Manchin Shoots, Scores With Anti-Obama Campaign

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Joe Manchin won West Virginia’s Senate race, defeating Republican businessman and perennial candidate John Raese, who had surged in recent weeks. Manchin’s win in the race to fill the seat vacated by the death of Senator Robert Byrd is surely a relief to Democrats—after all, Byrd held the seat for 51 years—but that doesn’t mean he will necessarily back the White House from the Senate.

Manchin’s win does likely kill any remaining hope of Republicans taking a majority in the Senate. But Manchin ran against Obama on a number of issues. He made it clear that he would not back a climate bill, going so far as to bust a cap in the cap and trade bill. He also positioned himself against the health care overhaul. In the final weeks before the election, Manchin made his main selling point the fact that he would vote against a number of Democratic priorities.

Current tallies have Manchin’s lead at 54 percent to Raese’s 43 percent. West Virginia is a red state—Obama only claimed 43 percent of the vote there in 2008—which certainly explains Manchin’s attempts to distance himself from the president. But this is a smaller margin of victory than Manchin has enjoyed in his previous races for governor, in which he won more than 60 percent of the vote. This likely ensures that Manchin will operate as conservatively in office as he indicated in the campaign.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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