Joe Manchin – Deep Left Field

Next Tuesday, if Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) defeats GOP challenger Herschel Walker (and every metric suggests he will), Democrats will have a 51-49 advantage in the U.S. Senate, a gain of one seat in the recent midterm elections.

And if Warnock wins, Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) will no longer be able to stand in the way of progress being made by their Democratic colleagues in the upper chamber of Congress.

Nick Reynolds of Newsweek explains:

Depending on the result of next week’s runoff election between Georgia Democrat Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker, Democrats stand to control 51 seats in the U.S. Senate as well as the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris, requiring both senators to break with their party to sink a piece of legislation.

Bottom line: Manchin and Sinema are about to lose what power they have.

“I don’t expect Manchin or Sinema to have much influence to be quite honest,” Joshua Huder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute, told Newsweek.

[…]

“To the degree that they do have influence, it’ll be much more in the vein of the infrastructure bill-type influence,” Huder said in reference to concessions they received for fossil fuel permitting and corporate tax carveouts in a recent infrastructure package.

“They’re not going to be able to kill Democratic initiatives like they did,” he added. “They’re not going to be able to threaten not to go along with the filibuster.

“They’re not going to be able to do any of the stuff that really gave them a lot of veto power. They can be a positive influence in the sense that they can negotiate with Republicans, but that’s really the limit of what they can do.”

Gregory Magarian, a professor at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, concurs, noting:

“Republicans will need to pass legislation that Democrats will accept, while what we’ve seen Manchin and Sinema do over the last couple of years is pull the legislation sufficiently far to the right to be acceptable to those pivotal House Republicans.

“So at that point, if we’re thinking about this in fairly linear ideological terms, there really shouldn’t be anything left for Manchin and Sinema to do.”

Good! All they’ve done is obstruct, so it’s time they became powerless and irrelevant.

As he continues to obstruct major portions of President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is now lying about the history of the Senate filibuster in a desperate attempt to make it appear that he’s on the side of the angels.

According to Chad Pergram of Fox News, Manchin had this to say Monday when asked about whether or not he would support changes in the filibuster rule so that voting rights legislation could be passed:

“The tradition of the Senate here in 232 years now..we need to be very cautious what we do..That’s what we’ve always had for 232 years. That’s what makes us different than any place else in the world.”

Manchin on the filibuster. Says it's been "The tradition of the Senate here in 232 years now..we need to be very cautious what we do..That's what we've always had for 232 years. That's what makes us different than any place else in the world.
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) January 10, 2022

But that’s simply not true, according to attorney Max Kennerly:

“232 years ago, in 1790, a simple majority could end any debate. The current form of filibuster that Manchin is protecting—in which votes can’t happen until 60 Senators agree—didn’t exist until 1975. Hundreds of exceptions have been made to it, including one last month.”

232 years ago, in 1790, a simple majority could end any debate.

The current form of filibuster that Manchin is protecting—in which votes can't happen until 60 Senators agree—didn't exist until 1975. Hundreds of exceptions have been made to it, including one last month.

1/9 https://t.co/rhCf3n5mg6
— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) January 11, 2022

Kennerly then added this painful reminder about the filibuster:

The few successful filibusters had a theme: anti-lynching legislation in 1922, 1935, and 1938. Anti-poll-tax legislation in 1942, 1944, 1946, 1948, and 1962. Civil rights legislation in 1946, 1950, 1957, 1960, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1968, 1972, and 1975. Some tradition, huh?
6/9 pic.twitter.com/7bdW5QBMR4
— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) January 11, 2022

Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine also weighed in, noting:

“The Founders considered, and rejected, a routine supermajority requirement.
“The filibuster is actually not in the Constitution.”

And Mehdi Hasan of MSNBC branded Manchin’s comments a “Trumpian lie.”

Straight-up, deliberate, Trumpian lie here from Manchin. He knows this is false, has been told multiple times it is false, but says it anyways. https://t.co/M5MvD2L5bI
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) January 11, 2022

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich also called Manchin out on Twitter:

Anybody notice that the filibuster rule was changed to allow the debt ceiling to be raised with just 51 votes? So why can't the filibuster rule be changed to allow the passage of voting rights by just 51 votes? Manchin — Holdout-in-Chief — are you listening?
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) January 10, 2022

Joe Manchin needs to be forced to explain why he wants to allow Republicans to keep people of color from voting. And he also needs to be called out for his endless lies.