He’s enjoying his moment in the spotlight, or at the very least, the time spent being the turd in the punch bowl at the high school prom and he knows that spotlight won’t come around again.
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We are where we are and where we are is at a 50 vote Senate. Even if there was no filibuster, as the 50th (or 49th) vote, he’d have the leverage to demand these changes and we’d have to give 'em to him.
But the thing is, we do have a filibuster and he’s standing in the way of fixing that too. If all this is is a ploy to give him bipartisan goodbellyfeels by getting Murkowski on board for the defeat, fuck him.
However, if letting him dictate changes to the bills are the price of getting him to move on the filibuster in a sufficiently meaningful way to get both laws passed (and assuming Synoma moves), we take what we can get, bank it and declare it a great victory. And if they bring Murkowski along for the ride (which in turn give Collins cover to move if she can find her way out of her perpetual cloud of concern and disappointment), so much the better.
Do Something! Democrats are constantly talking about LBJ. So fine, let’s talk about him.
In 1964, he tore the voting provisions out of the long-pending civil rights act. calculating that the ghosts of John F. Kennedy and Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were enough to get that much, and no more blown out of the blockade of segregationist senators. He persuaded civil rights leaders that that half loaf would be a great victory, got it passed claimed the high ground, got himself reelected by a crushing long-coattail landslide, and then pushed the part he’d torn out through the next Congress. Which is why we have the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Because that’s how shit actually gets done in a democracy.
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TPM corrected the faux pas. It can’t have been autocorrect. Must of been Freudian.
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Meh, Manchin’s asks are mostly cosmetic. Even the no-excuses absentee thing is fine. Everywhere that already has it can still keep it, and any state that wants it can still implement it.
If this is the cost of getting S.1 passed and enacted into law, I’m 100% fine with it. The anti-gerrymandering stuff alone is worth it (or will be until John Roberts discovers there’s a constitutional right to gerrymander).
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Uh, Fetterman is running for the Dem senate nomination in PA. Manchin is in WV.
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We have gone from No to I’ll vote for this if.
They are obviously negotiating. I want to see whatever the hell can pass get passed. It’s not the end of the rest of it - it can come back around in different legislation. But some is way better than none.
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Have you seen Fetterman?
I’m pretty sure he can unseat any of the sitting senators with one hand, regardless of location.
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Only If.
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Well if he doesn’t it doesn’t pass so we’re back where we started.
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If you make enough “compromises” to get the votes of 10 GOP senators you lose roughly 49 Democratic senators.
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Yes Manchin’s bill looks inferior in multiple ways. And HR 1 was NOT in reality a partisan Democratic bill. But political reality being what it is, I like the optics of Democrats embracing a Manchin compromise and putting it to the Senate for a vote. Get 10 Republicans and we get at least something, with the end to gerrymandering being crucial. Don’t get 10 Republicans (more likely) and they are exposed for the seditionists they are, their talking points are totally discredited, and we go back to round 2 of the fight no worse off than we were before.
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So Manchin is going forward with his doomed attempt at getting 10 GOP votes for any voting right’s bill?
Happy to let him publicly humiliate himself to prove that yet again that “bipartisanship” with the current Republican members of Congress is a fool’s errand.
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Republicans won’t vote, ever, even if their lives depended on it, for plan B. s/
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And everybody knows it, so it has to be being discussed or this is Kabuki.
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Manchin isn’t dumb enough to say WA, OR and CO are doing anything wrong, it just isn’t the role of the federal government to tell states how to run federal elections. And even though the Constitution explicitly states “the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations [pertaining to the times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives]” Congress cannot do that over GOP objections.
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As long as the Senate rules remain what they are, it would also need 10 votes from the Republican caucus, which remains unified in its opposition to the bill and, more broadly, skeptical of any federal mandates for state election procedures.
Coulda saved a whole lot of electrons with this as the lead, but I guess Tierney needed something to do today
Joe M should save his breath if he’s got nothing new to report
O I think it is being discussed. Nancy Pelosi has been upbeat on the chances of working something out. I can’t imagine Manchin making a promise about 10 GOP if he doesn’t have them, either. But I may be giving his intelligence way too much credit, too.
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Oh, stop your fucking saintly posturing, Manchin. You know you are never, EVER going to get 10 of those Republican motherfuckers to vote for ANY bill that would mean they will lose power for the next 100 years due to fair elections. You are either high, naive, or corrupt - but I would venture probably all three.
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I can’t go that far. 
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Maybe we need to team Fetterman with Rep, Collin Allred, everyone needs a little back up sometimes.
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