… Mr. Manchin’s unique ability to survive in West Virginia is the last vestige of the state’s once-reliable New Deal Democratic tradition, dating to old industrial-era fights over workers’ wages, rights and safety. It was one of the most reliably Democratic states of the second half of the 20th century, voting in defeat for Adlai Stevenson in 1952, Hubert Humphrey, Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Michael Dukakis. The so-called Republican “Southern strategy” yielded no inroads there.
But Democrats began to lose their grip on the state during the 1990s, at least at the presidential level. In a way, West Virginia voters have been thwarting progressive hopes ever since. The promise of a new progressive, governing majority always rested on the assumption that the Democrats would retain enough support among white, working-class voters, especially in the places where New Deal labor liberalism ran the strongest. They did not. CONTINUED
Nate Cohn, New York Times