I once slammed Joe Manchin. I regret it

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31. My issue is not with a smattering of conservative Democratic Senators....

...but once we are in the majority and have the power we have to come up with a better way of handling those handful of conservative Dems rather than doing what we have essentially done in the past which is given them de facto veto power over all legislation and handing control of our party over to their re-election campaigns.

Part of what I hear from a lot of non-voting but Democratic friendly types is that even if they are voting for a really liberal candidate, who best represents their district, or their state or whatever......the person they are voting for is only going to be allowed to be as progressive as the Dem caucuses most conservative members allow them to be.

The fact that Max Baucus and Blanche Lincoln were handed almost complete control of what our healthcare bill was and was not allowed to have in it, is one of the reasons it was so piecemeal and tenuous in strength and thus so easily painted as bad and eventually dismantled.

So absolutely. I'm fine with Manchin and/or any other conservative members in our caucus. But their comparatively minuscule numbers should not dictate what the rest of the party is or is not allowed to do, especially with slim margins in place to begin with.