Politics and Public Policy
Senator Joe Manchin and the Last Deal
Four takes on the departure of the Mountain State’s senior Senator.
On Thursday, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) announced he will not seek re-election to his seat in West Virginia. This after proffering his “last deal” on permitting reform in early summer. I have often been an “explainer” of our Senator to national outlets and a translator to baffled colleagues and friends as he waded the shoals of politics, cutting deals with the good, the bad, and the ugly. With this announcement, West Virginia’s senior Senator seems set for a whistle-stop tour around the country to gauge interest in a third-party presidential campaign, which could fundamentally alter the shape of the 2024 election.
In what follows, I’ll offer four takes on the departure of Joe Manchin and the context of West Virginia politics to digest them. My position is one of political scientist and a native of the state of West Virginia. Perhaps more importantly, public policy work and public outreach allow me to talk to citizens on the ground (and in places and situations remote from the spotlight of CNN or Fox flyovers). Mine is one perspective; even in West Virginia, there are many more than national narratives would admit.
Joe Manchin’s West Virginia
Joe Manchin’s political legacy in West Virginia is simple. He has been our most able and agile politician for quite some time (and, in my opinion, exceeds his predecessors in this). To conservatives, Manchin is a catalyst for the Biden agenda, and to liberals, he is the antichrist — the last Democrat in the way of progressive nirvana, an establishment firewall against the Biden agenda.
I’ve said elsewhere the difference between Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin is that Sanders’ friends and enemies are the same people every day. Joe Manchin’s friends today are enemies tomorrow and vice versa. And there are two ways to understand this. Depending on your side, he is unmoored from principle or the last pragmatist. However, Manchin has presided over a profound transformation that flies under the radar inside West Virginia.
The West Virginia of national narratives is not the West Virginia that exists on the ground. National reports are filled to the brim with depictions of a West Virginia full of coal and coal miners. (If any other narrative exists, it is one of substance abuse and its consequences for families and a citizenry lacking hope.) But that is not the West Virginia that has emerged under Manchin’s Governorship and Senate career. He has presided over, as Governor and fueled as Senator, a dramatic transformation culminating in the diversification of the energy sector in the state and the emergence of a recreational economy in the former coalfields. As a job creator, coal has declined (though production was fine) since Jimmy Carter unwittingly (as was his orientation to most domestic policy issues) legitimated mountain-top removal in the state — allowing a handful of equipment operators to replace hundreds of skilled miners at a mine.
Today’s West Virginia is best understood along I-79 and I-77, which bifurcates the state from near Bluefield to Charleston to Morgantown. Traveling north, to the right, is the emergence of the recreational economy, borne on our mountains, rivers, and rocks —world-class rafting, kayaking, climbing, biking, and hiking. To the left lies the Ohio River valley, gas, and a rebirth of the state’s manufacturing sector, some of which include green energy initiatives.
Joe Manchin has been front and center with federal investments, fueling the most profound economic transition in the state since coal hit the scene in the 1800s. Today, the state’s economy is more diverse than when I was a youth. New national parks, energy and road infrastructure, and investments in a climate-attentive, diversified energy sector are ultimately Manchin’s legacy in the state. Despite the uncomfortableness of many of his stances on core party issues for folks on the left, I suspect he will be treated favorably by history for these investments. West Virginia is undergoing a massive re-valuation of its natural resources. In the past, this was easy — severance tax on a ton of coal or the price of a board-foot of lumber. We are only beginning to understand how to value the state's renewable, sustainable environmental resources. This is the West Virginia that you don’t hear about in the national narrative, and it is useful for understanding politics here. Now that we know what is happening in the state, the takes…
The Takes, Hot and Crispy, Dredged in Pith
1. No, a Democrat will not win West Virginia, much less a Progressive.
Is it impossible for a Democrat to win West Virginia? No. Had Manchin stayed in the race, it would have been much closer than polls suggest (and even those have tightened since spring). But the notion that Manchin’s exit clears the way for a more party-friendly Democrat, much less a progressive, misses the mark. The last progressive to challenge Manchin or Capito struggled to get 30 percent of the vote. This isn’t a knock on the candidate, who galvanized many historical cleavages in West Virginia politics. The problem is that that view of West Virginia is of a bygone era.
Manchin was the only Democrat in the state capable of holding the Senate seat. The state’s most recognizable Democrats are its candidates for Governor and the party chair. There is currently a candidate for the primary, so there may now be more air in the room. These are all promising candidates whose time is likely in the future.
The real race for the West Virginia Senate seat Manchin is vacating is the Republican primary between Governor Jim Justice (with Babydog in tow) and Representative Alex Mooney. Rep. Mooney is an able politician who took down Rep. David McKinley when their districts were combined despite fighting largely on McKinley’s turf. This race was instructive — McKinley had voted for the Joes’ infrastructure legislation, and Mooney successfully rolled it up and bludgeoned McKinley with it in the primary election. It signaled the seeping of national narratives into West Virginia politics — a seachange where delivering policy goods was no longer good enough in the state—purity and successfully signaling that you are pure matters. Though Mooney is skillful, barring a monumental collapse, health issues, or legal problems, the Governor will win the seat (he too has overseen this sea change in the West Virginia economy), and Babydog will go to Washington.
2. Progressives finally get what they’ve long dreamt of — Republican control of the Senate.
If revealed preferences are a thing, Progressives have always desired a purer party in the state that is more aligned with national progressives, if not national Democrats. Like similar impulses on the right concerning candidates, frustration with Manchin’s centrist (they’d probably say “establishment”) politics fuels a desire to burn it down so the Phoenix can rise. But many of the issues central to national progressivism are not animating features of politics in West Virginia, even if they address acute problems in West Virginia. Some of the most valuable advice my father gave me is that you can’t care more about someone than they care about themselves; otherwise, you’ll spend a lifetime disappointed — and progressives are the most disappointed of all of us.
To be fair, retaining control of the U.S. Senate was always going to be a tall order for the Democrats. But Manchin’s decision makes the implausible as nearly impossible as we get in politics. It will take a heroic amount of effort and mobilizing to preserve the razor-thin majority. Meanwhile, within the chamber, initiatives with legs in an election year (admittedly few always) are now subject to lame-duck dynamics.
The switch from Manchin to the Governor will be a powerful lesson on the left in how much difference there is between Manchin and a Republican — a real one. It will also profoundly affect the Senate, the state, and energy and conservation initiatives. In the Senate, Manchin represents the last of the Dealmakers. As I’ve written elsewhere, from the beginning to the end of his career, Manchin never stops bargaining and cutting the deal. He is a pragmatist par excellence. The Senate will suffer from the departure of its last dealmaker. Moreover, the nomination process for executive branch appointments in the Senate is monumentally harder should a Democrat win the White House again. Manchin’s key role in appointing justices to the federal bench at an extraordinary clip flies under the radar in national discussions. In West Virginia, Senator Capito has climbed the ranks of the Republican party and reflects quite a bit of the same ideals as Manchin with a commitment to our larger economic transitions and initiatives.
3. Democrats can now shift their resources to other races without having to defend Joe Manchin…and so can Republicans.
As news of Senator Manchin’s decision came down, takes from long-disaffected Democrats poured in on social media. Most are bad, even if clever. But this one in particular seems devoid of understanding game theory, politics, or checkers on the porch. Yes, indeed, the Democratic campaign apparatus will not have to spend money defending Manchin’s seat in the Senate. This means they will divert their resources to other races on which their tenuous hold on the Senate depends in the most urgent of ways. Seats in Montana, Ohio, Arizona, and Wisconsin, to name a few, are close. Surely, these extra resources will help Democrats defend these marginal seats. So, Democrats will infuse these races with money.
And so will the national Republican campaign. Without Joe Manchin on the ballot in the fall (an almost certainty had he run), there are few reasons for the Republican party to spend money here. The Republican primary is the election. Moreover, the race inside the state was never going to be settled by some imagined enormous dollar disparity between the Senator and the Governor. Folks on the left, apparently, still have not settled in their mind that Manchin won despite the party, not because of its investments. The money available for these other campaigns will be matched by new money for Republican challengers. Frankly, the truer narrative is the reverse — Manchin would have forced (he is as good on the ground as advertised) massive expenditures from the RNC, even if in defeat.
4. There may be profound consequences for energy policy, and not in the direction we think.
And this is not all about the horserace of who controls institutions or “wins” an election. There are tremendous policy and governance consequences to all this, especially in energy policy, conservation initiatives, and developing a climate-attentive, just economic transition in Appalachia and other rural areas. This is a major development given West Virginia’s place as the 5th largest energy producer in the United States.
Manchin’s departure signaled for some the ability to have a truly liberal approach to climate change, the energy sector, and the transition away from fossil fuels.
Senator Joe Manchin is the most important person in the story of Biden’s presidency. Manchin has catalyzed massive investments in the nation’s infrastructure and emergent approach to climate change and energy transition. While no one sees these types of investments in the Senate emerging after the 2024 election, who oversees the implementation of these issues as they work their way to communities matters greatly. Senator Manchin chairs the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. The current ranking member is Senator John Barrasso (R-WY). Political science suggests that committees can shape the dialogue and information available for policymaking, even with no legislative power at all. One can take a look at the current committee and imagine how all these things are now subject to uncertainty. Manchin is a staunch conservationist, sportsman, and valuer of public lands.
That agenda and flow of information will now change. How much is yet to be seen, but here again, we will notice the dealmaker’s departure. Moreover, many of the projects spawned from these legislative initiatives are still taking shape on the ground, and there is plenty of time to intercede and shape them as they do. As hard as it is to stomach for many on the left and adjacent environmentalists, Manchin’s exit offers the opportunity for rolling back some of the environmental and social justice elements of the Biden agenda as it pertains to energy, natural resources, and the climate.
Conclusion
This is not to say there isn’t plenty to quibble with the Senator about his politics. That is the nature of the deal. He has always been more comfortable with this than his supporters or detractors. I could offer a litany of the problematic elements of the Senator’s politics (in truth, we could do this for any powerful person), but I don’t have to; there is plenty of that out there.
The national perception of Manchin ignores the complex, sometimes problematic, sometimes helpful figure that has been a luminary in West Virginia's largest transitions. In that way, the Senator is like most of his fellows here in the Mountain State. If nothing else, let’s remember West Virginia’s coal and its miners, but not let that past cloud what West Virginia is today and is becoming. If we can do that, we can understand West Virginia politics and what they mean for the nation a bit better, and I can relax with a cocktail.
