From TPM Reader PT …

You and numerous other observers have commented on the peculiar passivity of the Democrats going into what was always going to be a challenging midterm election, which will of course be even more challenging if they don’t really make much of an effort to contest it. What could be responsible for this malaise in the party?

tl;dr: Joe Manchin.

One of the abiding features of early 21st century American politics is that a lot of change on the right happens in the subterranean world of what we used to call “the Crazy.” In the pre-Trump years it’s not that any of this was really hidden. It wasn’t subterranean in that sense. But it was off the radar of most of conventional journalism and the mainstream political discourse because it wasn’t serious. It wasn’t real. It was just crazy antics on the margins. But as we’ve tried to chronicle for decades now, that was never the case. That was the real GOP politics. It controlled and drove the presentable mainstream leaders — the Boehners, Ryans, McConnells and more. The ascension of Donald Trump was in many ways a simple inversion of this dynamic, putting “the Crazy” in formal and open leadership of the party.

Something has happened as recently as the last four to six weeks that follows this pattern, is important and dangerous and is still mostly coasting under the radar of “proper” U.S. political discourse and reporting.