Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) attributed the left flank of the Democratic Party’s embrace of socialism for not earning a landslide victory down-ballot despite a reported victory in the Electoral College for the presidency.
According to the West Virginia Democrat, overtures to socialism “scared the bejeezus out of people.”
“It wasn’t a good message,” he said. “I mean, we let them tag us before basically, we could remind people who we are. We didn’t have a good message. I’ll be very honest with you, Margaret. Here’s the thing — four years ago in rural America, and America in general, voted for Donald Trump because Democrats were mad, independents were mad. They thought they had been left behind. And I will say this: West Virginia has felt like returning Vietnam veterans. We did everything this country asked and now we weren’t good enough and you left us behind. So they voted in record numbers. They went from being mad to being scared in 2020.”
“They were scared of this socialism that was thrown out there by a radical part of the so-called left that was throwing all this out that basically scared the bejeezus out of people,” Manchin continued. “That hung on and hung on strongly. It is not who we are. It is not who we are and it is not what we’re about. I have fought against that. Joe Biden has fought against that. We’re not for the Green New Deal. We’re not for all the things he is talking about — Medicare for All. We can’t even pay for Medicare for some. We’ve got to take care of a lot of things.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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