One way to solve a problem like Joe Manchin would be for Democrats to defeat Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine in the 2020 election.
Alas, absent a Time-Turner, the problem persists. (I mean, seriously: Biden beat Trump in Maine by 75,000 votes. Democrats netted about 128,000 more votes than Republicans in the state’s two House elections. Democrats retained majorities in both houses of the state legislature. Yet Susan Collins still won by 70,000 votes, which wasn’t even close, with Biden running nearly 100,000 votes ahead of Democratic candidate Sara Gideon and 18,000 votes ahead of Collins. Talk about dropping the ball.)
Joe Manchin has to be close to the most unpopular politician in Washington at the moment. He’s driving Democrats nuts by opposing, and thus essentially killing, the For the People voting rights act (although he cosponsored the same bill back in 2019) and insisting on a bipartisan infrastructure bill even though there probably aren’t ten Republicans willing to strike a deal with Democrats. (BREAKING: A bipartisan group of five Republicans and five Democrats including Manchin announced yesterday they’d cut a deal on the infrastructure bill; more on that in a bit.) Additionally, while Manchin’s not quite a hard “no” on eliminating the filibuster, he’s really fond of the damn thing, which means much of the Democratic agenda (like a $15 minimum wage, which Manchin also opposes) is going nowhere. Republicans certainly love watching Manchin backfoil the libs but I’m pretty sure they won’t be hitting the campaign trail for him or offering him their endorsement as Manchin did for Collins (let’s keep tabs on that to see if that’s reciprocated). As for his popularity in his home state of West Virginia, a poll by the Cooperative Election Study from October 2020 put it underwater at 33%-51%.
So yes, Manchin’s in the running for least popular guy in DC right now, but he remains among its most essential. Notwithstanding the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold, Democrats don’t have a vote to spare in the Senate if they want to pass votes via reconciliation (let alone retain control of the chamber) and Manchin’s vote, dangling way out there to the right of the Democratic mainstream, is the hardest to get. If Democrats do decide to get rid of the filibuster and press ahead with the more ambitious elements of their agenda, Manchin is the one who will give the go-ahead, and in that post-filibuster universe, unless Collins or Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska lend an unlikely hand, Democrats won’t be able to sidestep Manchin, since on almost every issue he’d be the 50th and final vote Democrats would need to make Kamala Harris the Senate’s tie-breaker. (Thought experiment: Does Manchin have more power as the 50th vote on the way to 60 in a Senate with the filibuster or as the 50th vote in a 50-50 Senate run by Democrats without the filibuster? Of course, the downside for Manchin of getting rid of the filibuster is that without it he can’t hide behind Republican obstruction, but the upside is he could actually use his office to get something done.)
Consequently, even though they may really want to, Democrats can’t just kick Joe Manchin to the curb. If anything, they’ve got to make sure they don’t ostracize him lest he jump parties. Good luck replacing Stephen Breyer (damnit, have we learned nothing!) or filling vacancies on the rest of the federal bench or throughout the federal government with Mitch McConnell calling the shots. Word is Manchin is unlikely to flip parties even if Democrats call him names or press him to act like someone who wants to get the Democrats’ agenda into law, but it would be really easy for him to take the ball and go home if Democrats don’t play ball on his terms…although it seems that’s basically what Democrats are doing right now.
To a certain extent, Manchin’s behavior is explicable. As one vote in the slimmest of Democratic majorities, Manchin is leveraging his position to his full advantage, which someone like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren would likely do, too, if Democratic legislation began slipping too far to the right. As someone closer to the center of the political spectrum, Manchin probably has more wiggle-room to object to legislation as well, as he could insist to his colleagues that his compromised version of something is better than nothing.
Manchin is also enamored with bipartisanship, which, hey, is great you know, I’m all for people getting together to solve the problems—Teamwork Makes the Dream Work—but that sentiment seems a bit misplaced at the moment. Manchin will argue compromise between the parties keeps congressional majorities from imposing their will on the people. Additionally, he sees bipartisanship as a way for Congress to heal the nation’s divides, saying the lesson he took from 1/6 is that the country has been torn asunder and needs to find a way to work together again for the greater good.
The problem is I don’t think the people who stormed the Capitol or who believe the 2020 election was stolen or who cover for those nutsos by voting against certification of the election results and a bipartisan commission to investigate the Capitol Riot are really about sitting down together to hug things out, and if they said they actually were about working together for the greater good, I’d remember that mean Van Pelt girl pulled the football away the last 20 times I tried to kick it and that maybe I should just work with someone else to help the team get some points on the board. Manchin seems to think all hope is not lost, however, as the Republicans who voted to impeach Trump and investigate the Capitol Riot are ready to step up on voting reform, writing in an op-ed
[The For the People Act] has garnered zero Republican support. Why? Are the very Republican senators who voted to impeach Trump because of actions that led to an attack on our democracy unwilling to support actions to strengthen our democracy? Are these same senators, whom many in my party applauded for their courage, now threats to the very democracy we seek to protect?
But Manchin may want to ask himself why those same Republicans, determined as they are to protect American democracy, continue to caucus with the party whose politicians either instigated the riot, refuse to hold those who instigated it accountable, or continue to question the integrity of the election despite no evidence of election fraud. Why do Susan Collins and Mitt Romney think it is better to serve in a majority with Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and Donald Trump than with reasonable old you, Joe? Might there be a little bit of delusion there?
Manchin opens that same op-ed with this rhetorical paradox:
The right to vote is fundamental to our American democracy and protecting that right should not be about party or politics. Least of all, protecting this right, which is a value I share, should never be done in a partisan manner.
This leads Manchin to conclude Democrats in Congress should not attempt to stop partisan Republican-led efforts in the states to roll back the right to vote without first winning over the support of—of all people—Republicans. Pro tip: They don’t want to help you, Joe! You’re looking for a dance partner in a mosh pit. And voting’s kind of important. You might have to go it alone on this one, and as a bonus you’ll have the benefit of being right.
To Manchin’s credit, he does support the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, so there’s some hope there, but it seems he’s a little obsessed with bipartisanship. Just imagine it’s 1864:
President Lincoln: I need you to march on Atlanta, then across Georgia to the sea.
General Manchin: Sorry sir, won’t do it without a division of Confederates.
President Lincoln: Get me Sherman.
Of course, Manchin’s independent streak seems calibrated to keep him in good standing with voters back home in West Virginia, who delivered a majority of their votes and a 15-point win to Bill Clinton in 1996 but by 2020 had nearly passed Wyoming as the most Republican state in the union. (Trump won West Virginia 68.6%-29.7% and Wyoming 69.9%-26.6%.) Manchin, who has been running for statewide office in the Mountain State since 1996, has seen his winning percentage drop from 69.8% in 2008 to 49.6% in 2018. Despite a latent tradition of blue-collar New Deal liberalism in the state, West Virginians these days just aren’t receptive to politicians with a (D) after their names, making Manchin’s re-election three years ago a minor miracle.
Manchin has built his brand in-state as a Blue Dog Democrat willing to check his party’s more liberal ambitions. Some might argue a Bernie-style populist would fare better, but even if that politician came along or if Manchin morphed into that character, is it reasonable to think they could still win? West Virginia looks rough for Democrats either way. It’s unreasonable to expect a Democrat from West Virginia to adopt the talking points of coastal liberal, but it might not hurt to take a few pages from Sherrod Brown’s playbook in Ohio.
So the hope is Manchin is committed to getting the Democratic agenda across the line in a way he can justify to voters back in West Virginia rather than trying to yank the party back to the milquetoast moderation of the Clintonian 90s. If this is what’s really going on, then it’s possible Manchin is just engaged in a bunch of political theater on his way to yes. Maybe Manchin wants voters back home to see him as tough on Democrats and thus invites the scorn of the party faithful. The more he’s called out by the left for sticking it to the libs, the better he looks in the eyes of his constituents. Maybe Biden and Schumer know this too so they play along by offering up an infrastructure package with a massive price tag just so Manchin can be seen paring it down to a number Biden and Schumer are already fine with. (It’s hard to believe Manchin would let an infrastructure bill that would provide real visible benefits to West Virginians fail.) Negotiations with Republicans could be used to allow Republicans to get to Manchin’s number on their own and deliver Manchin the bipartisan cover necessary to win his vote or to prove to the public just how unreasonable and stubborn Republicans are in their opposition, which, after the string of GOP filibusters on popular Democratic priorities that appear to be coming later this month, could give Manchin the cover he needs to allow Democrats to go forward with a more ambitious reconciliation agenda or even allow for some adjustment of the filibuster.
(That’s what makes news of yesterday’s bipartisan infrastructure compromise so interesting. Manchin may have won his bipartisan cover. But there are only five Republicans on board with the plan so far. What does Manchin do if they can’t find five more to break a filibuster? Would Manchin be open to reconciliation then, and would those Republicans continue to support the bill after that procedural move, and if they don’t, would Manchin back away from the bill as well since it is no longer bipartisan? What if leftists in the Senate don’t go along with the compromise? Would Manchin conclude at that point that reconciliation is the only way to get the bill passed and abandon bipartisan efforts, or scuttle the whole effort? And if Republicans go along with Democrats on infrastructure, does this keep the bar permanently at 60 votes for legislation going forward since it will have demonstrated to Manchin that getting 60 votes via compromise is possible, albeit unlikely for the rest of the Democratic agenda?)
There also exists the possibility that Manchin’s foot dragging is actually providing cover for a handful of moderate Democrats who are more than happy to let Manchin take the blame for killing legislation they don’t support. So long as Manchin is jumping at the opportunity to say no and spite Democrats, they don’t have to, which means they can maintain their standing with the liberal activist base. If this is the case, it may be Schumer is lacking a lot more than Manchin’s support for the infrastructure bill, voting rights legislation, and the rest of the Democratic agenda than what we’re being led to believe, which would be depressing. (And there would be no need to get rid of the filibuster if Democrats can’t unify and count to 50 on a bunch of worthwhile bills.)
All of which is to say I think it’s unwise for Democrats to get their hopes too high for what Biden can accomplish with a 50-50 Senate. There’s just no room for error there, and when one of your votes hails from the nation’s second-most conservative state, passing any meaningful legislation is going to be a heavy lift. It’s a small miracle the American Rescue Plan was passed (and remember Manchin was throwing all sorts of wrenches into that, too); anything requiring changes to the tax code, new and permanent revenue streams, or 60 votes is going to be exponentially harder. I’m not saying activists shouldn’t press their case. These are urgent times, and politicians need to be reminded we expect action on a whole range of issues. Just prepare to be disappointed.
We’ll only learn what’s really going on with Joe Manchin when the gossipy Washington insiders publish their books a few years from now about the frenzied first year of the Biden administration. By then we’ll know if Manchin’s stonewalling was mostly an act and if it worked, which if it did, great. We’ll have people working and new bridges to boot. I’m kind of hoping right now, though, that his theater, if that’s what it is, is a one-act play heading for curtain. The longer this goes on, the more I worry Republicans will end up tarring it like the Affordable Care Act, and Democrats, having raised the stakes by drawing out the negotiations so long, will find themselves passing an unpopular bill to keep Biden and the Democratic Congress from looking like hapless politicians. Biden has a lot of goodwill right now, so it seems really foolish to raise the price in political capital Democrats will have to pay to get this bill passed. That seems to be what the grumblings we’re beginning to hear on Capitol Hill from Democrats are about. Also: Democrats’ margin for control of the Senate is razor thin. The longer they wait to get this passed, the more they court legislative disaster should one of their members shuffle off the mortal coil.
I’d also like to know what Joe Manchin thinks his political future holds for him. The senator turns 74 years old this year; if he chooses to run for re-election in three years, he’d be 77 years old on Election Day. Is he really going to run? Does he honestly think he can win? I mean, yeah, Susan Collins won and he’s demonstrated he can win, but Maine is not nearly as rough on Republicans as West Virginia has gotten on Democrats and if the WVU Mountaineer declared himself a Democrat and ran for office I’m pretty sure even he’d lose in a landslide. That’s just a fair-eyed assessment. What does Manchin want his legacy to be then? Instead of being the Democrat who always told his party “no,” why not be the Democrat who got to “yes”? Instead of providing cover for other Democrats reluctant to get onboard legislation, why not be the Democrat who provided the party with the momentum it needed to get Biden’s agenda into law? And yes, bipartisanship is nice and all that and it’s fun when senators get together once or twice a year to slap each other on the back for crossing party lines to pass yet another continuing resolution, but instead of being one more senator whose retirement speech laments how the Senate is broken and never gets anything done, why not be the senator who actually made the place work?
Thanks for reading.
Further reading: “How Joe Manchin Survives as a Democrat in West Virginia” by Nate Cohn, New York Times; “Joe Manchin Wants to Save Democrats from Themselves” by Andrew Prokop, Vox; “What Joe Manchin’s Constituents Think of His Bipartisanship” by Dan Merica, CNN
Photo credit: www.manchin.senate.gov
Exit Music: “This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” by Taylor Swift (2017, Reputation)