PEACH CREEK, W.Va.—The silver Yukon XL barely had come to a crunching halt in the gravel lot in front of the pig roast here at a place called Houn’ Dog’s when out from the shotgun seat bounded Senator Joe Manchin[1]. Wearing brown boots, blue jeans, a garish sweater and a confident grin, Manchin homed in on a crowd of people sporting shirts shouting UNION PROUD and caps announcing JESUS IS MY BOSS. The space between Manchin and his constituents quickly dissolved in a swirl of handshakes, hugs and kisses on cheeks. “Git ‘er done!” he called out. “Git ‘er done!”
This three-plus-hour swing-through on Saturday night in mostly forlorn Logan County followed by a two-day, 11-stop, 700-mile, get-out-the-vote motorcycle ride[2] around the rest of the state added up to the capstone of a campaign that produced one of the most striking results of these volatile midterms.
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Two years ago, when Donald Trump was elected president, Manchin was considered instantly the most endangered Senate Democrat in the country. Donald Trump, after all, won[3] West Virginia by 42.2 points, his largest margin of victory with the exception of Wyoming[4]. And yet on Tuesday night, Manchin, 71, the most prominent politician in this state for the better part of a generation, was reelected to his second full term by a comfortable margin—distinguishing him from other incumbent red-state Democrats like Joe Donnelly in Indiana, Claire McCaskill in Missouri and Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota who were drubbed soundly.
Statistically speaking, it was a stunning result, a significant party-line swing in just 24 months. And it happened in spite of Trump‘s repeated trips to the state, hoping to deliver a knockout blow to
