Working-class Americans once formed the backbone of the Democrat Party, but the cracks in that formerly ironclad coalition began showing years ago. Today, it is nearly irreparable—and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va) stands as the last Blue Dog of the U.S. Senate.
Castigated as a traitor for challenging the party’s multi-trillion-dollar spending agenda, Manchin says it’s “very lonely.” With a razor-thin majority, however, Democrats may come to regret pushing Manchin too far in this fight and those ahead. Following the trail of many rank-and-file voters, one major West Virginia Democrat, Gov. Jim Justice, has already jumped ship to the GOP in recent years. Many are asking Manchin to do the same.
“I promise you,” says Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), “he’s got a seat at the table and a big important voice in our [Republican] caucus if he chooses to come over.” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has made similar gestures toward Manchin.
Such a move would carry immediate political ramifications: restoring a Republican majority in the Senate; relegating Democrats back to the minority; and putting a halt to much of the Biden agenda. In the long view of history, the moment could be remembered as the final act of the working class exodus from the Democrat Party.
For his part, Manchin has not rejected these invitations, going so far as to suggest he may unregister and become an independent. At the same time, he stops short of threatening the balance of power in Washington. “I’d still be caucusing with Democrats,” he says—but how far can Democrats push him before that changes?
Rather than facing political blowback back home, Manchin’s constituents would celebrate a move to the GOP. Over his twenty years in statewide office (as secretary of state, governor, and U.S. senator), West Virginia experienced the sharpest blue-to-red partisan shift in modern American history. In 1992, the state voted decisively for Bill Clinton with a 13-point margin. A generation later, those same voters chose Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton by a crushing 40 points. Joe Biden met a similar fate last year. What happened?
The leftward lurch of the Democrat Party in recent decades, on issues ranging from gun rights to taxpayer-funded abortion, began the alienation of the party’s conservative, working-class coalition—in Appalachia and across America—whose ties to the party have always rested in labor politics. This alienation did not stop, however, with disregarding their views on social issues, ramping up into policies that have directly attacked their livelihoods.
“Green” policies drive up energy prices and send manufacturing jobs overseas. In response, party leaders insult the pride of those who have always provided for their own families, offering welfare checks in place of lost paychecks. Now, with total Democrat control in Washington, President Joe Biden is attempting to override union-negotiated collective bargaining agreements—violating one of the core tenants of the labor movement—requiring companies to fire workers who do not comply with his vaccination mandate. For those whose jobs survive, inflation erodes wages as Democrats urge the Federal Reserve to print trillions funding a massive spending agenda. Adding insult to injury, those who voice objections are targeted by the new woke enforcers of the Democrat Party as “deplorable” and uneducated racists, standing in the way of the grand utopian vision.
Should anyone be surprised that working-class communities, like those in West Virginia, have shifted red?
Now the last Democrat standing in his once blue state (all other statewide offices being held by Republicans), Manchin understands why his constituents now vote overwhelmingly GOP. In a recent interview, he said:
“My little state has never complained. We’ve done all the heavy lifting — we’ve done the mining, we’ve made the steel, we’ve done everything it took for this country to be the superpower of the world. And all of a sudden they took a breath and looked back and we’re not good enough, we’re not clean enough, we’re not green enough, we’re not smart enough, so to hell with you. So, they said, ‘Well, to hell with you, too.”
The same could be said for all blue-collar communities across all America.
Manchin is right to pause and reconsider his own political future. Why would any working person—in West Virginia or across America—support this new Democrat Party?
Eric Brakey is the senior spokesperson for Young Americans for Liberty and a former Maine state senator (2014-2018).