Good morning,

And now Joe Manchin inches his way toward at least giving oxygen to David Corn’s report last week in Mother Jones that he might just leave the Democratic Party. As reported by The Washington Post, Manchin told the Economic Club of Washington on Tuesday morning that his political philosophy looks like this: Government has a “moral responsibility to take care of those who can’t take care of themselves,” but it “should be my partner, not my provider.” That can mean a lot of things, depending on what else he said that wasn’t quoted. But mainly it’s a way of signposting that he’ll back certain public-sector expansions—he does, for example, support cutting prescription drug prices—but that he feels increasing distance from his party. He can’t really become a Republican, though: He voted twice to impeach Donald Trump, so there’s zero future for him there. And winning a Senate seat as an independent is a rare feat to pull off. Soooo … he has some interesting choices to make; the best of which would be to decide that his constituents in one of the country’s poorest states could stand to have a little paid family leave and free community college in their lives.

By the way: If you’re at all interested in terrific reporting on what’s going on in Manchin’s state, have a look at Mountain State Spotlight, a website that partners with ProPublica and is run by Pulitzer Prize–winning West Virginia journalist Ken Ward. Today, it reports that Governor Jim Justice unveiled an impressive $1 billion broadband plan for the state. He just kinda sorta forgot to tell local governments that he’s counting on them to fund it.

Kudos to Terry McAuliffe and Joe Biden for being willing to lean into a defense of Toni Morrison and Beloved, after Glenn Youngkin’s new ad trying to make the Virginia governor’s race a referendum on white people’s discomfort with being confronted with the fact that slave owners used to rape and otherwise abuse those who worked their fields. Youngkin has gone from “banning a woman’s right to choose to banning books written by a Pulitzer Prize– and Nobel Prize–winning author, Toni Morrison,” Biden said at a rally Tuesday night. “This is a guy who doesn’t know much about anything.” McAuliffe said much the same, and his campaign aides actually passed out copies of Belovedto journalists at the rally. It’s good to see Democrats being willing to engage in this battle, instead of ducking and weaving. If McAuliffe wins, it’ll be a signal that Democrats can win culture-war fights if they bother to fight them.

Op-ed of the day: In The Washington Post, Michelle Norris recounts the (I think) little-known story of Claudette Colvin, the young Black woman who refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus nine months before Rosa Parks. For reasons I’ll let Norris explain to you, the local NAACP decided she wasn’t the right person around whom to build their case. She’s still alive, and she’s going back to Montgomery today. A fascinating story.

Today at NewRepublic.com, we have my own write-up of our perhaps-first-annual TNR readers’ survey of America’s worst right-wingers, in 20 categories (the illos are hilarious); Eleanor Cummins on the launch of the creepy Fox Weather channel; Matt Ford on the so-far disappointing redistricting process; and Cora Currier on the novelist and critic Teju Cole.

With certainty that today is surely the day the Dems have a deal,

Michael Tomasky, editor

Yesterday’s political history–trivia question: In every Virginia gubernatorial election since 1977 except one, the winner has been from the party that didn’t control the White House. When was the exception, what was the party, who was the president, and who was the gubernatorial winner?

Answer: It was 2013, the party was the Democrats, the president was Barack Obama, and the winner of the governor’s race was one Terry McAuliffe.

Today’s politics question: Who is the other, non-Manchin senator from West Virginia; who was her father; and what was he best known for?

Today’s pop-culture history question: Which actress once said that when she does a certain thing in real life, “I also leave the bathroom door open and shower curtain open. I’m always facing the door, watching, no matter where the shower head is.”