Democrats Should Concentrate on Winning Elections

Democratic senator Joe Manchin is firmly on record that he prefers to be “bipartisan” than oppose Republicans’s efforts to manipulate electoral processes as a means of gaining control of the federal government. In a Washington Post column yesterday, Jennifer Rubin sensibly advises Democrats that it would be both futile and counterproductive to admonish Manchin. Concentrate on winning elections, she says. Win enough of them and you can gain control by a sufficient margin so you’re not dependent on unreliable fellow Democrats. Unfortunately, because of structural reasons, for example Wyoming having the same number of senators as California, which has a vastly greater number of citizens, gerrymandering, voter suppression laws, and other anti-Democratic mechanisms, to win elections in some key states Democrats will have to attract substantially more voters who favor Democratic candidates than Republican candidates.