Robert Reich explains why it's 'time for Democrats to kick Joe Manchin out of the party'

Sarah D | 10:34 AM on July 18, 2022

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin continues to be a proudly persistent thorn in the Democratic Party’s side, most recently with his refusal to fall in line behind Joe Biden’s heinously awful Build Back Better agenda that our country literally cannot afford.

According to some of our greatest Democratic and liberal thinkers, Manchin has basically “single-handedly doomed humanity” to a fiery death from climate change and no free college and whatnot.

And speaking of our greatest Democratic and liberal thinkers, here’s Robert Reich with some advice for the Democratic Party on how to deal with Joe Manchin going forward:

Yes, it is.https://t.co/tbnB00E953

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) July 18, 2022

Robert here is convinced that the only way Dems can move forward and succeed in making America fully realize the dream of Progressive Utopia is to show Manchin the door, because as long as they allow him (and Kyrsten Sinema) to infect their otherwise noble party, they’re doomed to hit wall after wall after wall:

In fact, the way things are right now, Biden and the Democrats have the worst of both worlds. They look like they control the Senate, as well as the House and the presidency. But they can’t get a damn thing done because Manchin (and his intermittent sidekick Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema) won’t let them. So after almost two years of appearing to run the entire government, Democrats have accomplished almost nothing of what they came to Washington to do.

America is burning and flooding but Democrats won’t enact climate measures. Voting rights and reproductive rights are being pulverized but Democrats won’t protect them. Gun violence is out of control but Democrats come up with a miniature response. Billionaires and big corporations are siphoning off more national wealth and income than in living memory and paying a lower tax rate (often zero), but Democrats won’t raise taxes on big corporations and the wealthy.

…

By kicking Manchin out of the party, Democrats could at least go into the midterms with a more realistic pitch: “It looked like we had control of the Senate, but we didn’t. Now that you know who the real Democrats are, give us the power and we will get it done.”

We already knew who the real Democrats are, Robert. Or, rather, we already knew who the Democrats really are. And they’ll only confirm that even further if they kick out Joe Manchin.

But let them go for it anyway. We’d love to watch!

I don't see how this could possible backfire pic.twitter.com/f8FGfA1zEn

— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) July 18, 2022

Griswold is being facetious; Reich is not. He really doesn’t see how it could possibly backfire. Not seeing how his big, bold ideas would actually play out is kind of his thing, if you think about it.