Tag: Joe Manchin

A Modest Proposal: Doug Jones For POTUS

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As the United States continues to careen towards a dark and potentially catastrophic 2024 election cycle, there is definitely one obvious way to punt our problems down the road for four more years: elect a conservative Democrat like Doug Jones (or Joe Manchin).

I say this because only a conservative Democrat would have the political credibility with both sides to the point that they could provide the leadership, the glue to hold the country together for one more presidential cycle. And, yet, this particular dream is also really impractical.

My dream of a Doug Jones or Joe Manchin becoming the Democratic nominee is a political phantasm because it would be a real struggle to wrangle the AOC wing of the Democratic Party into such a thing. Though, I think a Jones (or Manchin) / AOC ticket in 2024 would be exactly the type of thing that would keep America from collapsing.

But there is a big problem — I know people who literally believe the Democratic Party is Satanic and no amount of reminding them that it IS possible for someone to be conservative and a Democrat would change their mind that, by definition, a Democratic president wants us all to be gay and arrest anyone who gets a Transgender person’s pronouns wrong.

I’m not kidding. I wish I was, but I’m not.

So, in a sense, we’re just too far gone. The die is cast — some sort of major crisis is going to happen around late 2024, early 2025. We just don’t know if it’s of the civil war or MAGA-themed autocracy variety at the moment.

Joe Manchin For POTUS? (Uh, No)

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have to admit that given that America is a center-Right nation with center-Left aspirations that all things being equal a Joe Manchin presidency would potentially punt the civil war or autocracy question down the road as much as eight years.

And, yet, in real terms, any attempt on his part to become president will only exacerbate the very forces he would halt if he was president. In theory, a President Manchin would be just the type of person who would please neither side and yet also sort of be able to bridge the political divide in a way that the country would avoid the existential crisis that is careening towards it.

So, lulz, there is a real chance that Manchin will throw the election to ding-dong Trump if he runs against Biden in some way. I say yet again that we have to take seriously the idea that not since the election of 1860 has America faced such an existential crisis.

I honestly don’t know which way things will go.