Because of Manchin and Sinema, the people broadly saw the Democratic Party as ineffective and unwilling to actually try to enact their policies.
This is a part (far from all, but a real part) of why they turned to someone who claimed to be willing to get things done—even if he had to break rules to do it.
I'm not going to say that I wish those seats had been filled by Republicans, instead, because I don't know how much worse that would have made things. It's very possible that we still would've gotten 2 Trump terms even so.
But I don't think it's fair to paint them as unquestionably better, when the second-order effects are real, and, while impossible to measure, potentially devastating.
This is a part (far from all, but a real part) of why they turned to someone who claimed to be willing to get things done—even if he had to break rules to do it.
I'm not going to say that I wish those seats had been filled by Republicans, instead, because I don't know how much worse that would have made things. It's very possible that we still would've gotten 2 Trump terms even so.
But I don't think it's fair to paint them as unquestionably better, when the second-order effects are real, and, while impossible to measure, potentially devastating.