Zach Shrewsbury faces an improbable task to replace the conservative Democrat in the face of a Republican onslaught – but he won’t be put off
Zach Shrewsbury faces an improbable task to replace the conservative Democrat in the face of a Republican onslaught – but he won’t be put off
West Virginia has pretty equal numbers of registered Democrats and Republicans (36.5% & 36.8% respectively) so this will be a battle over turn out and convincing the remaining voters. We'll see where his numbers are in six months.
Comparing party registration is a useless exercise. In states with open or semi-closed primaries unaffiliated/independent is always going to be a sizable bloc, and those voters almost always vote with one party or another (i.e. they're not truly independent swing voters who can be swayed). Just because WV has a huge chunk of independent voters doesn't mean the partisan lean of voters is anything close to even. West Virginia is an R+22 state, and the battle will be much less about turnout than it is about messaging and recapturing the attention of the working class.
And I fully intend to hold centrist Democrats responsible for their turnout or lack thereof. The party is as entitled to their votes now as it was when it was demanding progressives' votes for Manchin. And I'm not expecting the candidate to do a fucking thing to please centrists. They're not Republicans. That was enough when it was Manchin. Remember, progressives vote with the party 95% of the time!
Bernie took w Virginia over Hillary, I think if he raises enough money and communicates his message well people will respond to him. My gut says that Jim Justice will get the Republican nomination and he will be a difficult candidate to beat. He's won governor races as a Democrat and a Republican. Trump likes justice and Trump won west Virginia handedly. The odds are stacked against Shrewsbury but I still think he has a good chance if he can establish his own story and not let justice paint him as some crazy Marxist.
Maybe. But the centrists will need to vote blue no matter who, like they've been screaming at any progressive who is less than pleased with people like Manchin.
We'll see. Turn out for the last election was the best since 1960. I think turn out will go down next year unfortunately. I truly hope I'm wrong. But I think next year is going to be a democratic massacre. People like Shrewsbury might actually turn that around. Who knows.
Well, it's clear that people like Manchin can't.
Joe manchin did win three Senate races he was also a secretary of state and governor of West Virginia. That's a lot of wins for a Democrat in West Virginia where Trump beat Biden by something like 39%. I'm not trying to tell you to like him or anything but that's impressive to me.
He's not running for re-election because knows he can no longer win. Moving to the right has failed.
Well neither one of us knows what he's thinking and neither one of us has a crystal ball but this race is going to be a difficult run for any Democrat. Justice may very well have been able to out-Manchin Manchin. I think it's a good idea to make this a contest of completely different world views. Neither one of knows right now who would win Manchin vs Justice or Shrewsbury vs Justice.