In the wake of Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) hard line against Democrats’ big democracy overhaul legislation, Senate Dems on Monday were working through the various stages of grief.
Josh has a piece up on this very issue. Manchin is tilting at windmills if he truly believes 10 Republican votes are there for either bill. Murkowski is the only vote out there and even she noted it will be a heavy lift.
I suppose the GOP is against the bill in large part because it exposes dark money. Moscow Mitch would ever be against that.
Therefore, I must surmise this is the most likely issue driving Senator Manchin as well since the nut of his position is simply to support Republicans here.
If ten Republicans did step up to support the Lewis Act, then that would cement Manchinism as the rule going forward. Manchin would do a victory lap, and the filibuster would survive until the first day the GOP gains control of the Senate. Which is why I worry that will be McConnell’s move in order to stymie the rest of the Biden Agenda.
Actually we’re at the very late stages. People around the country as aware as they will ever be about what’s at risk here. If you can’t legislate, say so, explain why Republicans are to blame, and start holding hearings into the GOP’s 1/6 insurrection. Do politics.
Expecting Republicans to support voting reforms is like expecting arsonists to get behind funding for more fire hydrants.
We’re coming for you and Sinema, Joe. Your primary opponents will have warchests that will make you shit your redneck pants.
Fact: Manchin favors a return to Jim Crow.
It is somewhat misleading to say “He’s opposed to the bill on the merits, because it doesn’t have Republican support.” The merits usually refers to the content of the bill. And it is possible that Manchin is opposed to the content of the bill. But the content is a distinct matter from whether it has bipartisan buyin. A bill that Manchin supports up and down on the merits is not likely to have bipartisan buyin.
The point is that Manchin not only will not vote to get rid of the filibuster, but also says he wouldn’t vote for the bill if they did. But both of these things seem to be about his sense of what looks partisan, and not at all a matter of the merits of the bill. If the issue was the merits of the bill that would require a different kind of negotiation than does the fact that Manchin is waiting for Republicans to vote for a bill to stop Republicans from undermining democracy.
Making voting easier is good for the Democratic Party and bad for the Republican party. That’s it. That’s the truth of it not that truth matters much anymore. So lets watch the dancing…“we shouldn’t federalize election law”, “bipartisan”, and “preserving Democracy by shoving a poker up its ass”…
Frankly Manchin should go fuck himself.
Brian Schatz has the clearest response to Manchin and this should be the response going forward. Find the votes, Sen. Manchin.
My view is that anybody who holds the filibuster up as some key element of maintaining democracy has an obligation to be part of the group that produces 10 votes for something meaningful,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) told reporters.
At my most cynical, I’d say Manchin is using the John Lewis Act as a shiny object to redirect attention and knows full well that it’s DOA.
All evidence points to his supporting the status quo on voting rights and election law.
Of course, there is the question of what legislation there is out there that he does support.
I read Josh saying Manchin supports the infrastructure bill, with increases in federal corporate taxes, this morning.
Of course, if that can’t be passed by reconciliation, Manchin’s support for raising corporate taxes is also his support for Republican opposition to the bill, which will, consequently, just as certainly die.
Manchin has said he won’t support anything passed by reconciliation, I believe.
While some elements of the Voting Rights Act could have bipartisan support, Toomey said, “there’s a fundamental challenge” in that “Republicans don’t think we should federalize election law.”
“I think you have to make the case for why we need preclearance,” Toomey told TPM. “Where is there demonstrated evidence that we need it today, rather than what we needed 60 years ago? Because in six decades America has changed.”
Translation: The Blacks don’t have Jim Crow any more and ALLLL America is living in a post-racial society soooo,…what’s the problem?
In effect, that means he supports the Reactionary position and opposes the bill.
I’ll give him credit for recognizing that America has changed. He is absolutely unwilling to admit how it has changed, though, because recognizing the dimensions of change would require his party to adjust their policies to attract more voters than the other party.
Well, actually, it would require the GQP to have policies instead of surgical gerrymandering and voter suppression to “win”.
ETA: @brooklyndweller beat me to the punch
Sadly the timescale you are speaking about is too long. Both Manchin’s and Sinema’s terms end in 2025, so primary challenges are not going to help Biden with his agenda this term.
I thought that the Democrats should have publicly pitched the 1/6 Commission as the litmus test: Manchin either needs to get 10 GOP Senators or change his position on the filibuster. Now that he has started, he seems to want to move the goalposts each time the GOP blocks a piece of Biden’s agenda.
Manchin’s substitution of the Lewis Act for S.1 makes me think he entertains the notion that he can get GOP support for it, and, since I am more cynical than the average bear, I worry that he and Mitch will pass a watered down version of the act to prove that bipartisanship can work, and take the pressure off Manchin to kill the filibuster.
Apparently Manchin supported and sponsored the For the People Act in 2019. Jaysus.
When there was no hope of it passing in other words?
Sinema also co-sponsored. Hypocrites nothing but hypocrites.
