By all indications, Shrewsbury, a 32-year-old Marine Corps veteran and community organizer, faces a difficult, if not impossible, road to victory. West Virginia gave Donald Trump his second-biggest margin of support of any state in the nation three years ago, and Manchin is the last Democrat holding a statewide office. Political analysts do not expect voters to elect the Democratic candidate – whoever that turns out to be – and predict Manchin will be replaced by either Governor Jim Justice or Congressman Alex Mooney, the two leading Republicans in the Senate race.
Shrewsbury’s message to them is: not so fast.
“People were really sold on the fact that Joe Manchin could be the only Democrat that could win in West Virginia, and I very much disagree,” Shrewsbury told the Guardian a week after the senator made his announcement.
Sure they do, the right-wing of the Democratic Party can become the new, saner right-wing party. With the existing GOP being treated as the toxic waste dump it’s become. It’s always good to have reasonable opposition in government. They opposing sides force each other to think critically about their positions and consider them from angles that they might not have. The problem is that this needs to happen between parties which are committed to the betterment of the country and upholding democracy. Right now, we have a fractured Democratic Party which is having that push and pull happen inside the party, weakening it while the GOP has turned into a cancer which is being led by bullshit. Unfortunately, the cancer is currently too popular to effectively cut out and our political system makes the rise of a third party incredibly difficult.
The right wing democrats can join the GOP instead when the leftist vanguard kicks them out and takes all their funding.