If you’re sick to death of watching Senator Joe Manchin play games with millions of people’s lives – stonewalling crucial Biden legislation that would (among other things) guarantee four weeks of paid leave, extend the child tax credit, invest heavily in renewable energy, expand health care coverage, and combat climate change – you need to first understand the chasm that now separates the national Democrats from the politics of West Virginia.

Yeah, it’s infuriating that one guy from a backwoods state can hold up historic progressive measures that might actually give his own party a fighting chance to hang onto Congress in the ’22 midterms – indeed, he’s balking again this week – but he would not be so consequential if only the Democrats had won a few more of the ’20 Senate races that they’d been widely expected to win, namely in Maine and North Carolina.

But that didn’t happen, so now we get de facto President Manchin – who hails from a once-solidly Democratic state that’s now deeply alienated from the national party. Manchin does not owe that party, or Joe Biden, a blessed thing.

There once was a time, as late as 1996, when West Virginia routinely voted blue in presidential races. Back when coal was king and FDR’s New Deal legacy endured, the white working class was staunchly Democratic and viewed Washington as a friend. But the pivot began in 2000 when Al Gore’s anti-coal and pro-climate change agenda tipped the scales for George W. Bush; in fact, it can be argued that West Virginia with its five electoral votes (not Florida) doomed Gore in that squeaker election.

In the years since, the red trend has accelerated in West Virginia, primarily because the once-loyal blue electorate has been turned off by the national party’s progressive stances on cultural issues – guns, gay marriage, abortion, racial and gender wokeness – and the perception (fair or not) that the party is now dominated by cosmopolitans who disdain traditional Christian beliefs. I’m certainly not suggesting that the national Dems have been wrong to embrace gun restrictions, defend choice, and prioritize racial and gender diversity; I’m simply pointing out that actions have consequences, and that in socially conservative West Virginia, where 94 percent of the citizens are white, the GOP has leveraged the culture war to great political advantage.

The state’s electoral stats tell the story. In 2012, Manchin triumphed in his Senate race with 61 percent of the vote – while President Obama, running for re-election, won only 35 percent. In 2016, Hillary Clinton did even worse, winning only 26 percent. And in 2018, the red trend nearly toppled Manchin himself; he eked out a re-election victory with just 49.57 percent, prevailing by only three points.

So no wonder he’s bedeviling Biden and the progressives. Even though numerous provisions in the Build Back Better bill would greatly aid needy people in his own impoverished state, it’s apparently bad politics to say Yes – at least without dragging one’s feet (and politically imperiling one’s colleagues) well into 2022. Oh, and lest we forget, West Virginia’s coal legacy is still a factor, because all that climate change stuff – which does seem kinda serious – simply doesn’t sit well with a guy whose family business has made millions from coal. Some might call that a blatant conflict of interest, but in Washington that’s just life as we know it.

It’s bizarre, really: West Virginia’s citizens are older, sicker, and poorer than Americans almost everywhere else, and the state is heavily dependent on federal help (number two in the nation, by some measures) – and yet, Manchin is still hung up on playing Hamlet, which guarantees him maximum attention.

Is there a solution to this endless farce? Yeah. Democrats have to start winning more Senate elections. Their prospects would certainly be enhanced if only the Senate would finally pass voting rights legislation that targets the GOP’s vote-suppression schemes. But that won’t happen unless they can thwart Senate GOP blockage by doing away with the filibuster. But to do that, they need to get agreement…from Joe Manchin.

We’re living in a remake of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22.