On a Sunday morning Fox News chat show, Senator Joe Manchin (D.-West Virginia) announced flat-out that he can’t support President Biden’s “Build Back Better” bill, and since Democrats only have a maximum of 50 Senate votes plus Vice President Harris as a tie-breaker, any Democratic Senator voting “no” basically kills the agenda.
Wow. Who didn’t see this coming? Besides Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden, apparently.
The same day, White House press secretary Jen Psaki released a statement:
Weeks ago, Senator Manchin committed to the President, at his home in Wilmington, to support the Build Back Better framework that the President then subsequently announced. Senator Manchin pledged repeatedly to negotiate on finalizing that framework “in good faith.”
On Tuesday of this week, Senator Manchin came to the White House and submitted—to the President, in person, directly—a written outline for a Build Back Better bill that was the same size and scope as the President’s framework, and covered many of the same priorities. While that framework was missing key priorities, we believed it could lead to a compromise acceptable to all. Senator Manchin promised to continue conversations in the days ahead, and to work with us to reach that common ground. If his comments on FOX and written statement indicate an end to that effort, they represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate.
And yet, the response from the Lamestream Media in the last few days has been that “it’s not over yet” and after all, they still need Manchin to keep their (alleged) majority, and the Administration is still trying to negotiate with him.
First off, if this is an example of continued negotiation, I would hate to see what negotiation breakdown looks like. But second, if this is a continuing process of negotiation, then the Administration through Psaki is signaling to Manchin that the president will not be indefinitely led by a carrot that he will never get to bite.
In his Tuesday announcements on Omicron virus, President Biden was asked about the matter and told a reporter, “People think I’m not Irish, cause I don’t hold a grudge.” Well, I’m Irish, and I do.
Thing is, when it gets down to it, I’m closer to Manchin on budget issues than I am to AOC or Pramila Jayapal. But this dickery actually offends me on a visceral level, because of the way Manchin is going about things. He knows damn well that his party needs to succeed in Congress to get people re-elected, not to mention carry out their promises on popular items. He also knows, or ought to know, that anything that screws the Democrats in this binary system benefits the Republicans. But not only does he screw them, he screws them by pretending he’s negotiating in good faith when there’s always some reason he can’t agree to what everyone else has agreed to.
With friends like this, who needs Trump?
People act like there’s some big mystery to Manchin’s motivations, when there really isn’t. He’s a Senator for a state where most people are that much more conservative than he is. And the fact of the matter is, he’s bought and paid for. You can’t expect him to cooperate with Biden’s agenda, even if Biden is more moderate than the “progressives”, because Manchin is serving the people who pay his way. Not the people of West Virginia, but the corporate donors who like the system just the way it is.
I’m sure Manchin doesn’t care about any political factors, because it was enough of a miracle for West Virginia to elect a Democrat last time. I likewise don’t think Krysten Sinema cares much, because as blue as Arizona is getting, it still has a certain Sagebrush Rebellion culture and Sinema, an ex-Green who’s gotten increasingly pro-corporate, is clearly trying to play both sides of the street. But that just means these guys only care about themselves and not the future of their Party. Which is incredibly short-sighted. Supposedly the reason Manchin in particular doesn’t just join the Republican Party (like the rest of West Virginia) is because he would no longer be a linchpin, just another member of Mitch McConnell’s caucus, and Mitch would be calling all the shots, not him. But if Democrats become the minority party next year, he certainly won’t be the linchpin any more.
One pundit had analyzed Manchin’s supposedly Sphinx-like motives to be that he “is happy not to accomplish much of anything as long as people have to continually kiss his ass to even get judges and cabinet officials approved.” And I’d said it would be a lot more likely that he would be the Man Whose Ass Must Be Kissed if he let Democrats get rid of the filibuster, because then his vote actually would be a possibility rather than a ‘gee if only we could get ten Trump apologists to agree with us’ theoretical. And my conclusion at the time was “Thus one returns to the rejected theory: That Joe Manchin is an abject moron who, if he ever paid attention to what the Senate was like in his entire tenure, is certainly not aware of what it’s like now.”
But that’s the generous interpretation. As is the Occam’s Razor theory that Manchin is serving his donors. The more recent events suggest a more prosaic explanation: That he’s just extremely petty.
According to one article, Manchin has (allegedly) said “In recent months, Manchin has told several of his fellow Democrats that he thought parents would waste monthly child tax credit payments on drugs instead of providing for their children, according to two sources familiar with the senator’s comments. … Manchin’s private comments shocked several senators, who saw it as an unfair assault on his own constituents and those struggling to raise children in poverty.” The article went on to quote “Manchin has also told colleagues he believes that Americans would fraudulently use the proposed paid sick leave policy, specifically saying people would feign being sick and go on hunting trips.” Apparently someone in West Virginia thinks there’s a problem with hunting.
And then the Washington press came up with other leaks saying that what lost Manchin was a Biden statement: ““I had a productive call with Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Schumer earlier today. I briefed them on the most recent discussions that my staff and I have held with Senator Manchin about Build Back Better. In these discussions, Senator Manchin has reiterated his support for Build Back Better funding at the level of the framework plan I announced in September. I believe that we will bridge our differences and advance the Build Back Better plan, even in the face of fierce Republican opposition.”
According to Steve Clemons, who seems greatly sympathetic to Manchin, THAT’s what lost him. “Given the protests that Manchin’s family has experienced at his home, which is a boat in Washington Harbor — with folks harassing him, his wife and grandson by kayak around his boat and the gate to the marina — I knew this presidential statement was personalizing the game. It put his family at risk, in my view.”
I mean, all these ‘liberal’ media guys seem to be at pains, to a disturbing degree, to tell Biden and the other Democrats to go back to the table no matter how many times Manchin pisses on them, pointing out for instance that Biden wouldn’t have been able to appoint any judges if he didn’t have that technical Senate majority. Even leftist New York writer Eric Levitz took his position, sort of, saying “HuffPost’s Tara Golshan tweeted that Manchin had said he “knew from the beginning he wouldn’t support BBB.” Progressive Twitter users interpreted this to mean that Manchin had just confessed his own bad faith: He knew from the start that he would oppose Build Back Better, no matter what concessions the White House offered. He was just playing them this whole time — and now he was admitting it!
“Of course, what Manchin actually said was close to the opposite of this. His point in the interview wasn’t that negotiations were doomed because he never actually cared about his own substantive demands, but rather, that they were doomed because he did care about those demands, and the White House was unwilling to meet them.
“Nevertheless, Manchin’s supposed confession of bad faith quickly became a rationale for progressives to preemptively disavow making any further substantive concessions to the senator, since doing so would be pointless, anyway.”
Well, yes.
Psaki’s statement this week indicated that Biden had in fact sought Manchin’s opinion, Manchin had come to Biden directly and given him an agenda, and Biden said he was willing to work with that, and then on Sunday Manchin gave him a flat No.
All of this handwringing and placating Joe Manchin seems to be based on the assumption that he’s actually going to negotiate in good faith, and all this stuff that he says he wants, like voting rights reform and a talking filibuster reform, are actually going to happen. I see little evidence of that based on history. At this point in the Democratic Party, there are a lot more “progressives” than there are people like Manchin, maybe even people like Biden. And even Biden is able to work with them. Largely because of Manchin, the main entitlement bill had its cost reduced by about half (which I agreed with), and Biden got the Left to agree to drop their demand to pass that bill at the same time as the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which the Left was holding up because they knew the Republicans and people like Manchin wanted to throw the progressive bill out. Negotiation, compromise, and working with the other factions of your party presume that in fact you’re going to concede something to the other group if they concede to you.
And if homeboy is so piqued at even being mentioned by name in a very restrained and diplomatic statement, imagine how offended the rest of his party is when he basically tells them, on Fox News no less, “Fuck you because I can”? If he thinks he was getting harassed before, why would he want to make that even worse?
I am reminded of the classic joke where I guy goes to his old friend’s house and meets the friend’s hot wife, and the three of them have dinner and later on because of the weather, the guy has to stay overnight. There’s no couch in the home (for purposes of the joke) so the couple offers to let their friend sleep in the same bed with them. And shortly after they’re all settled in, the wife turns to the guy (let’s say his name is Joe) and says “Hey Joe, you wanna screw?” And he says, “Your husband’s right here!” And she goes, “Oh he’s sound asleep. Go ahead, pull a hair off his ass and see if he wakes up.” So Joe does that, and sure enough, the friend doesn’t move. So Joe fucks the guy’s wife. And a few minutes later, she wants to go at it again. And he’s like, really? And she goes, “Go ahead, pull a hair off his ass and see if he wakes up.” And Joe does that, and sure enough, he doesn’t move. So the two of them go at it again. About ten minutes after climax, the wife motions to Joe, they nod, he reaches for his friend, and the friend turns over and says, “Look Joe, bad enough you’re fucking my wife, but quit using my ass for a scoreboard!”
That guy is Joe Manchin. And the husband is the Democratic Party.
So supposedly, because they have no other choice except to make Mitch McConnell happy and push Manchin to the Republican camp, Democrats are continuing to negotiate with Manchin even when he’s done everything he can to make it clear that he’s not going to give them what they want even as he demands the advantages of being the deciding vote on their agenda.
They really ought to talk brass tacks with him and make it clear that he needs their support at least as much as they need his. Otherwise, why would he stay in the Democratic Party when he clearly won’t agree with either the Left or Biden?
Because again, while there are all kinds of reasons for Manchin to skip to the Republican Party, since it seems to be a much better fit for him, there are several key reasons why he might not. One, Manchin seems to at least in theory agree to spending on infrastructure and the middle class. Second, as discussed, is that going Republican changes him from the guy who dictates to President Biden to the guy who is dictated to by Senate Majority Leader McConnell. And third, related to the second, is that everything we have seen about Manchin this year distinguishes him as a vain, imperious man with the emotional sensitivity of the Princess and the Pea, who demands that everyone bow and scrape and cater to him or else he’s going to wreck everything they want.
Given that that is also a perfect description of Donald Trump’s behavior within his own party, I don’t know if there’s enough room for the two of them.