The Democrats v Manchinema and the strategic paradox of the progressive left

Many Democrats have pilloried Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in the press to try to force them left — but they may in fact be hurting themselves electorally

A long piece of mine on, roughly speaking, the future of the Democratic Party is in The Economist’s print edition this week (and online right now). It is chock-full of all the political science/demographics-y bits and bobs you all like from this newsletter, so please give it a read. (If you don’t have a subscription, you can log in with an email and read 3(?) articles for free each month.)

One of the important things that got cut from the piece was about this paradox Democrats are in with how they deal with their moderate holdouts, especially in the Senate. They have lambasted Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema for not signing up to the big-spending version of Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda (which is mostly popular in its particular proposals with a majority of Americans).

The central problem here is that attacking Manchin (and, to a lesser extent, Sinema) for not being progressive enough or being too strict with the Congressional purse can hurt the Democrats ability to win in the pl…