I'm not here much these days, but what Joe Manchin did today requires a response.

Here's mine. It is unabashedly and without apology directed to all the centrist, triangulating, county-by-county-vote-counting Democratic Party apparatchiks born of Bill Clinton and James "Clueless" Carville. You know who you are: Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, which mounted almost from Day One of the Clinton administration and only multiplied under Obama, you have continued to believe in-- and insist that the rest of us endorse--triangulation (or as it's been more recently called, "the Third Way"), instead of calling it what it is--spinelessness--and fearlessly following the trail groups like this one have blazed, for ensuring its banishment from the party once and for all.

That's right, my response to what Joe Manchin did today is simply this: WE TOLD YOU SO. And here at the NPA, we've been telling you so for 11+ years.

Grow a pair, Democrats. Escort Joe Manchin, and Kirsten Sinema, and any other member of your caucus who would vote against the priorities in the party platform, of the president, and of your caucus, over to the GOP side of the Senate (and when necessary, the House). Tell them they will lose their bid for re-election. And then, GO MAKE SURE THAT HAPPENS. 

Oh! But then we won't be in the majority! YOU'RE NOT NOW, MORON. It's not rocket science: They're truly on your side or they're not, and when they're not, you must call that out, KICK THEM OUT, and recruit candidates who pledge to do what voters sent them to Washington to do. 

It really is that simple. The GOP did it for years, and that was before their train left the tracks. Anyone claiming politics is one iota more nuanced than this is far too interested in momentary victories. We are in a reality, with authoritarianism on the march, that screams for the fundamental change needed to bring the United States into the same century as the preponderance of the world's other developed nations. Which--NOT coincidentally--are also the most successful, the most empathetic to their populations, and the most peaceful on the planet.