He pretends that he's not one of "them".
His votes tell the story.
1. Not a native WV’ian. When you hear the “Your not from around here?”, its a big deal in Appalachia, particularly WV. Manchin exploited that adroitly, brought in Jerry West, Don Nehlen and others WVU sports legends to do commercials supporting him. Manchin also was on the WVU football team, set the bench but was on the team That's a big deal in football crazy WV!
2. Manchin is from Farmington, his family had a furniture and carpet store there. He also was in the coal business as a coal broker. As governor here he wasn't reflexively hostile to business and the small business man. Very unusual for a WV democrat! As governor he handled the PR on the Farmington mine disaster brilliantly. He's from there, so I don't think his concern was completely insincere. People remember that!
3. Morrissey moved to WV and promptly ran for office just like Rockefeller did. (Tried it in NJ and failed!) Rockefeller got away with it because he's rich. WV'ians are unduly impressed by rich people. (Look at Governor Justice!) Morrissey professionally was a government lobbyist as is his wife. Running as a DC outsider seemed hypocritical and Manchin exploited that. Worse then being just a lobbyist Morrissey was a pharmaceutical industry lobbyist (I think wife still might be a pharmaceutical industry lobbyist) . People hate the drug companies (Look at the comments here on FR!) When he was AG, Morrissy successfully prosecuted several pharmacies, MDs, pharmaceutical companies etc. for dispensing drugs carelessly & illegally , but people thought he wasn't hard enough on them! Manchin exploited that!
4. Compared to Manchin, Morrissey is a bore on the campaign trial.
5. What Morrissey couldn't seem to do was show Manchin was a big do nothing when it came to protecting WV coal from Obama. Manchin's own commercials avoided the issue. They were mostly I'm a Mountainerr & you're not ! At least that's what really stands out in my memory.