If liberals are going to defeat Donald Trump, they need to stop being ignorant about politics
Jeff Sessions was confirmed as Attorney General tonight, just as we all knew for certain he would be the minute he was nominated. There was no way that three Republican Senators were going to vote against one of their own Senate colleagues. And with the Democrats lacking a majority, Sessions was a lock. We knew that weeks ago. It was always just a matter of whether the Democrats could use the hearings to damage Donald Trump along the way. But not only did most liberals fail to understand that about the Sessions hearings, they also ended up mistakenly focusing their anger on a Democrat when it was all said and done.
Within the context of the absolute certainty from the start that Jeff Sessions was going to be confirmed, the Democrats scored a victory with the hearings. Elizabeth Warren managed to bait Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell into attacking her in a rude and sexist manner which also pitted him against Coretta Scott King. The Democrats got their message across to the American political middle that Sessions is a racist, Trump is a racist, and McConnell is a jackass. And that’s what matters of course, because Trump will sink or swim based entirely on his approval rating, and that’s determined by whether the people in the middle side with his supporters or his detractors.
And so after fifty-two Senate Republicans all came together to make sure Jeff Sessions would be confirmed in a manner that the Democrats simply could not stop, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin did something smart tonight: he cast a meaningless vote for Sessions, and in so doing, he just got himself reelected in 2018. Manchin is a moderate Democrat from West Virginia, one of the most conservative states in the nation. He has to throw the conservatives in his state a few bones here and there, so they won’t replace him with an extremist conservative Republican.
But instead of focusing their anger on the fifty-two Republicans who marched Jeff Sessions straight into the Attorney General’s chair, angry liberals only wanted to focus their wrath on Democrat Joe Manchin. They’re vowing to launch a primary challenge against him in 2018, forcing him out in favor of a liberal Democratic nominee. Nevermind that any liberal Senate candidate in West Virginia would get automatically blown out by twenty points, because it’s West Virginia for crying out loud. Nevermind that the end result of targeting a moderate like Manchin, who usually votes with the Democrats, is that they would merely lose a Senate seat to a Republican who would then vote against them 100% of the time.
None of that heaping dose of reality seems to matter right now to the angriest of liberals, who either don’t understand how politics works or don’t care. They’re too busy stupidly attacking one of their own allies, under the deranged delusion that they can magically replace him with a liberal Senator in an extremely conservative state. They’re too busy bathing themselves in misdirected blind anger so they can feel self righteous, to bother acknowledging that the laws of politics don’t change just because they wish it were so.
And they’re not even bothering to focus any anger on the Senate Republicans who guaranteed that Jeff Sessions would be confirmed. Because in the minds of those who have lost their minds, it must feel more soothing to attack an ally for nonsensical reasons, than to attack an enemy who’s trying to destroy you. It’s time for this sheer utter nonsense to end.
If liberals want to survive the Donald Trump era, they need to grow up when it comes to acknowledging how you actually win and lose in politics. They need to get over how special it makes them feel when they attack other liberals for not being liberal enough. They need to educate themselves on the realities of politics, because while all these protests do affect what goes on in the political arena, this war with Trump will ultimately be won or lost in the political arena. And until liberals figure out what they’re talking about when it comes to politics, they need to stop randomly flying off the handle about political realities which they don’t grasp.
Joe Manchin did a smart thing tonight. He helped the liberals, and he helped the Democratic Party. He just got himself reelected to the Senate in 2018 in a conservative state. That’s one seat the Democrats won’t have to worry as much about losing now, to what would surely have been an extremist conservative Republican. Jeff Sessions was a lock to be confirmed the minute Trump nominated him. Liberals lost that battle weeks ago. His hearings have just been political maneuvering. Tonight was a victory for liberals. It’s only the politically illiterate liberals who failed to understand that. Liberal defiance in general is what’s keeping America alive right now. But if liberals keep angrily mouthing off about politics without knowing what they’re talking about, they’re only helping Trump.
