West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey leads his Democratic rival Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) in a new poll just released.
Bill Moore is an author who spent most of his life in Appalachia and is a regular contributor to Free State Patriot.
October 17, 2018
In three weeks, we, as a nation head, to the polls in what is shaping up to be the most important election in history. The choice, as in 2016, is whether to choose the rule of law or rule by mob. Hillary Clinton embodied the Democrats morality (actually lack of morality). I won’t go over her lies, contradictions and total disconnection with real hard working Americans in this article. What I want to focus on is someone West Virginians, according to the polls, are preparing to reward with another term.
Joe Manchin III, according to https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/senate/?ex_cid=irpromo (an aggregate poll) is expected to win 52% to 44% over Patrick Morrisey. The most recent notable action Manchin did was to vote for Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation. As we all know President Trump wanted Kavanaugh on SCOTUS and Manchin’s vote helped secure that position. Manchin’s vote made no difference in the outcome as it still would have been a 49-48 victory had he voted “NO”. This was a play to secure your vote that would in no way damage his party.
Most West Virginians are wholesome, hardworking families that just want to earn a decent living. Being fair minded folks it would be disrespectful not to reward Manchin’s vote on SCOTUS with another term as he made the right choice. It would be like encouraging your child to improve their grades and when they finally get a good test score you ground them anyway. The child is confused holding a test paper with an “A” while being told they cannot attend the school dance. Your child will storm off to their room, complaining how unfair the world is. As a parent, you are concerned with the big picture of your child’s education and the whole grading period not just a single test score.
Let’s look at the whole grading period of Joe Manchin III and point out why he needs to be a private citizen again. (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-trump-score/joe-manchin-iii/) This year he has voted 17 times on the same side as Trump or 78% of the time. Not bad, a “C” on most grade scales. Except that the voters were telling Manchin in 2016 they were on completely Trump’s side. Remember he beat Hillary by 42%. That overwhelming victory should encourage better than a “C”. This is an election year and I wonder if that is influencing an apparent shift towards Trump? Let’s look at the previous grading period from 2017.
There were 57 opportunities to vote in 2017. (Yes, Congress has no real productivity) Good ole’ Joe voted against Trump 45% of the time. Even with West Virginians practically yelling at him “we are in Trump’s camp” he chooses party lines 55% of the time. Understand there are Senators that vote strictly party line 80%-90% of the time so as that goes Joe is somewhat better. Now let’s look at the votes that impacted West Virginian families.
His very first disagreement with Trump and by extension West Virginia, January 12, 2017, was voting NOT to repeal the disastrous Obamacare or Affordable Care Act as it is officially known. This is important because the proposal from the Republicans was to repeal and then replace with a more affordable insurance coverage that would use the open market to keep premiums low. Manchin said “no”. Effectively keeping money out of your pockets and maintaining the status quo of rising premiums and increased profits for the insurance companies. Joe defends his vote using the “pre-existing” condition argument. Meaning if you have an illness prior to obtaining insurance Obamacare requires the insurance to cover that illness. Imagine if your auto insurance worked the same way. You don’t buy till you have a wreck. This is a feel-good defense designed demonstrate how evil Republicans are and how caring Democrats are. Make no mistake when you are forced to purchase something by the government it is a tax no matter the name. Joe had no issues forcing people to buy insurance with Obamacare. As a side note look up the first quarter profits for insurance companies’ profits. That reveals the winner of the ACA. Certainly, it was not the voters.
If you really want health care to be affordable remove government regulations and encourage competition in a free market. Costs only spiral upward when some else is footing the bill. Do you really think aspirin would cost $16.00 a pill if insurance was not covering it? Or perhaps ask Joe about the $69,700 campaign donation from Mylan Inc. a pharmaceutical company that benefits from insurance companies paying for its drugs.
Manchin continued to fight Trump on traditionally non-partisan votes such as Cabinet positions. Thanks to Manchin and the Mob (Democrats) Trump has had more “NO” votes applied to Cabinet posts than any other President since FDR (and he had 12 years). Manchin has 4 “NO” votes on Cabinet officials.
Manchin also votes against putting more money in your wallet. Three different times he has voted against tax reform. The IRS Tax Codes are out of control and simplification is needed as well as a reduction in tax rates. Then again, a guy that lives on a $700,000 yacht while doing public service really cannot fathom the impact of an extra $20 on a weekly pay check.
One last bit of discussion on good ole’ Joe. He currently has, in individual contributions (not including PAC money), $3,186,506.00 that are from OUT OF STATE! (https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/geography?cid=N00032838&cycle=2018) 88% of his individual donations are not from West Virginia voters!!! Compare this to the total donations (PAC and individual) of Patrick Morrisey. Mr. Morrisey stands at $2,949,126.00. (https://www.opensecrets.org/races/summary?cycle=2018&id=WVS1) Again TOTAL DONATIONS. So, who exactly do you think Joe is representing?
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