Mother Jones, named after Mary Harris Jones, known as Mother Jones, an Irish-American trade union activist, and socialist advocate, is a far left opinion journal founded in 1976, so the following article they printed is hardly a surprise.
“He’s a villain, he’s a threat to the globe.”
by Oliver Milman | Wednesday, January 26, 2022 | 2:00 AM EST
Within the brutal machinations of US politics, Joe Manchin has been elevated to a status of supreme decision-maker, the man who could make or break Joe Biden’s presidency.
Internationally, however, the Democratic senator’s new fame has been received with puzzlement and growing bitterness, as countries already ravaged by the climate crisis brace themselves for the US—history’s largest ever emitter of planet-heating gases—again failing to pass major climate legislation.
For six months, Manchin has refused to support a sweeping bill to lower emissions, stymieing its progress in an evenly split US Senate where Republicans uniformly oppose climate action. Failure to pass the Build Back Better Act risks wounding Biden politically but the ramifications reverberate far beyond Washington, particularly in developing countries increasingly at the mercy of disastrous climate change.
As it happens, the article is not a Mother Jones original, but was reprinted from the United Kingdom’s left-wing newspaper, The Guardian, and the Guardian original had a slightly less dramatic headline: “‘He’s a villain’: Joe Manchin attracts global anger over climate crisis: The West Virginia senator’s name is reviled on the streets of Bangladesh and other countries facing climate disaster as he blocks Biden’s effort to curb planet-heating gases”.
One might have thought that an American-based opinion journal like Mother Jones would have had a greater understanding of American politics, but apparently not. You see, the “whole world” is not hating on Joe Manchin, because the people of West Virginia, the ones he represents in the United States Senate, aren’t hating on him. As William Teach of The Pirate’s Cove noted, Senator Manchin is pretty popular in his home state, with 72% of his constituents approving his opposition to President Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ plans. Mother Jones, headquartered in San Francisco, appears unaware of that fact.
In Senator Manchin’s last campaign, in 2018, the incumbent drew a Democratic primary opponent, Paula Jean Swearengin, a very ‘progressive’ candidate, so ‘progressive’ that, in July 2021, she left the Democratic Party for the far-left People’s Party. West Virginia’s Democrats didn’t think much of Miss Swearengin’s candidacy, giving Mr Manchin 111,589 votes, 69.8% of the total, to Miss Swearengin’s 48,302 votes, 30.2%. West Virginia’s voters knew what they had in Mr Manchin, as he was one of very few Democrats to vote to confirm most of President Trump’s cabinet nominees, yet they still gave him the vast majority of their votes.
Miss Swearengin tried again in 2020, against incumbent Republican Shelley Moore Capito, and was stomped 547,454 (70.28%) to 210,309 (27.00%).
Still, Senator Manchin, who had won statewide elections in 2000 (for Secretary of State), 2004 and 2008 (for Governor), and 2010 and 2012 (for the United States Senate) didn’t have an easy time of it, defeating Republican Patrick Morrisey by the relatively narrow margin of 290,510 (49.6%) to 271,113 (46.3%).
The truth is simple: the voters of the Mountain State are very conservative, and Mr Manchin, who has described himself as a “centrist, moderate, conservative Democrat”, is not only representing the voters of his state the way they would like, but has been true to the way he has described himself to the voters.
It appears that the editors of The Guardian, who, being Brits, believe that candidates represent their party rather than their geographical constituency. The way British elections work, the way a lot of European elections work, such a belief is understandable. But the editors of Mother Jones ought to know better; in the United States, elected officials represent the voters of their geographical districts, and politically educated Americans, a subset which ought to include the magazine’s writers and editors, know this to be true. Mr Manchin does not represent the Democratic Party; he represents West Virginians.
So, no, Mother Jones, the whole world isn’t hating on Joe Manchin. A lot of Republicans aren’t hating on him, and, most importantly, his constituents aren’t hating on him. But that might be too difficult a concept for people in the City by the Bay.
My good friend Amanda Marcotte‘s second favorite whipping boy — Donald Trump was, is, and always will be her favorite person to hate! — Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) has been dropped by the writer as a frequent target of late. But I knew nevertheless that she’s wax apoplectic if she saw this story from The Hill: