We have lots of wonderful people who have been doing amazing work, trying to work in their communities, Frankenberry continues. Itd be helpful if these folks would, you know, send us the money to help us support those organizations instead of just putting billboards up or radio ads that dont have any input from West Virginians. Were fully capable of communicating with our people.

West Virginia Cant Waits Smith agrees and argues the real task for those hoping both to push Manchin and change the states political landscape long-term will be building out a local organizational infrastructure that can sustain itself after and beyond campaign season. A couple of billboards or out-of-state TV ads arent going to move these folks because they can ignore it and wait, knowing that that energy will leave come election time, he says. But the long-term building of political infrastructure, like whats happened over the last 10 years in Arizona and Georgia and other places, is the kind of thing that will move politicians in the short run because they know their political future is in jeopardy if they dont.

Smith also sees this as the key to winning Manchins support on structural reforms, including the elimination of the Senate filibuster and statehood for the District of Columbia. If his vote will be won at all, itll be won not through arguments about reforms in and of themselves but through West Virginia voters coming to understand reform lies between them and passing the policies that actually animate them. Were hearing some of the same things from allies inside and outside West Virginia who want to turn this into a wonky debate about 51 votes or 52 votes, and how do we do this or how do we do that, he says. And our experience is that those debates are largely academiceven if you win them in the public sphere, they dont actually affect the way power operates. Power will respond to a direct threat.

Smith says the threat to Manchin is compounded by the number of West Virginians who feel disaffected from both parties. Although outsiders have come to think of West Virginia as a red state in recent years, it wasnt so long ago that the states Democratic Party comprised its political establishmentuntil 2014, Smith notes, it had held full control of the states legislature for over 80 years. And before the election of Shelley Moore Capito, West Virginias junior senator, in 2014, the state hadnt elected a Republican to the chamber since 1956.

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The Grassroots Organizers Hoping to Move Manchin in a More Populist Direction - The New Republic