Didn’t notice how a Senator Machine run on a “No Labels” party would backfire. He’s likely to lose his reelection in 2024. So very little to lose there. He seems to have firm first principles. So why not swing for the fences?

Such a run might result in his getting Ross Perot type numbers. That would be a wakeup call for both parties, though likely more of a call on the left. Ross Perot (and Pat Buchanan for that matter) turned out to be more prescient and right. Took 30 years, but many now acknowledge the “giant sucking sound” (Perot) and that there is great danger and little reward in being the world’s policeman (Buchanan). So Senator Machin, run baby run. Watch those b…s sweat.

I don’t know, i rather think we need an extreme response right now. Centrism isn’t going to solve anything or change behaviors. Every institution has been taken over, a strong response is the only remedy to eventually get back to the center right.

My understanding of No Labels is that they will run if it is Biden against Trump. I wholly support them in doing that. I will not vote for either of those two people and many others will not either. I am lucky in my state that I can write in a candidate of my choice, but many other states only offer the choices of those that can get on the ballot. So, if No Labels can manage it, they offer disenchanted voters a chance to say ‘neither of those two’.
When Biden ran in 2020 he ran as the normalcy candidate, a promise that if he was elected a civility and gravitas would return to Washington, old Uncle Joe would be a guiding hand and a stop-gap one term presidency holding back the extremists in his party and removing Donald Trump (who according the Democrats was the cause of the unrest and civility and general norm breaking, ha). Of course, Biden has been a disaster on various fronts. If Democrats didn’t want a No Labels type option on the ballot, maybe they should have governed differently.
No Labels has a wishy washy platform of bland statements and no real solutions, it solely exists for voters to show dissatisfaction with the current two favorites for the Democrat and Republican parties. I am absolutely fine with that. I can vote my policy choices down ticket.

The Progressives cleaned up US politics in the 1890s and after. It can be done. If Manchin starts a twenty first century version of this movement he will be doing good.

US politics are clearly dysfunctional. It is hard to see how significant progress can be made without structural reform a) public debate ceases to fragmented into a series of ideological silos b) both Congress and the executive branch cease dancing to lobbyist tunes and start paying more attention to public opinion.

On a) one can be an optimist. Podcasts are replacing Twitter. Algorithms have been tweaked and are becoming less polarising (judging by my own feeds). More subjects are being debated.

On the other hand, b) is very challenging. Fixing the executive branch by banning the revolving door and other forms of soft corruption is possible but the legislative branch is trickier. The current necessity to raise ever larger amounts to finance political campaigns mean that politicians inevitably have to pay more attention to contributors than voters (especially in “safe seats” i.e, most districts). Given the Supreme Court’s protection of corporate influence via the Citizens United case, it may require a Constitutional amendment to clean up politics. The British approach of limiting political spending and providing free communication is not perfect but it may provide some pointers.

The widespread and growing populist perception that “they” are no longer listening let alone acting to help ordinary citizens is both largely accurate and potentially fatal to the American experiment.

Alex Carnegie

What we have in America is a vocally radical veneer of hyperpartisanship masking a deeper monoculture of managerial backscratching wherein a small but loud minority on each side is perpetually at drawn daggers with each other while a sclerotic and increasingly decrepit uniparty fails to run the country in any meaningful way aside from ensuring their own reelection. Any colorful extremism is intended to disguise the inherent gray mediocrity and self-serving incompetence of most of our political class.

“Bipartisanship and consensus decision-making have lost their lustre”
I’m not sure this is accurate. Both parties have simply developed irreconcilable differences.
The system worked fine when we were arguing over tax rates or immigration. But our arguments now are essentially theological: “what is man?”, “what is a woman?”, “does reality exist?”, “are babies human?” These questions are not amenable to political compromise; they are zero-sum. What should we do, have a 3/5ths Compromise on abortion? We know how well that worked out the first time.
It isn’t that our political parties are radicalizing. It’s that Americans increasingly do not share a common philosophy. A people with shared values can compromise on means (how) as long as they agree on ends (the goal). Eg: poverty is bad, let’s argue about how to fix it. But disagreement on ends is often fatal to a society. Increasingly, our political arguments are over “what is good” instead of “how do we achieve the common good”.

Congressional Democrats double crossed Manchin when they failed to deliver on things they promised him in the energy sector in return for his vote for the infrastructure bill. The Biden Administration was too worried about offending Climate Change fanatics to deliver on promises to Manchin. As a result, Manchin’s political career in WV is over. He can’t win reelection after his infrastructure bill vote without compensation. Manchin has a double motive to run for president.
1. Revenge for the double cross.
2. Make sure that a more pro fossil fuel policy takes over in Washington, DC.

As noted in the article, Manchin agress with Trump on a lot of policy issues. Watermellon Democrats, green on the outside, Marxist red on the inside, are the bane of West Virginia. Manchin can redeem himself at home in WV if he runs 3rd party and a Republican wins. Currently, WV votes overwhelmingly Republican. I think Manchin wants to be able to go home with better approval numbers. After reading Manchin’s recent Op Ed in USA Today, I’m fairly certain he’ll run.

” if moderates abandon the major parties, they will only empower these extreme candidates, driving the Democrats and Republicans further and further apart.”
But think it thru. Sure the departure of the moderates would leave both parties more fanatical than now, but who would care, since the poor damn voter would once again have sanity to vote for. The center would win, and the other parties would become laughing stocks. Their only way back to power would be to *compete* for the centrist voter once again. There millions of voters who will never vote for Trump and millions more who will never vote for Biden — but who might, all of them, vote for a respectable centrist.
” if moderates abandon the major parties, they will only empower these extreme candidates, driving the Democrats and Republicans further and further apart.”
But think it thru. Sure the departure of the moderates would leave both parties more fanatical than now, but who would care, since the poor damn voter would once again have sanity to vote for. The center would win, and the other parties would become laughing stocks. Their only way back to power would be to *compete* for the centrist voter once again. There’s millions of voters who will never vote for Trump and millions more who will never vote for Biden — but who might, all of them, vote for a respectable centrist.

Imagine instead a viable Presidential candidate, already polling around six per cent, who was a roaring critic of cancel culture, not that some of us have ever not been cancelled, and of identity politics by reference to class politics. Imagine that he sat on the Board of Academic Advisors of the Classic Learning Test, which clearly did not object to his foreign policy positions. Imagine that his answer to why he was not a Marxist, since his views and alliances invited the question, was that dialectical materialism was incompatible with incarnational theology.

Cornel West bases it all on the glorious Matthew 25, which it is fashionable to stop reading at verse 40. But there are six more verses after that. You have to believe in Hell. You have to hold the fully orthodox Christology that alone upholds the authority of Jesus to send anyone there. That contains the seeds of the correction of the points on which West is wrong, though no more so than any other candidate, sometimes in different ways and sometimes not.

West’s candidacy opens the way, as his Presidency would open it even more clearly, for a successor who recognised that Christological orthodoxy, West’s protection against dialectical materialism, could not be separated from fidelity to the Petrine Office, with implications that were far more radical than anything that Marxism could ever formulate, much less deliver.