Mehdi Hasan, host of “The Mehdi Hasan Show” on Peacock and MSNBC, said that if Democrats endure a drubbing during the upcoming midterm elections, the party’s poor performance will largely be the fault of Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
“If (when?) the Dems get hammered in November in the midterms, the number 1 reason will not be the left, or the economy, or Joe Biden, or Joe Biden’s chief of staff, or mask mandates. It’ll be two Democratic senators called Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. We all know this,” Hasan tweeted on Thursday.
On Friday, he followed up with another tweet: “Lots of conservatives angry at this tweet on Joe Manchin’s behalf. This isn’t about left or right, normal people don’t vote like that. It’s about delivery. Democrats haven’t delivered on bulk of their agenda not because of progressives but because of… Manchin and Sinema.”
Manchin and Sinema, who both support the Senate filibuster, refused to back a plan to change the rules to enable Democrats to ram so-called “voting rights” legislation through the chamber last month.
The two also proved to be an obstacle as the Biden administration and Democrats sought to push a massive spending proposal last year. Manchin said in December that he would not vote to pass the spending plan.
Democrats could face an uphill battle during the midterm election cycle. Americans have been facing rapidly rising prices, and President Biden remains underwater on his job approval numbers.
Responding to Hasan’s claim that Manchin and Sinema will be to blame if Democrats do poorly during the midterms, Erick Erickson said that if that were the case, progressives would win elections, not Republicans.
“By this logic, more progressive candidates would be getting elected, not Republicans. But it will not work that way. Which means this guy has no freaking clue what he was talking about,” Erickson tweeted.