Angry Democrat: ‘Unfortunate’ Joe Manchin Wields So Much Power

Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY), who represents the urban city of Louisville, shot arrows at Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) for not being “representative of most of the country” and lamented his influence as a crucial swing vote in the U.S. Senate.

Manchin has often been a deciding vote in the Senate on legislation and nominations, and the moderate senator holds even more sway with the Senate now split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats.

Yarmuth said it is “unfortunate” Manchin wields so much power, and that he comes from a “largely rural” and “mineral-producing state” that “is not particularly representative of most of the country.”

"I think it's unfortunate, and I think also it's unfortunate that he comes from a state which is not particularly representative of most of the country," says Rep. John Yarmuth on the power Sen. Joe Manchin holds.

"But it is what it is. That's the construction of the Senate." pic.twitter.com/neyZLDaIJX

— CNN Newsroom (@CNNnewsroom) February 24, 2021

The attack on Manchin and his blue color constituents is the latest example of the Democrat Party’s identity crisis.

The Democrats, once the party seen, at least in stereotype, as the home of lunch-pail, working-class union members in the Rust Belt, now are a party dominated by higher-educated, higher-income voters on the coasts.

According to a report, during the 2020 election, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook were the five largest sources of money for President Joe Biden’s campaign and joint fundraising committees among those identifying corporate employers. Biden’s presidential campaign received at least $15.1 million from employees of those five tech firms.

“I think it is fair to say that in many ways the Democratic Party has become a party of the coastal elites, folks who have a lot of money, upper-middle-class people who are good people, who believe in social justice in many respects,” Sanders told NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers” just before the 2020 election. “But I think for many, many years the Democratic Party has not paid the kind of attention to working-class needs that they should’ve.”

The GOP has been changing in the opposite direction. For every $1 employees at the world’s biggest technology companies donated to former President Donald Trump in 2016, they gave $60 to Hillary Clinton.

People who work at Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon sent a total of $3 million to the Democratic presidential nominee ahead of the 2016 election, compared with just over $50,000 to her Republican challenger, according to reports.