Congressional moderates could make a party of their own

Multi-party democracy without election reform

I wrote a brief piece for Bloomberg about rumors that Joe Manchin might leave the Democratic Party that I wanted to expand on here.

He almost certainly won’t leave, both because he’s said the story is “bullshit” and also because leaving the party would be sort of pointless. Obviously, if he flipped to become a Republican that would be a big deal. But Manchin’s spent his whole life not being a Republican. For narrow electoral purposes, the time to flip would have been in advance of his 2018 reelection campaign. But not only did he not flip, but Manchin voted against ACA repeal and Trump’s tax bill. I just don’t see this happening.

And leaving the Democrats without caucusing with the GOP wouldn’t change anything. On substance he’d be the pivotal senator, but he mostly is that already. And politically it wouldn’t help him much. Right now his problem in his home state is that the Democratic Party brand is trash. The good news is that the Joe Manchin brand is decent. But nobody is particul…