By Michael Weber
Coordinator, the Joe Manchin for President network
It’s January 20, 2021. Inauguration Day in our nation’s capitol. The 45th President of the United States has served one term and in just four years has achieved with Congress what has eluded our Presidents and Congresses for decades.
The federal budget is balanced – without raising tax rates. In fact, we’ve run up hundreds of billions of dollars in surpluses in four years and we’re on track to pay down trillions of dollars of our national debt in the 2020s.
We’re running these federal surpluses while investing more in the future: new infrastructure that shortens our daily commutes, R&D in nanotech and other leading-edge fields loaded with potential for lots of high-paying jobs, ten planned human missions to Mars by 2030, and huge strides in achieving five key educational goals: that every 4-year-old has access to quality pre-K education, that every kindergartner can read, that every 8th and 9th grader has an educational and vocational plan for his or her future, that every adult who dropped out of high school can get a GED, and that every high school grad can go to a 2-year or 4-year college.
As our nation enters the 2020s, federal taxes for both individuals and corporations have been reformed in a sweeping way and are far simpler and fairer, saving individuals and businesses vast amounts of time in filing. Health care is more affordable, of higher quality, and personalized, with a much stronger focus on prevention and wellness. K-12 education has been turned back to the states and local school districts, with parents and teachers having far more power and Washington bureaucrats almost none.
Employers are creating four million net new American jobs each and every year. We’re on track to lead the world in nanotechnology and create 15 million American nanotech jobs by 2030. We are also thriving, prospering, and creating millions of new jobs in other leading-edge tech fields. The national minimum wage has been raised to $11.25 per hour, lifting up families and businesses in lower-income neighborhoods across America, and no American who works 40 hours a week needs food stamps or other public aid.
We have a reformed, super-efficient, performance-based, and customer-centric federal government. We have eliminated and pared back hundreds of federal agencies and programs while preserving our safety net for the retired, the sick, the disabled, and the unemployed. Washington no longer micromanages domestic policy and vast power has been moved out of Washington and back to the states, communities, families, and individuals.
We are making remarkable progress toward clean energy, not with draconian regulations that kill jobs and slow economic growth but with incentives that stimulate innovation and reduce costs. Clean electricity is as cheap as coal-based electricity, and so the states and the market itself are moving us to clean electricity at a rapid rate.
We are using desalination to open up an abundant water supply in the American West. We are cleaning up our lakes, seas, and rivers. We are reducing toxins in our air. We are restocking the oceans with fish. We are advancing public health and replenishing and restoring the environment.
With a large new R&D effort, we are pursuing the great and historic goal of removing all three trillion tons of C02 from Earth’s atmosphere in the 2030s, along with other greenhouse gases. We aim by 2040 to return the Earth’s atmosphere to its pristine pre-industrial condition of the 1700s. Yes, we are on track to end and reverse global climate change by the year 2040.
Amazingly, we’ve also reached a new consensus on the two most contentious social issues of our time.
In accord with the conscientious judgment of three out of five Americans, first-trimester abortions remain legal while abortions are only legal in the second and third trimesters when the life or health of the mother is at stake. Adoption is heavily promoted. The number of abortions has dropped substantially, and while pro-life Americans attempt to win over hearts and minds regarding this searing personal decision in the first trimester, a relative truce exists on the legal and policy questions.
The question of gay marriage has been left to each of the 50 states and D.C. The states define marriage. Half the states have it, half the states continue to debate it. Congress no longer attempts to restrict gay marriage where it is wanted and federal judges no longer try to impose gay marriage on states where a majority of citizens and legislators, the Governor, and the state supreme court all oppose it.
Comprehensive immigration reform has passed not only the U.S. Senate but the U.S. House. The change has come. Our border with Mexico is secure and those who’ve lived here for years have a path to responsible American citizenship.
In international affairs, we project our vision of freedom, entrepreneurship, opportunity, and human rights to the world and we defend the world from terrorism while refusing to get bogged down in unnecessary war. Our national security budget is aligned with our national security strategy and meets our actual security needs. We spend less on foreign aid but have used it to team up with the Gates Foundation and eradicate malaria from the world. We are using almost all our non-military foreign aid to achieve one big goal: to ensure that every person on Earth has access to clean drinking water and to sanitation.
In 2014, this is a vision, an agenda, and a set of major goals that is endorsed (with a couple extra details likely to be endorsed) by three out of five Americans. Those of us who are centrists, mainstream progressives, and mainstream conservatives share these basic goals. How can we move America toward this 2020 end-game? How can we make it happen?
The polarization that has marked our national political life since 1994 need not continue. We can restore accountability, common sense, and civility in Washington by electing a President in November 2016 who will unite the nation in solving our most pressing national problems. The only way to get there – to achieve these big national goals by the year 2020 -- is to enable one of the two major parties to nominate a centrist for President.
In 1981, after five decades of relative center-left hegemony, Ronald Reagan led America into our era of divided government. In 1994, this era became far more polarized and has remained so ever since. In 2016, we must end this era of polarization and divided government and enter instead a unified centrist era.
George W. Bush tried to unify the nation from the center-right. Barack Obama has tried to unify the nation from the center-left. Unfortunately, both Presidents failed to unify the nation. From this bitter experience, we now know that the nation can only be unified by a centrist President.
Twice in the past three and half decades the Democrats have had the White House, the Senate, and the House. In 1993 and 1994 and again in 2009 and 2010. Both times, Democrats lurched too far to the left and the Republicans came back to win several dozen Congressional seats in wipeout elections. Let’s never again let the Far Left lead the Democratic Party and our nation down this dead-end road.
Once in the past three and a half decades the Republicans held the White House, the Senate, and the House for a full election cycle. In fact, two full election cycles. From 2003 to 2006. The results were a totally mismanaged war in Iraq, stagnant wages, and a failure to enforce laws against fraud in the finance, insurance, and real estate sector – a failure that led to our nation's worst economic meltdown since 1929. The 1920s, of course, were the last time before the 21st Century that Republicans held the White House, the Senate, and the House. Let’s never again let corporate cronyists and the Far Right lead us into catastrophe.
Today, 53% of Americans believe that neither party represents the American people. Both parties have ignored us. Divided government has failed us. And polarization caused by the Far Left and the Far Right has betrayed us.
There is only one path forward to success for America. We must elect a unifying centrist President in 2016, and then we must continue to elect unifying centrist Presidents for decades to come.
Regrettably, in 2016 it will not yet be possible to get a centrist nominated for the Presidency in the Republican Party. Thus, at least for 2016, we have no choice but to turn our focus to the Democratic Party.
The Democratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, has already been rejected by 40 percent of independent Americans. Think about that. Four out of ten independent voters say that they will never vote for her.
While it may not be her fault, we must face the reality that there is no way that Hillary Clinton can unify this country to solve our major problems. Indeed, it is unlikely that she can win the election in November 2016, especially if the Republican ticket is Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio. Ryan and Rubio could make their extreme agenda sound positive to just enough independent voters to win the White House. This lurch to the Far Right could do lasting damage to America.
If not Hillary Clinton, who can we turn to? As we look at Democratic leaders, we see that about a dozen Senators, a few dozen Representatives, and several Governors are centrists. Of these, a few really stand out as leaders who have worked their way up from middle-class families, who have children and seem to have a good marriage, and who are capable of being elected President and serving effectively as President.
Centrist Democrats passing this threshold include Montana Senator Jon Tester, Montana Governor Steve Bullock, Wisconsin Congressman Ron Kind, and HUD Secretary Julian Castro of Texas. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar is “centrist enough” and New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand was a centrist in the U.S. House before becoming more progressive in the Senate. Let’s put all six on our “short list.”
For a growing number of us who seek a dynamic, transformational, and unifying centrist President, however, there is one leader who truly stands out. His name is Joe Manchin.
Joe Manchin, the former West Virginia Governor and current U.S. Senator, has a rare cluster of leadership traits: common sense, empathy, political and legislative savvy, executive decision-making skill, keen intuition with people, and artful communication. Joe Manchin is “the whole package.” Joe Manchin has a well-balanced temperament, a likeable personality, problem-solving skill, an all-American can-do attitude, a sound leadership style, and a six-year tenure as one of the most effective, successful, and popular Governors in America.
Joe Manchin has spent the past quarter-century not living in a bubble surrounded by the world’s corporate and political elites but with the shopkeepers and miners of West Virginia. He is neither an anti-business radical nor a perpetuator of the Big Corporation and Wall Street cronyism that is limiting opportunity in our nation. He is a small-business, Main Street, and pro-labor, pro-worker Democrat who will lead us in a national celebration of the opportunities that workers and entrepreneurs can forge together.
Joe Manchin’s Presidency would be a highly successful Presidency, and I can testify personally to his leadership gifts. Since 1991, I have had the opportunity to work with more than 700 elected leaders from 45 states. Joe Manchin always stood out as the best of them all.
If Senator Manchin chooses to run for President, Democrats will have a real choice. The frontrunner may cost us the 2016 election and will, if she wins, polarize our nation for another eight long years. Joe Manchin would start out as the underdog, but he can win the 2016 election in a landslide and then unify the country as we solve our biggest national challenges.
With the right President, we can have all of the great things that three out of five Americans want. We can create 4 million net new American jobs each year, raise wages, balance the budget, simplify taxes, invest more in infrastructure and future growth, empower teachers and expand educational opportunities, preserve the safety net, personalize health care, advance clean energy, reduce toxins, clean up and replenish our waterways and water supplies, restore the atmosphere and the environment, secure our border while setting up a path to responsible American citizenship, reduce abortions, let each state define marriage, stand up to terrorism, stay out of unnecessary wars, and promote freedom, entrepreneurship, opportunity, and human rights around the world.
Decades of divided government and polarization have caused us to lower our expectations for our government and for our elected leaders. It is now time to raise those expectations. We can have it all and we can have it all by the time our nation enters the 2020s.
All of our hopes for solving our national problems and restoring America’s greatness rest on electing a unifying centrist Democrat to the Presidency in 2016. At this moment in history, with so much hanging in the balance for all of us, the prospects for a bright American future rest on the shoulders of Senator Joe Manchin. We urge him to run. We await his decision.
(Michael Weber is the former Legislative and Policy Director of the National Foundation for Women Legislators and the former Executive Director of the John F. Kennedy Policy Center. He has worked on policy or communications for a dozen campaigns for Governorships and the U.S. Senate, including serving for a year in the mid-1990s as research director for Joe Manchin’s first campaign for the West Virginia Governorship.)