The liberal base’s biggest problem in applying pressure on Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) on things like the filibuster and spending is the fact that he just doesn’t seem to care — and might even relish it. Indeed, getting hit from the left only bolsters Manchin’s brand as a moderate-to-conservative Democrat in what was the second-reddest state in the 2020 election. The popular former governor doesn’t really need the base, and no amount of bemoaning that fact when it comes to Democrats’ 50th vote in the Senate will change it.
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We’ve already seen what seemed like a bit of a warning shot on all this recently, thanks to a report that Manchin has considered leaving the Democratic Party. (Manchin denied it, and then said he had indeed offered to become an independent if it would help the party.)
On Thursday morning came another comment that seemed designed to cause liberals to pull their hair out and perhaps to send a message: Manchin pitched his holding out on Democrats’ spending bill not just as a reflection of his conservative state, but of the country as a whole.
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“We can’t go too far left,” Manchin said on CNN. “This is not a center-left or a left country. We are a center — if anything, a little center-right country. That’s being shown, and we ought to be able to recognize that.”
Cue the latest anti-Manchin outrage. The kind of people who have been bemoaning Manchin’s obstinance immediately cried foul. Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections, after all. They hold the presidency, the House and the Senate, and the spending bill is both popular and very much reflects the campaign promises President Biden ran on in 2020. Even to the extent Democrats’ majorities are thin, they note very validly, that’s in significant part because Republicans have a built-in advantage in American elections — across virtually every lever of power.
This question is more complex than that, though, and judging it is difficult. It involves getting into the minds of hundreds of millions of Americans. We’re clearly a closely divided country, at least when it comes to partisan control.
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The first thing we can say is that Democrats do generally win more votes. This has been the case not just in elections for president, but also for House and Senate (even if you consider the fact that the Senate popular vote can be pretty misleading). There’s also the fact that nonvoters tend to skew to the left — with 51 percent leaning toward Democrats and 30 percent leaning toward the GOP in a 2014 Pew poll.
As a whole, if everyone voted and the playing field were completely level, it’s evident Democrats would win more.
That’s not quite the same as saying we’re a center-left country, though. As Manchin shows, electing Democrats doesn’t inherently mean you support liberal policies. There is a not-all-together ancient history of moderate-to-conservative Democrats like Manchin winning in plenty of districts, especially across the South. And to this date, despite the decline of the Blue Dogs, the moderate wing of the Democratic Party is more robust than in the GOP.
It’s also been true for a long time that many more Americans tend to view themselves as conservative than liberal. A Gallup poll early this year showed that, despite an increase in Americans calling themselves “liberal” in recent years, conservatives still outpaced them by 36 percent to 25 percent.
That could be at least in part because Americans are still wary of the “liberal” label, which Republicans have wielded for decades as an epithet. Other Gallup polling has shown Americans are more likely to call themselves “conservative” when “liberal” is the option on the other end of the spectrum.
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But when it offered a “progressive” option instead of “liberal,” the left-leaning option didn’t perform any better; it just moved some conservatives to the “moderate” option. And regardless, even as more Americans and voters appear to align with the Democratic Party, it’s clear that’s not true of those calling themselves “liberals” or “progressives.”
Then there’s the question about how people identify themselves versus the policies they actually align with. Proposals like the Democrats’ spending plan poll very popularly, as do other Democratic priorities like comprehensive immigration reform and raising the minimum wage — while the Trump administration’s priorities generally polled poorly. Republicans have proved much more adept at pushing things through, despite them apparently not having popular support.
Relatedly, Americans have moved to the left in recent years when it comes to perhaps the fundamental difference between the two parties: the role of government. Polls have shown a significant increase in the number of Americans who want the government to do more, versus those who wanted it to do less. That’s in part due to Republicans warming to bigger government during the Trump era, and we’ll have to see if it continues to be the case (skepticism is warranted). But it suggests that while Americans claim the conservative label more than the liberal/progressive one, they align more with core philosophy of Democrats on this foundational issue.
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Whether the United States is a center-right country is a very debatable proposition. And Manchin certainly has an interest in arguing that, given it would validate his position as a swing vote and his decision to hold out on the Democrats’ big spending bill. But practically speaking, if he really believes it, that’s what matters in the here and now. And he’s probably not going to be swayed after what happened in Tuesday’s elections.
The fact that he’d say something like this — he also notably called himself a “conservative Democrat” in an MSNBC interview — should also reinforce that he appears increasingly comfortable thumbing his nose at his critics and their vision for what a Democrat like him should be.