/i] be a blue state. But that changed when Al Gore lost it 20 years ago.

Just look at the changes from January 1987, after the Democrats had won control of the Senate for the 100th Congress:

Source: By Assorted-Interests - CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=101130916

And for January 2021, the 117th Congress:


Blue states = 2 Democrat Senators
Red states = 2 Republican Senators
Purple states = split 1/1
2021: one independent in Maine and one in Vermont caucus with Democrats

@beckyromero It's just an indicator and hopefully a motivator for a wider number of Democrats to win with moderate and centrist candidates to force the Republican Party to retool itself.

@MarkPaul

Moderates and centrist candidates might win in the South.

But as long as Democrat primaries are dominated by those on the left, the chances of increasing the margin in the Senate is slim at best.

Better off making DC and Puerto Rico states. Add four Democrats to the Senate that way.

@beckyromero That's kind of like cheating and taking the easy way out. The extremists on both sides have become "too" power-hungry because the majority in the middle have willfully given them that power. It's time to take it away. They will quickly wither back into the woodwork.

@MarkPaul

Why would giving nearly four million AMERICANS voting representation in Congress (including over three million the right to vote for president as well) be "cheating"?

@beckyromero Puerto Rico is a territory and should probably be let go with best wishes as a remnant of the USA's empire-building past. Washington, D.C. has a slightly stronger case for statehood, but the idea that it SHOULD be a state because it will give Democrats a seat advantage is a weak argument at best.

@MarkPaul Support for independence in Puerto Rico is very low.

DC should be a state because the people living there deserve representation. The idea that it SHOULDN'T be a state because it will give Democrats two Senate seats is an obviously partisan argument. This was an issue before the Civil War, where every free state admitted to the union had to be balanced with a slave state. So maybe the Republicans should propose splitting a red state in two to give themselves two more seats if maintaining a balance is that important.

@MarkPaul [quote]Puerto Rico is a territory and should probably be let go with best wishes as a remnant of the USA's empire-building past.[/quote]

With that line of thinking, you'd give California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas back to Mexico.

Spain gets FLORIDA.

Hawai'i becomes a nation.

Oh, and write to Putin to let him know he gets Alaska back.

Puerto Ricans are AMERICANS.

They're repeatedly shown they favor STATEHOOD over independence.

But Congress has repeatedly concocted three way votes to prevent statehood from winning an outright majority.

@beckyromero No. I'm just talking about Puerto Rico.

@MarkPaul

Puerto Ricans are AMERICANS.

They're repeatedly shown they favor STATEHOOD over independence.

But Congress has repeatedly concocted three way votes to prevent statehood from winning an outright majority.

@beckyromero I never claimed they WEREN'T. Still, I don't see statehood as a win-win.

@MarkPaul

So how do you defend the comment, "let go with best wishes"?

Puerto Rico isn't the Philippines. The Filipino people WANTED independence. The vast majority of Puerto Ricans do NOT.

@beckyromero Look, it's a sticky situation, no doubt. I'm sure they don't want to be set adrift. And, maybe remaining a territory is the best middle-ground solution.

@MarkPaul Manchin won exactly the same way a Republican would win, Money From Koch.

@Pitchblue It's why donor money should be banned for all political campaigns and candidates regardless of political parties.

@MarkPaul [quote]maybe remaining a territory is the best middle-ground solution.[/quote]

And in the meantime Edward Snowden can be Vladimir Putin's guest in Moscow and get a Hawaiian absentee ballot and vote in the U.S. presidential election but Puerto Rican-residing American citizens serving in the U.S. military cannot.

@beckyromero That's the nature of being a territory. It's not a recent development. In some states you can vote in an "open primary;" in others you can't. That seems unfair too. In some states you can have the benefit and convenience of early voting; in others you can't. That seems unfair too.