Joe Manchin is sounding more and more sensible by the day. Asked this afternoon whether he was interested in going back on his word and signing on to the Democrats’ gargantuan reconciliation bill after all, Manchin signaled that he was not. Per The Hill:
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) told reporters Tuesday that he isn’t involved in any serious talks at this time about reviving President Biden’s sweeping climate and social spending bill, underscoring the lack of progress on the president’s signature domestic policy plan.
“I’m really not going to talk about Build Back Better anymore because I think I’ve been very clear on that. There is no negotiations going on at this time,” Manchin said, doubling down on comments he made to “Fox News Sunday” last month announcing that he would not vote to proceed to the legislation.
Nor, it seems, is Manchin interested in pretending that the Democrats have 1937-style majorities:
Manchin said he’s more interested in working on legislation that has bipartisan support and again expressed concern about pushing legislation that further divides Democrats and Republicans.
“There’s an awful lot of things, a lot of things that were very, I think, well intended. And there was a lot of things that was a pretty far reach,” he explained. “Our country is divided and I don’t intend to do anything that divides our country anymore.”
Instead, Manchin said he wants “whatever I can do to unite and bring people together.”
Manchin also sounded skeptical toward using the nuclear option to abolish the filibuster — even on the supposedly “limited” basis that Chuck Schumer is trying to sell:
Manchin has long opposed using the nuclear option and added on Tuesday that if Democratic senators “go it alone” to change the rules, “it ends up coming back at you pretty hard.”
As Manchin pointed out, there is no way of using the nuclear option that wouldn’t essentially end the 60-vote threshold:
“Anytime there’s a carveout, you eat the whole turkey. There’s nothing left,” Manchin said.
Manchin does seem genuinely to believe in the utility of the filibuster. (As he should.) But, even if he didn’t, his position would be a sensible one. Pretty much every elections analyst in the world agrees that the Republican party is going to take control of at least one federal legislative chamber in the 2022. midterms. In purely practical terms, it would make absolutely no sense for the Democratic party to hand itself a legislative tool that will be useless as of next January, and, depending on how the next presidential election goes, that could plausibly be used against it as early as 2025.
In his letter to his party, Senator Schumer argued that:
We must adapt. The Senate must evolve, like it has many times before. The Senate was designed to evolve and has evolved many times in our history. As former Senator Robert Byrd famously said, Senate Rules “must be changed to reflect changed circumstances.” Put more plainly by Senator Byrd, “Congress is not obliged to be bound by the dead hand of the past.”
But as Senator Manchin (and Senator Sinema, and probably some others) understand, the only thing that has “changed” in the last year is that the Democrats have obtained a tiny, temporary majority. Soon, they will not have that majority. And then what?
Schumer writes that:
We must ask ourselves: if the right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, then how can we in good conscience allow for a situation in which the Republican Party can debate and pass voter suppression laws at the State level with only a simple majority vote, but not allow the United States Senate to do the same?
And yet, for some reason, he seems unable to grasp that this also serves as a killer argument against his position. In Schumer’s mind, the Republican party is “wholly uninterested in taking any meaningful steps to stem the rising tide of antidemocratic sentiment.” If, as Schumer believes, is the case, “the Republican Party” is willing to “debate and pass voter suppression laws at the State level with only a simple majority vote,” then surely, having been freed up to do so, it would also be willing to debate and pass voter suppression laws in the Senate?
(Because he is sloppy and ill-disciplined, Schumer’s letter inadvertently implies that this is what the Democrats hope to do. Read it closely: “. . . how can we in good conscience allow for a situation in which the Republican Party can debate and pass voter suppression laws at the State level with only a simple majority vote, but not allow the United States Senate to do the same?”)
It is somewhat alarming to acknowledge that only two of the 50 Democrats in the Senate seem capable of thinking beyond the immediate term, but, alas, that is where we are. A year is a long time in politics, and nothing is certain, but if Joe Manchin can keep holding on against this vandalism in the face of what must be withering personal pressure, he will have done the republic a great service indeed.