White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday signaled that the Biden administration hasn’t given up hopes of working with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) to push voting rights legislation through Congress, despite the centrist senator’s very public opposition to the sweeping “For the People Act” that his Democratic colleagues have been pushing.
In the end Manchin won’t matter. Mitch is won’t allow any Republican Senator to vote for anything that improves voting rights nor anything that improves the life of ordinary Americans. It is what Dems should craft the 2022 midterms around.
Uno )
Dos )
The White House also declined to respond to comments Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) made Monday when he slammed Manchin as “the new Mitch McConnell” in response to the West Virginia senator’s opposition to the House-passed “For the People Act” and his ongoing refusal to nuke the filibuster.
h/t Molly Ivins
Psaki denied that the administration views HR.4 as “languishing”
Unless the Biden administration knows Manchin will change his mind, S.1/HR.4/Infrastructure/Biden’s legislative agenda are indeed “languishing” while Manchin insists they be bipartisan.
The GOP will not budge. That means that Manchin will not be able to find the 10 people he is looking for.
If Manchin had a spine, or any principles, or any fidelity to voters’ rights, or a conscience, he would say “I cannot find 10 Republicans to vote in favor of this, therefore I am changing my vote.” All big “IFs!”
I wish I could get Eric Sevaried to ask him
or Walter Cronkite
or David Brinkley
I’d even settle for Tim Russert, for heaven’s sake!
Note that Manchin is setting himself up for a question the answer++ of which will make him look like a clueless fool.
++ McConnell: “Fuck NO! There are no 10 Republicans who want a damn thing to do with you.”
To sum up: VP Harris has been nominated to fall on the sword for Manchin’s sin.
Susan Miley, business manager for the Miley Legal Group, posed a question during the executive committee meeting that seems to perfectly sum up the problem with the Democratic establishment’s approach to change: “Why are white people drafting a plan for Hispanics and Black people? Why?” she asked. Her peers didn’t answer.
Meanwhile, a relative newbie to the Senate club — moderate Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) — may have found her own clique … among Republicans. She was spotted at Charlie Palmer two weeks ago having dinner with Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.).
“They are all women who feel comfortable in their own skin and enjoy each other’s company,” the first source said of the women at the dinner.
The source added of the female Republicans: “They’re all in love with [Sinema]. They think she won’t cave.”
Manchin is incenting McConnell to whip harder. If he can just get 40 Republicans to stay home he gets Manchin for free and Manchin is apparently treating reconciliation the same way. Schumer has only a few limp carrots to offer Joe and no stick at all. Good luck to us all.
Manchin is born and bred semi-rural West Virginian: I don’t think his motivations are necessarily atypical in that regard even if his family history is middle-class and Italian/Czech rather than working class and British Borderer; e.g, he may not be actively racist but he is also unlikely to find the value of diversity compelling or even particularly interesting whether the franchise is involved or not.
IMO normal Democratic arguments are not going to get anywhere with him. Don’t know what Biden can offer him that Manchin can’t get elsewhere with less risk but I sure hope someone in the administration can figure it out.
The first thing to remember is that Manchin isn’t very bright and would not have lasted very long in, say, New Jersey politics. The second thing to remember is that he grew up in a working class WV family. You can’t compare it to working class families in, say, Allegheny County, PA, who are basically urban and who are trying to frantically get their kids into college, going bankrupt in the process. People who have aspirations in WV move elsewhere (not to PA, NJ, or NY, where they are held in contempt).
So now he’s the 50th vote. You have someone who is corrupt (he went into politics in WV, a place where everything is for sale, by WV standards he may be aboveboard but in a lot of northeastern states he’d be in prison. Even in PA, a state that is very friendly toward crooked Jim Crow refugees, and even in OH. But he doesn’t need any of that. Whether he’s got the family support structure that Susan Collins has (her “compromise” allowed her to harvest amount huge amounts of Federal money, and unlike Manchin she knows how to rake it in). The guy has no motivation (wouldn’t he like to get all the credit for the Joe Manchin Voting Rights Act? And can’t they build a bridge bigger than the New River Gorge bridge (prior to the Millau Bridge in France, it was the highest bridge in the world – oh yes, the Millau Bridge cost something like 11 billion EUR). We’ve just learned that Joe Biden is not a crook, since he won’t earmark a few things like that for WV. Of course, it would be called the Joe Manchin Bridge, and he could troll the EU and China about it. The problem is that this guy just doesn’t care. He is taking the easy way (or perhaps the only way he knows). Rest assured that Mitch McConnell (a product of the same culture but a lot more effective at larceny, and a committed confederate) knows how to graft Manchin.
We got into this hole when we didn’t bust the filibuster in 2009 to get the 2009 recovery act passed, along with a better version of national health insurance.
And yet it is Democrats who are chastised for being partisan, even by their own. GO FIGURE
Who is paying Manchin and how much? (His daughter is a Medicare profiteer)
Since Manchin is literally a required vote for the Dems to pass anything under any scenario, it’s… mind-boggling innumerate and illogical as a headline to write “isn’t giving up on Manchin despite…” I mean for God’s sake giving up on Manchin means giving up period.