… If Manchin acted and voted like a garden-variety Democratic senator, Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) could enact much of Biden’s agenda.
But Manchin won’t permit that — and the reason turns on home-state politics. Unlike almost all other Senate Democrats, he’s trying to outrun a decades-long realignment in West Virginia. Over the past 40 years, a confluence of factors — the changing politics of coal, the Democrats’ leftward slide on cultural issues, the state GOP’s increasing institutional strength and the rise of Donald Trump — transformed this once safely blue state into a Republican stronghold. Only Manchin’s moderation and insistence on compromise have kept him afloat. CONTINUED
David Byler, Washington Post