West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin gave an exit interview to CNN as his time in the Senate wraps up. Freed from the constraints of elections and loyalty to the Democratic Party, Manchin unleashed on Democrats, especially the party's left flank. Manchin would know, as he became the top target of progressives during Biden's tenure, and his criticisms are accurate.

Perhaps most importantly on Manchin, he understands the pivot left on Democrats the best. Manchin was elected to the state Senate of West Virginia in 1986 and remained there for a decade. He eventually moved up to the governor of West Virginia in 2005. He won election to the U.S. Senate in 2010, taking over for the deceased Senate legend, Robert Byrd.

For the first half of Manchin's tenure, West Virginia was a lockdown state for Democrats. Bill Clinton won re-election in 1996 with West Virginia as a lock, winning by nearly 15 points. Twenty years later, in 2016, his wife, Hillary Clinton, lost West Virginia by more than 40 points and did not win a single county.

Bucking that trend was Manchin, a man who won a state that became more red over time while the national Democratic Party surged to the left. When Manchin announced he wasn't running again, there wasn't a Democrat within the state who could replace him. It moved from a toss-up race for Republicans to a lock.

In the CNN interview, Manchin went off. He said that he "no longer considers himself a Democrat 'in the form of what Democratic Party has turned itself into.'" He added, "The party's brand has become about telling people what they can and can't do, blaming progressives for the change. 'They have basically expanded upon thinking, 'Well, we want to protect you there, but we're going to tell you how you should live your life from that far on,'"

Manchin looks at the Democratic Party and sees its past as a champion of the working class. From FDR to Tip O'Neill,the party hammered bread-and-butter issues and championed the working class. That's no longer the case.

West Virginia's shift tells the whole story, and Manchin's eviction from politics emphasizes that change. Manchin blames the far left for the losses in the Democratic Party, and it's hard to disagree with him. He has the vantage point of a Democrat trying to win a race while progressives make loud noises in safe blue districts.

Political science is siding with Manchin on this point, too. Studies show that women are shifting to the left, particularly those who line up on the far left of the Democratic Party. It's a shift that's gotten worse since 2016 and accelerated further in 2020.

Political scientist Ruy Teixeira, who co-authored the famous book The Emerging Democratic Order, says the progressive fever peaked in 2020 with the riots in cities, radicalization on gender issues, and hard pivot left on topics like immigration.

Teixeria writes on the elevation of progressive ideas in 2020: "In reality, a lot of these ideas were pretty terrible and most voters, outside the precincts of the progressive left itself, were never very interested in them. That was true from the get-go but now the backlash against these ideas is strong enough that it can't be ignored."

Examining the wreckage of the Democratic Party in the aftermath of the 2020 election, Teixeira went further. He wrote, "The Democrats really are no longer the party of the common man and woman. The priorities and values that dominate the party today are instead those of educated, liberal America which only partially overlap—and sometimes not at all—with those of ordinary Americans."

What's the proof you need? It's the fact that Donald Trump won the race easily. Kamala Harris and the Biden flunkies that made up her campaign now admit they never led in the race. Everything they threw at Trump fell flat because they had nothing to answer for the failures of the Biden administration.

Democrats are fond of claiming Biden is the most accomplished President since FDR and fluffing up his accomplishments. Americans looked at the same presidency and rejected it resoundingly.

Manchin, Teixeira, and others are trying to point out that Democrats are in a loud echo chamber, preventing them from seeing what American voters are shouting at them. With Manchin's exit from national politics, Democrats lose another voice trying to pull them back to sanity. John Fetterman is trying to ride to the rescue, but it's not clear he's being heard.

That's not to say Democrats will lose elections forever. Far from it. But the parties have changed, and Manchin no longer sees a Democratic Party of the 20th Century. Democrats no longer represent the working class, bread-and-butter issues, or anything else.

The new Democratic Party is one of the elites: the wealthy, numerous degrees, experts, bureaucrats, and the state. This is the new Democratic Party. If you don't fit that bill, you're shoved out in favor of more elites. That's forcing Republicans to be a big tent to hold everyone else - it turns out that's a lot of people and can include people like Joe Manchin.