The Manchinian Candidate

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Joe Biden abdicating his position as the 2024 democratic nominee marks the first time that an incumbent will not seek re-election since fellow democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1968. Coincidentally, 1968 also marks the last time there was an assassination attempt on the presumptive favorite going into a presidential election. While Robert F. Kennedy was murdered unlike Donald J. Trump, the historical parallels from 1968 put the Democratic Party at a similar watershed moment in their history.

However, those historical parallels aren't confined to 1968 alone. The crossroads that democrats find themselves at now echoes the position the republican party found itself in during the wake of the Obama administration in which it founds itself needing to cultivate a new identity to shed itself of the stigma its previous leadership had mired it in. While the bombastic leadership of Donald Trump ushered in that sea change in 2016 by reshaping the neoconservative political platform republicans were rooted in into the direction of a populist one, the radical platform the democratic party has embedded itself in up to 2024 makes its chances of re-branding itself into something more palatable for the American electorate even more unlikely than even the unforeseen outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

When the Democratic Party last faced an existential crisis of this magnitude following resounding defeats in three successive presidential elections, it was ironically Joe Biden who played a role in reshaping its identity to better contend against its republican opposition. Then-Senators Al Gore and Joe Biden ran under the New Democrat platform in the 1988 Presidential Election as they hoped to build a faction that would usher in the new leadership the party so desperately needed at the time. While their candidacies were to no avail, they set the tone for the party moving forward as it would ultimately triumph in 1992 built upon the centrist foundation it had cultivated in the years prior.

In order to achieve that victory, eventual President Bill Clinton rejected the reckless spending and obsession with using social justice as a political vehicle to push policies that attacked existing american norms. The template for success it built would re-emerge in a new iteration in 2008 under the candidacy of Barack Obama, who like Clinton took up the mantle as the figurehead of New Democrat political identity in order to reinvigorate his party after its failure to usurp the Oval Office from George W. Bush in 2004. Today, the very suggestion of abandoning social justice as the crux of the democratic party's platform would result in career suicide for any aspiring liberal politician.

For the Democratic Party to shed itself of the failures of the Biden administration, it would require a stark deviation away from the radical platform it has built itself upon since 2020. In doing so, the democrats could effectively run themselves as the uniparty by fostering a political climate more conducive to moderate voters much like how Bill Clinton successfully did in forming the New Democrat ideology that won him consecutive elections in 1992 and 1996 at a time the Democratic Party was in shambles every bit as much as it is today. Not only does that defined course of action exist but a perfect candidate to be the figurehead of that new identity had as well: West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin.

However, the radical direction the Biden Administration has taken its party in places anyone who skewed more centrist like Manchin into political exile. That alienation was culminated by Manchin's decision to register as an Independent in 2024, leaving the party altogether. The hostile dynamic fomented by the Democratic Party that saw Manchin leave its ranks is a microcosm of how it has dug its own grave heading into the 2024 Presidential Election as it now finds itself rudderless and without any alternative other than to steer itself on the same course that has led the party to its impending doom.

The toxic culture created by democrats remains every bit as pervasive today despite the obvious detriment it has become to their political viability. Rumors arising the Manchin is contemplating re-registering as a democrat to contend for the party's nomination have been immediately and vociferously rejected by democrat voters whose unyielding radicism represents the norm within the party. Even if Manchin could serve as a legitimate candidate who could challenge Trump, democratic voters have been so deluded under Biden's leadership that they still do not demonstrate an iota of self awareness when it comes to how their radical platform has been firmly rejected for being incongruent with the course that lies ahead if America is to reshape its trajectory in the hopes of having any future whatsoever.

Despite the proven track record of success the modus operandi moderate Democratic leadership has given its party for the better part of the last 3 decades, the direction it has gone in since 2020 makes returning to that strategy untenable. For the modern democratic voter, allegiance to policy making promoting transgenderism, DEI, and an open border has become so ingrained in their political consciousness that the party nominating a moderate candidate like Manchin would likely result in abysmal voter turnout. That reaction from Democratic voters would offset any gains it would stand to make by garnering votes from RINO voters who share liberal's obsession with doing whatever it possible to upend Donald Trump, regardless of the cost. The toll that has taken appears to finally have come due as the Democratic Party's apparent decision to double-down on the radical political platform that has been the cornerstone of a presidential administration with some of the lowest approval ratings in history by investing itself in Kamala Harris as the future of the party. That decision has snuffed out any rekindled optimism of their chances to name a candidate like Manchin who could serve as a competent adversary to Donald Trump in the wake of Joe Biden dropping out of the 2024 race.

Harris becoming the presumptive nominee doesn't just represent a capitulation for democrats in 2024 and the near future. It also represents the urgent need for the party to self-reflect and grow into something other than what it has become if it hopes to have any future at all. The challenge that exists there is that the electorate it has cultivated is so hyper-radicalized that the voting base the Democratic Party hinges on is one that is innately obstinate, refusing to even concede the most radically polarizing positions of its ideology. By fostering that impetuous political consciousness, building a more moderate Democratic Party that can act in the interest of the American public instead of its radical ideologues seems as hopeless as the party's chances heading into election day.