No offense, but we could sit here all day imagining scenarios where Joe F’ Manchin is the “savior” of the party by providing that vital 50th vote to make something significant happen. And while I like fantasy stories as much as the next person, the reality is that we’re headed into midterms dragging dead weight that is threatening our only real chance to tip the scales back in our favor. Personally, I expect the days after Election Night 2022 to be like Election Night 2010: A whole lot of despair, a whole lot of anger, and a whole lot of screaming about how progressives fucked the party over for failing to show up and how it was a “mistake” to appeal to them when we should have been working to win the suburban white vote.