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Manchin is actually quoted as saying he's doing this "not as a Democrat", and I think this counts as saying that the Tsar is poorly advised:
Sanders is claiming that Obama isn't left wing enough, which is a 50 Stalins criticism. And it's not actually hard to find conservatives criticizing Trump.
This is very silly. On this basis it is impossible for a left-winger to give anything but 50 Stalins criticism to those on the centre-left. Obviously Sanders will claim Obama isn't left-wing enough, because he's... to his left.
Scott originally gave as an example "There isn’t enough Stalinism in this country!" There isn't enough leftism is an obvious extension.
Not really because, as well as the things Stefferi points out, Stalinism is a much narrower concept than 'leftism'. When someone asks for 50 Stalins, the whole point is that they're not actually asking Stalin to do anything different, it's just theatrical non-criticism - if there is real criticism it is directed at the rest of society for failing carry forward Stalinism with sufficient zeal. When Bernie criticises Obama, he is asking him to be more (or at all) leftist, but in ways that actually demands he changes central elements of his policy and ideology.
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Setting aside the whole sustainability of the idea that critiques from some particular viewpoint are somehow invalid because that viewpoint is different from yourself (and it is really a question of perspective - a Communist who attacks Obama for being a neoliberal could claim that the Tea Party types were just demanding Obama to be even more neoliberal than he actually was): no, the example is "There aren't enough Stalins".
Is this a meaningful distinction? It is in this case, since we're specifically talking about cults of personality. If we're talking about parties or ideologies, sure, I could see the point, but we're talking about specific personalities, and in this case a political cult of personality really generally demands complete fealty to the personality, independent of political ideologies. Attacking a personality from the "further same side" is the same as attacking them from the "opposite side" since both are evidence of disloyalty, "further same side" probably even more so. Again, Stalin vis-a-vis Bukharin and Trotsky is a good example.
Another Stalin-related example of how political cults of personality work is a demand that you follow the personality's line even if they make complete u-turns. When Yezhov is Stalin's guy, you agree he's a good Communist; when Stalin gets rid of Yezhov, you agree he was a traitor all along and edit him out of photos. When Stalin declares that Hitler is the greatest threat to Soviet Union there is, you attack Hitler; when Stalin declares that Hitler is OK now and the Western imperialists are the true treat, you change your line instantly and forget your attacks on Hitler even if you're Jewish yourself; when Hitler attacks Soviet Union and Soviet Union allies with the West, you change your line about Western warmongering in the middle of the speech if needed. And so on.
Does this apply to Obama and Trump? I can't think of good examples regarding Obama - Obama changed his line from anti-SSM to pro, but most of his partisans had probably already made the switch already. On the other hand, there just was a case of Trump's actions changing the views of at least a great number of his supporters instantly; the bombing or Iranian nuclear sites, making the GOP support for such strike go from 47% to 77%, meaning that there is at least a large number of Republicans willing to change their stance to Trump's instantaneously.
"50 Stalins" uses Stalin as metonymy. It isn't about actual Stalin, and the fact that people behave in a certain way in relation to Stalin (and have to to stay alive) doesn't make that what "50 Stalins" is about.
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So? He's still a Democrat.
That's not what 50 Stalins means. As it was originally used, it was "Okay, back up. Suppose you went back to Stalinist Russia and you said “You know, people just don’t respect Comrade Stalin enough. There isn’t enough Stalinism in this country! I say we need two Stalins! No, fifty Stalins!”"
It's supposed to be a completely facile pseudocriticism, not an actual criticism that is simply coming from a different direction than where you yourself are coming from. If we loop back to actual Stalin, it was just as dangerous to attack him from the left (like Trotsky did) as from the right (like Bukharin did), originally even considerably moreso. The only way to stay say would have been not to attack Stalin at all but "attack the system" while praising Stalin, like the 50 Stalins example guy does.
This is someone obscure enough that I have never heard of them before you linked this, and the whole piece starts with him taling about how his criticisms of Trump get him constantly attacked by dozens of readers. Not a particularly worthy example, this.
Not a normal and mainstream one. He was a well known and prominent 'blue dogger', which exempts him from the usual rules around democrats. It could mean many things but 'moderate republican who steals more' is a reasonable and common formulation.
Can you show non-blue dog democrats criticizing Obama without careful phrasing?
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I understand a 50 Stalins criticism to be that someone's positions aren't extreme enough and he should lean into them even more. Claiming that a Democrat is not left-wing enough would be a 50 Stalins criticism. (And likewise, something like "Trump isn't doing enough to stop illegal immigration" would be a 50 Stalins criticism of Trump.)
It's true that it would be dangerous to do this to actual Stalin, but that's not how the metaphor works.
It was the first one I found by googling that sounded good enough.
If that were true then Stalin would be a desperately confusing example to use for the reasons @Stefferi points out.
Fine but the two are obviously not equivalent. Manchin was a sitting Senator and former state governor. 'Dace Potas' is a journalist who is two years out of college whose various bios tout him as a writer for such pillars of journalism as USA Today and something called 'The College Fix'.
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