AND THE SENATOR WHO TELLS THEM
“We’re a center—if not center-right country.” So said Joe Manchin III, senior senator of West “Almost Purgatory” Virginia some ten days ago. He said it to justify his ongoing obstruction to the passage of President Biden’s Build Back Better bill. He’s wrong. We are not center or center-right…unless you spread out a map of the U.S. and compare the size of the red and blue areas.
But that’s not how we decide our political colors. We base them on the numbers of people who vote, and Joe should know that six out of the last seven presidential elections Democrats have received more popular votes than Republicans. That would make us a center-left blue country if anything, but so slightly blue that we remain stuck in the nation’s present purple bog of turbulent stasis.
Of course politicians must tell little fibs every now and then just to keep their seats. Joe, though, must know this a whopper, and if perpetuated it will flush Democrats from power next year. In which case Joe can always switch parties and make his state’s coal barons even happier. But what will we do here on the blue West Coast? We sure don’t fit in the Trumpian autocracy now a-building “Down South” and “Back East.”
Here’s an idea! Deep blue California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii secede from the failing union and walk with our 78 electoral votes (there have been no red votes since California’s in 1988) and bond together to keep democracy alive and well on the blue Pacific Coast; we could even call our new nation Pacifica. In doing so we’ll make Joe Manchin an honest man and give him the deep-red country he apparently prefers.
With California having the fifth largest economy in the world, and the other three Pacific states sharing with us similar political views and a common culture, there should be no doubts about our new democracy’s viability.
Do I hear a second for secession?