He talks a big talk, but everytime a progressive like Bernie or Warren went down to WV to talk to his voters...
Manchin stopped opposing his own party, but said it'll never work again.
WV voters support most progressive policies, and when people explain Manchin is opposed to all the stuff his voters support, Manchin gets scared. Because all his promises to not run again are lies.
This is generally true of conservatives / GOP voters as a whole (though, of course, there are always exceptions).
When you ask them about policies without words or phrases they have been taught to react to, they almost always support .. maybe not progressive ideas, but moderately liberal ones. When asked about healthcare, for instance, they react strongly against "Obamacare" and "ACA" and now, "individual mandate". But explain what the ACA does, and how it works, and how insurance companies have to spend certain percentage of their revenue on healthcare instead of profits, and conservatives love it.
They don't get upset until they hear words or phrases the media has told them to get upset about.
Did you post this from an iPhone? I feel like there's a bug in the dimensions of the touch target for the N key because I often end up with an errant space on that specific key. I've not filed a bug report because I'm not sure if it's just me.
That's the opposite of what is happening here. He is afraid of his constituents in West Virginia. It's his electors that would rather see the world burn than lose their own inflated incomes. WV's economy is very tied to fossil fuels.
Too bad there wasn’t some huge pool of spending allocated, that they could use to diversify their economy and energy sources. As the world flushes down fossil fuel companies, the pay seem determined to ride that wave