Understanding Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator imperiling U.S. democracy’s future

Joe Manchin sure is the wrong per­son to be reliant upon in a crisis.

The lone remain­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­ber of Con­gress from West Vir­ginia declared in a guest essay yes­ter­day that he is firm­ly and res­olute­ly opposed to H.R. 1, the For the Peo­ple Act, and will nei­ther vote for it nor help end the fil­i­buster to allow the Unit­ed States Sen­ate to be run demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly pri­or to the midterms.

“I believe that par­ti­san vot­ing leg­is­la­tion will destroy the already weak­en­ing binds of our democ­ra­cy, and for that rea­son, I will vote against the For the Peo­ple Act,” Manchin wrote in a guest essay for the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

“Fur­ther­more, I will not vote to weak­en or elim­i­nate the fil­i­buster. For as long as I have the priv­i­lege of being your U.S. sen­a­tor, I will fight to rep­re­sent the peo­ple of West Vir­ginia, to seek bipar­ti­san com­pro­mise no mat­ter how dif­fi­cult and to devel­op the polit­i­cal bonds that end divi­sions and help unite the coun­try we love.”

“Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy is some­thing spe­cial, it is big­ger than one par­ty, or the tweet-filled par­ti­san attack pol­i­tics of the moment. It is my sin­cere hope that all of us, espe­cial­ly those who are priv­i­leged to serve, remem­ber our respon­si­bil­i­ty to do more to unite this coun­try before it is too late,” Manchin concluded.

Manch­in’s unground­ed, unre­al­is­tic com­men­tary quick­ly prompt­ed a lot of angry respons­es from Demo­c­ra­t­ic and pro­gres­sive activists and commentators.

Many of them were served up, fit­ting­ly enough, on Twitter.

“I’ve bris­tled at the notion that if you don’t sup­port blow­ing up the fil­i­buster, you’re not a Demo­c­rat. Or you don’t sup­port all gov­ern­ment spend­ing, you’re not a D,” tweet­ed Joe Lock­hart. “But Joe Manchin, when you don’t sup­port the right to vote for every Amer­i­can, you are not a Demo­c­rat. Not even close.”

“If vot­ing rights leg­is­la­tion had to be ‘bipar­ti­san’, [the] 15th Amend­ment would’ve nev­er passed. It’s aston­ish­ing that Joe Manchin calls right to vote ‘fun­da­men­tal’ but won’t back For the Peo­ple Act that would stop great­est roll back of vot­ing access since end of Recon­struc­tion,” tweet­ed Ari Berman.

“Joe Manchin is so twist­ed,” declared the Rev­erend Dr. William Bar­ber II, one of the great­est preach­ers in the coun­try. “We need both the For The Peo­ple Act and the John Lewis Vot­ing Rights Advance­ment Act. He knows the VRA is going to be chal­lenged and is a tar­get for the Repub­li­cans. And if he want­ed to pass the VRA, why for eight years has he not done any­thing to pass it?”

“Mitch McConnell and Joe Manchin are work­ing in a bipar­ti­san way to dis­man­tle our nation’s pur­suit of democ­ra­cy,” added Charles Book­er.

Even Fox’s Chris Wal­lace was crit­i­cal of Manchin, ask­ing if he was naive.

You might be sur­prised to learn that Manchin sig­naled open­ness ten years ago to fil­i­buster reform, but that was before he got on this big bipar­ti­san­ship tear.

Ah, bipar­ti­san­ship. I’m not sure there is any­one in Unit­ed States pol­i­tics who is more in love with that adjec­tive right now than Joe Manchin.

It takes two to tan­go, though, and con­gres­sion­al Repub­li­cans who are “priv­i­leged to serve” have no inter­est in unit­ing the coun­try or col­lab­o­rat­ing with Democ­rats to make vot­ing reforms “bipar­ti­san”. I can count on my fin­gers the num­ber of Repub­li­cans who will some­times buck their par­ty, but only for some­thing minor.

Susan Collins might vote for a Biden nom­i­nee she likes once in a while. Mitt Rom­ney and Lisa Murkows­ki will occa­sion­al­ly back a piece of leg­is­la­tion, like the bill to estab­lish a bipar­ti­san com­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate the Jan­u­ary 6th attacks. Even more Repub­li­cans can be found when the objec­tive is com­mit­ting mon­ey to counter Chi­na’s influ­ence, which the End­less Fron­tier Act seeks to do.

But on any­thing major, the Repub­li­cans will be nays. All of them.

That’s espe­cial­ly true with respect to vot­ing rights. Repub­li­cans aren’t going to sup­port any leg­is­la­tion that would impede them from get­ting back into power.

That includes the the John Lewis Vot­ing Rights Advance­ment Act, which Manchin brought up as some­thing he does sup­port in his guest essay for the Gazette Mail.

“My Repub­li­can col­league, Lisa Murkows­ki, has joined me in urg­ing Sen­ate lead­er­ship to update and pass this bill through reg­u­lar order,” Manchin wrote.

“I con­tin­ue to engage with my Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­t­ic col­leagues about the val­ue of the John Lewis Vot­ing Rights Advance­ment Act and I am encour­aged by the desire from both sides to tran­scend par­ti­san pol­i­tics and strength­en our democ­ra­cy by pro­tect­ing vot­ing rights.”

Um, what? What desire from both sides is Manchin talk­ing about?

Lisa Murkows­ki is one Repub­li­can. She is unrep­re­sen­ta­tive of her par­ty and of Mitch McConnel­l’s cau­cus. In the absence of the fil­i­buster, one Repub­li­can would be enough to pass a bill with­out the need for a tie-break­er. And one Repub­li­can vote does get you the thin veneer of “bipar­ti­san­ship”.

But since Manchin is opposed to get­ting rid of the fil­i­buster, it would take ten Repub­li­cans to get the bill prop­er­ly before the Sen­ate for con­sid­er­a­tion and a vote on final pas­sage. Those addi­tion­al Repub­li­can votes do not exist.

Fur­ther­more, the John Lewis Vot­ing Rights Advance­ment Act, while impor­tant and a very good idea, bare­ly scratch­es the sur­face of what is ulti­mate­ly need­ed to pro­tect vot­ing rights and access to the bal­lot in this coun­try, as the Rev­erend Dr. Bar­ber said in the tweet I repro­duced above. That’s why the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives put togeth­er H.R. 1 and sent it over to the Senate.

And even H.R. 1 isn’t enough. But it’s sub­stan­tial, and would prob­a­bly get us clos­er to a more uni­form elec­tion sys­tem that pro­tects the right to vote.

How­ev­er, as we know, Repub­li­cans don’t have any inter­est in that.

Wher­ev­er they cur­rent­ly have pow­er, Repub­li­cans are pass­ing bills intend­ed to stop peo­ple from vot­ing in this coun­try. I wrote about these bills last Sun­day, pro­vid­ing the com­plete text of four of them right here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate.

We can see that not only are Repub­li­cans not inter­est­ed in pass­ing bills like the John Lewis Vot­ing Rights Advance­ment Act, they are laser focused on going in the oth­er direc­tion. Telling­ly, Manchin did­n’t acknowl­edge what Repub­li­cans in Texas, Geor­gia, Iowa, and Flori­da have been up to recent­ly in his guest essay.

Manchin does, how­ev­er, rec­og­nize that Mitch McConnell is obsessed with get­ting his pow­er back. When McConnell orches­trat­ed a fil­i­buster of the bipar­ti­san com­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate the Jan­u­ary 6th attacks, Manchin lament­ed:

“There is no excuse for any Repub­li­can to vote against this com­mis­sion since Democ­rats have agreed to every­thing they asked for. Mitch McConnell has made this his polit­i­cal posi­tion, think­ing it will help his 2022 elec­tions. They do not believe the truth will set you free, so they con­tin­ue to live in fear.”

Curi­ous­ly, despite that expe­ri­ence, here is Joe Manchin only a few days lat­er vain­ly preach­ing bipar­ti­san­ship again. If he real­ly believes that the truth will set peo­ple free (and by the way, it won’t and does­n’t… that’s an Enlight­en­ment myth), then why does­n’t he acknowl­edge the truth? Twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry style bipar­ti­san­ship is dead, no mat­ter how fer­vent­ly Manchin wish­es it weren’t.

Repub­li­cans are not inter­est­ed in help­ing to coop­er­a­tive­ly gov­ern the coun­try, and they have proven this over and over again for more than decade.

But Manchin would rather chase after uni­corns then deal in real­i­ty.

To put it anoth­er way: The process seems more impor­tant to him than the out­come. Leg­is­la­tion on some­thing like vot­ing rights is only worth doing in his book if it’s bipar­ti­san. Bring back those wun­ner­ful olde tyme pol­i­tics!

To that, Repub­li­cans say: Great! That means we win, and noth­ing will get done.

About a month ago, Iowa’s Chuck Grass­ley told con­stituents that he was con­fi­dent Manchin would hold out as a voice and a vote against H.R. 1.

“We think we’ve got him nailed down,” Grass­ley was quot­ed as say­ing.

Yes­ter­day, Manchin proved those words to be true.

Manchin clear­ly does­n’t like what is hap­pen­ing to the coun­try, but bewil­der­ing­ly, it appears he only wants to take cor­rec­tive action if the very peo­ple who are busy enabling the destruc­tion of Amer­i­ca’s polit­i­cal norms are on board.

That’s a sil­ly, mad­den­ing posi­tion to hold. But, if you’re try­ing to make sense of it, it helps to know where Manchin comes from, and who he is.

Manchin rep­re­sents West Vir­ginia, a small state that has become zeal­ous­ly, fever­ish­ly Repub­li­can. He has sur­vived sev­er­al elec­toral purges of Democ­rats from high office, rid­ing on the strength of his per­son­al rep­u­ta­tion and name famil­iar­i­ty. He’s a rather unique polit­i­cal fig­ure, both with­in and beyond his state.

He does­n’t owe his Sen­ate seat to the DSCC, the DNC, or nation­al pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tions, as FiveThri­tyEight’s Per­ry Bacon has observed.

In 2018, his last cam­paign, Manchin won reelec­tion with less than fifty per­cent of the vote. He got 290,510 votes, while Repub­li­can Patrick Mor­risey got 271,113 votes and Lib­er­tar­i­an Rusty Hollen got 24,411 votes. If Hol­len’s vot­ers had backed Mor­risey, Manchin would have been defeat­ed… in a Demo­c­ra­t­ic year.

Because he won reelec­tion to a new six year term three years ago, Manchin did not face vot­ers in 2020, when Trump’s name was on the bal­lot, and was not at risk of being vot­ed out of office at that time by Trump’s base.

But in 2024, Manch­in’s luck could eas­i­ly run out. He will be up. If he runs again, he could con­ceiv­ably end up on the bal­lot with Trump, since Trump has not been barred from run­ning again for the office of Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States.

Even if the Repub­li­cans nom­i­nate some­one else, Manchin is going to find it hard to pull anoth­er rab­bit out of a hat. While I don’t and can’t know the future, I fig­ure Joe Manch­in’s odds of get­ting reelect­ed in 2024 are pret­ty steep.

Don­ald Trump got 68.62% of the vote across West Vir­ginia last year. Not a sin­gle coun­ty in the state backed the Biden-Har­ris tick­et. Not even one.

The Wikipedia arti­cle on the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in West Vir­ginia says of the state’s south­ern region: “This coal-min­ing, union-heavy region was once among the most heav­i­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic places in the nation; Logan Coun­ty, for exam­ple, broke 72% of its bal­lots for Bill Clin­ton in 1996, 61% for Al Gore in 2000, and even 52% for John Ker­ry in 2004; but by 2008, John McCain flipped it to the Repub­li­can col­umn with 54% of the vote, which increased to 68% for Mitt Rom­ney in 2012 and by 2016 and 2020, it had vot­ed 80.9% for Trump.”

All this has hap­pened dur­ing Joe Manch­in’s polit­i­cal career.

In 1982, he was elect­ed to the West Vir­ginia House of Del­e­gates. In 1986, he moved over to the West Vir­ginia State Sen­ate. In 2000, he won his first statewide race and became Sec­re­tary of State. In 2004, he was elect­ed Gov­er­nor, and held that office until 2010, when he resigned to run for the Unit­ed States Senate.

West Vir­gini­a’s trans­for­ma­tion into a devout right wing bas­tion has accel­er­at­ed, rapid­ly, since Manchin left the state­house for the U.S. Capitol.

When Manchin left Charleston for Capi­tol Hill, he did so with state gov­ern­ment large­ly in Demo­c­ra­t­ic hands. Manch­in’s suc­ces­sor, Earl Ray Tomblin, was a Demo­c­rat. The Sec­re­tary of State was a Demo­c­rat (Natal­ie Ten­nant), the long­time Attor­ney Gen­er­al was a Demo­c­rat (Dar­rell McGraw), the Com­mis­sion­er of Agri­cul­ture was a Demo­c­rat (Gus R. Dou­glass), the Trea­sur­er was a Demo­c­rat (John Per­due), and the Audi­tor was a Demo­c­rat (Glen Gainer).

Today, all those posi­tions — all of them — are held by Republicans.

The same shift has tak­en place in the state’s con­gres­sion­al delegation.

In 2014, when Manch­in’s seat­mate Jay Rock­e­feller decid­ed to retire, Democ­rats failed to hold his U.S. Sen­ate seat. It went instead to Repub­li­can Shel­ley Moore Capi­to. 2014 was also the year that West Vir­gini­ans dumped long­time Demo­c­ra­t­ic U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Nick Rahall, send­ing hin into retire­ment after sev­er­al decades of ser­vice in the House. (Rahall was first elect­ed in 1976.)

With Rahal­l’s loss, the entire three mem­ber U.S. House del­e­ga­tion from West Vir­ginia became Repub­li­can. It has remained so since.

Manchin is — real­ly and tru­ly — the last promi­nent Demo­c­rat left stand­ing in a state that used to be Demo­c­ra­t­ic to its core. And he knows it.

Manchin also knows that Democ­rats need his vote to pass any­thing in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate. As a mem­ber of a fifty per­son cau­cus, his word alone is enough to sink a bill, at least in the eyes of Belt­way polit­i­cal writ­ers who churn out who’s win­ning, who’s los­ing right now analy­sis on a dai­ly or week­ly basis.

Manchin is milk­ing this dynam­ic for all that it’s worth on a reg­u­lar basis, keep­ing him­self the cen­ter of atten­tion. In the showhorse vs. work­horse metaphor, Manchin is far and away the showhorse by a coun­try mile.

The guest essay he wrote for the Charleston Gazette-Mail did­n’t just gen­er­ate press for him; it gen­er­at­ed nation­al above the fold headlines.

That was by design.

Democ­rats should­n’t be hostage to Manch­in’s whims. They should­n’t need Manch­in’s vote to pass any­thing in the Sen­ate. He ought to sim­ply be the most con­ser­v­a­tive mem­ber of the cau­cus, rather than the linch­pin of the majority.

But unlike in 2013, when Har­ry Reid embraced fil­i­buster reform for nom­i­nees and mar­shaled the votes to get it done, Democ­rats don’t have a fifty-five mem­ber cau­cus. Instead, they have the barest of majori­ties, with Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris avail­able to break ties as need­ed. Chuck Schumer can’t spare Manch­in’s vote. Democ­rats need him on board to do any­thing for the time being.

The par­ty failed to beat vul­ner­a­ble Repub­li­can incum­bents like Susan Collins and Thom Thillis last year despite mak­ing a huge effort to knock Mitch McConnell out of pow­er. The cur­rent major­i­ty was only belat­ed­ly secured thanks to the incred­i­ble vic­to­ries of Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in Geor­gia on Jan­u­ary 5th.

Were it not for those Geor­gia vic­to­ries, Mitch McConnell would still be in con­trol of the Sen­ate and Joe Manch­in’s dreams of bipar­ti­san­ship would not be a hot top­ic right now. The road back to the major­i­ty has cer­tain­ly been a roller coast­er for Democ­rats. There has been both the agony of defeat and the ecsta­sy of victory.

In a way, Manch­in’s guest essay yes­ter­day is help­ful. It sends a clear mes­sage: I want to remind you that I’m unre­li­able, and I sim­ply can­not be count­ed upon to do what’s best for the coun­try, even in a very dark hour when I could be of tremen­dous help to mil­lions of Amer­i­cans by offer­ing coura­geous lead­er­ship.

Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Chuck Schumer ought to force Manchin to take a vote against the For The Peo­ple Act by bring­ing it up soon for the Sen­ate’s con­sid­er­a­tion. If Democ­rats can’t get the bill through the Sen­ate, they can at least make an issue out of it. As for pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tions seek­ing to hold Manchin account­able, the best course of action is to cre­ative­ly ensure that he and his staff have to hear from Amer­i­cans upset with his bad choic­es on a reg­u­lar basis.

Spend­ing mon­ey on ad cam­paigns in West Vir­ginia or cam­paign­ing against Manchin is not a good use of resources. As Manchin him­self observed a few weeks ago: “What are they going to do — they going to go into West Vir­ginia and cam­paign against me? Please, that would help me more than anything.”