Democrats: Do you support forcibly removing Manchin from the democratic caucus?

[Tartarus Sauce]

How is it in our best interest to primary him?

Regardless of what you think about the viability of running progressive populists in predominantly white-working class areas, what progressive populist is going to be willing to shill for the coal lobby as part of their main platform? The reality is that West Virginia has offered little signals that it wishes to diversify its economy despite the decades long decline of the coal industry, and until they do demonstrate willingness to try new things, they won't support any candidate that's anti-coal.

Primary him with somebody more progressive and watch him get replaced with a staunch, party line Republican. Congratulations on voting out of office somebody that still votes over 60% of the time on Democratic agenda items and replacing him with somebody that votes for Democratic items 0% of the time. You really showed those DINO's how it's done!

[Tartarus Sauce]

I think you're all missing the bigger picture. Yes, it's pretty likely that enforcing party discipline the way Republicans did will cost us seats in the short term, but guess what, Republicans did that, and now they hold majorities in both houses and do basically what they want with it. In the short term, they sacrificed seats they could have easily kept (Chafee, Jeffords, Specter, Castle etc.), but in the long term, this created a chilling effect for current Republicans in Congress, who are terrified of breaking from the party line in any circumstance. And sure, this cost them the Senate in the short term, but eventually you get a wave big enough to regain control. Democrats need to start playing the long game.

Yes, the rise of Trump made that abundantly clear.

Would you like to go down the route of "party before country" as well? Because insisting ideological purity has the counterproductive effect of not actually producing ideological purity but instead generating a cycle of increasingly bellicose and strident behavior that emphasizes rhetorical tone over policy substance.

You see the Republicans in power and think that ideological purity has served them well, not realizing that such power has come at a great cost. Far from being ideological pure, they've been overtaken by a man who possesses none of their ideological trappings, only their belligerency and opportunism. Their soul has become rotten to the core. Is that what you want for the Democrats as well? Power without integrity? Power simply for the sake of power?