Democrats need more Joe Manchins, not less

Joe Manchin has been a source of considerable frustration for many progressive Democrats, as he yields extraordinary influence in an equally divided 50-50 U.S Senate. But instead of demonizing Sen. Manchin, Democrats need to embrace several political realities if they are to advance their agenda and avoid seeing Republicans regain control of the House, and possibly the Senate as well, for years to come.

First is a reality check. Democrats would not have the majority in the U.S. Senate now, and certainly won’t have the majority in the future, without Joe Manchin, and others like him, getting elected in Republican or Republican-leaning states. While trimming a Democratic reconciliation bill is disappointing to many, there would be no major piece of legislation if Manchin hadn’t defied the odds to win re-election in 2018.

Democrats need more, not fewer, candidates who can appeal to independents and Republicans.

Second, despite social media’s echo chambers (exacerbated by those pernicious algorithms), what progressives see on Twitter is not representative of voter opinion. While 69% of the most active Twitter users identify as Democrats, polling shows that significantly more Americans overall self-identify as conservative (36%) or moderate (35%) than liberal (25%). These pluralities of moderate and conservative voters contributed to the Republican statewide sweep in Virginia.

And as Democrats (and Republicans) need to remember, the politics of primaries (tilting hard left or hard right) are very different from the politics of general elections.

Adding to this reality are the structural barriers that Democrats face that will not be changing anytime soon. Both the electoral college and our system of electing U.S. House and Senate seats favor Republicans and conservatives over Democrats and progressives. Democrats in recent years have consistently captured more votes overall than Republicans in congressional races, but Republicans have been more successful holding onto or regaining the majority.

Some of this is within Democrats’ sphere of influence, such as fighting voting restrictions rooted in false claims of election fraud and partisan redistricting. But much of this is beyond their control, as Democrats’ population centers shift to the coasts and Republicans are disproportionately represented in the smaller, rural states that have outsized impact in our electoral system.

In 2018, for example, Democrats won 12 million more votes than Republicans in U.S. Senate races but failed to capture control of the Senate. Democratic California may have 60 times as many voters as Republican Wyoming, but each gets two U.S. senators.

Moreover, what used to be a historical rarity — presidential candidates winning the popular vote but losing the electoral college — has become more commonplace, happening twice (Gore-Bush and

Clinton-Trump) in just 16 years. And it almost happened a third time with Biden defeating Trump by more than 7 million votes but eking out small electoral college victories in a handful of swing states. As Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, has said: “The rise of minority rule in America is now unmistakable.”

Democrats not only have to win the popular vote, they have to win the popular vote in specific, more conservative parts of the country.

Further contributing to Democrats’ challenge is the emerging political differences between the more liberal white Democratic base and more moderate Black Democratic voters on issues such as public charter schools and defunding the police. This split threatens an already vulnerable Democratic coalition and creates a big opportunity for a non-Trump Republican, such as U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina or Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, to capture a larger share of Black, Latino and suburban voters with a message of inclusiveness, economic opportunity and faith.

Finally, Democrats need to understand political intensity versus political support. While a wide range of issues that Democrats embrace have support from a majority of voters, there is a much smaller range of issues that impact how most people vote. These are the higher-intensity issues, with the economy and jobs topping the list by a wide margin. In

South Florida, the higher-intensity issues include, understandably, where candidates stand on U.S. policy toward the repressive regimes of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.

On the positive side, core elements of the Democratic agenda are popular enough to overcome the Republicans’ structural electoral advantages. On issues such as tax fairness, prescription drug prices and access to affordable health care, Democrats have a sizable advantage in the polling. And Democrats have demonstrated that they can overcome one of the Republicans’ biggest advantages on issues with voters — the economy and jobs — when Democrats combine fairness with economic growth (see: Truman, JFK/Johnson, Bill Clinton and Obama.) Recent examples at the state level of Democrats who earned voter confidence in job-creation and economic development include U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper and Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado, both successful entrepreneurs prior to seeking elective office. Stacey Abrams is arguably the Democrats’ most effective current practitioner of focused messaging and turnout in more conservative political terrain.

A Democratic Party with a big tent, but one anchored in pragmatic progressivism, is the best recipe for long term success.