Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia is easily the top trending topic in Washington these days. And he would clearly have it no other way.
In fact, he has framed his vote as so critical to Biden’s progressive agenda that Democrats of all stripes are courting him. Here, for example, is how CBS News reported yesterday on Reverend Al Sharpton and other Black leaders meeting with him as if the voting rights of Black folks really do depend on his good grace.
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Senator Joe Manchin met with leaders of several civil rights organizations on Tuesday morning, two days after the moderate Democrat from West Virginia announced he would not support an expansive but controversial voting rights and elections reform bill.
Manchin’s public opposition has all but doomed H.R. 1, known as the For the People Act, which the Senate will still consider later this month amid sweeping efforts by Republican-led states to pass laws restricting voting rights. …
Manchin told reporters after the meeting that it was ‘very productive’ and ‘very informative,’ and that participants ‘had a constructive conversation.’ He said that ‘everyone’s position was discussed,’ but also acknowledged he didn’t believe anyone changed their stance.
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No sh*t.
But Biden could have avoided this untenable spectacle of Manchin behaving like a Russian ransomware hacker by holding the top items on his domestic agenda hostage. I offered a foolproof strategy to do so in ““Biden, Don’t Bank on Flipping Two Seats in Georgia. Barter with Sitting Republican Senators.” November 13, 2020, and “To Joe Biden: On Cutting Joe Manchin Down to Size,” May 2, 2021.
I commend those two relatively short commentaries for your edification; not least because it’s not too late for Biden to execute the strategy I offered. But time is running out … fast.
To be fair, though, it’s arguable that Manchin is only aping Biden’s forlorn hope for bipartisanship. This is why he’s insisting that he will not vote for any legislation that does not have Republican support
The problem, of course, is that the Republican caucus now functions as little more than a Trumpian cult. More to the point, its leaders have vowed as an article of faith to block Biden’s legislative agenda – “one hundred percent” – no matter how bipartisan the provisions or salutary the intent. So it’s plainly foolhardy for Biden and Manchin to seek bipartisanship from Republicans who have made so plain their intent to reject it.
Like Manchin, Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine supports the Senate filibuster. But just days ago he exposed the untenable logic in Manchin’s personal filibuster. Because King insisted that, if it comes down to voting with insurrectionist Republicans and their obstructionist filibuster rule or patriotic Democrats and their principled efforts to ensure unfettered voting rights (especially for Blacks and Hispanics), he’s voting with Democrats.
This looming conflict is really that stark, and the choice to be made really that clear. Which brings me to the why in my title.
Truth be told, it seems some of the KKK sympathies old Sen. Robert Byrd publicly renounced seeped into his private tutelage of young Sen. Joe Manchin. Because only that explains Manchin’s dogged belief that it’s more important to preserve a Jim-Crow parliamentary rule in the US Senate than to prevent whites from suppressing the rights of Blacks to vote.
As my strategy calls for, Biden needs to forget infrastructure and do whatever it takes to “buy” a (retiring) Republican senator’s vote to abolish the filibuster. Otherwise, Democrats are just playing idle politics in DC while Republicans are laying the groundwork, across the country, to render them politically impotent in perpetuity.
Whatever the case, the inconvenient truth afoot is that Manchin is taking a filibuster now, filibuster tomorrow, filibuster forever stand against Democrats using a party-line vote to protect voting rights. But he is taking a good-ole-boy approach that allows Republicans to use a party-line vote to suppress those very same voting rights.
In other words, for Manchin, it appears partisanship in defense of whites suppressing the voting rights of Blacks is no vice.
Say it ain’t so, Joe. And, given the circumstances, either one of you will do.
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To Biden…