Red-State Democrats Voting With Bernie And Warren

Red-State Democrats Voting With Bernie And Warren

Senate Democrats from states Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 have a choice to make. They can either adapt their voting habits to better fit their states’ voting habits or they can continue to move in lockstep with their liberal Senate caucus. As a new Politico report shows, these red-state Democrats have chosen the later. In […]

March 15, 2017

Senate Democrats from states Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 have a choice to make. They can either adapt their voting habits to better fit their states’ voting habits or they can continue to move in lockstep with their liberal Senate caucus. As a new Politico report shows, these red-state Democrats have chosen the later. In particular, Politico singles out Senators like Claire McCaskill who has chosen to follow the interests of Chuck Schumer, not Missouri voters, this year:

“Donald Trump carried Missouri by 19 percentage points on his way to the presidency. But Sen. Claire McCaskill, who faces a fight for reelection next year in the conservative-leaning state, isn’t exactly voting like Washington, D.C.’s idea of a red-state Democrat. McCaskill has sided with Democratic leaders against all of Trump’s most contentious Cabinet nominees and six of the eight regulatory rollbacks teed up by the Senate GOP since Inauguration Day, according to a POLITICO analysis.”

Politico’s analysis also found that Senator Joe Manchin, far from voting like a moderate, has a voting record that is significantly aligned with leftists like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders:

“Even famously GOP-friendly Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has sided with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren more often than he aligned with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).”

Significantly, the extremists group Moveon.org is already taking credit for red-state Democrats continuing to vote liberally:

“’Grass-roots mobilization has already opened the way for red-state Democrats to follow their conscience,’ MoveOn.org Washington director Ben Wikler said in an interview. ‘Everything about the way this administration operates suggests it will keep inflaming an incredibly broad resistance movement.'”

Moveon.org is not a group that has many supporters in states like West Virginia or Missouri. The fact that these Democratic Senators are so beholden to such a liberal group is not something their voters will forget anytime soon.