Yeah, I don’t really blame Schumer, it just seems like he ought to know better by now.
Charlie will never kick that football if he doesn’t try.
As one of Manchin’s pissed off constituents, I am happy to work to see Val Demings, John Fetterman, and Tim Ryan get to the Senate and make Manchin and Sinema irrelevant. It also raises the issue of the Senate, the filibuster, and our constitution. How many voters (that is the number who did vote, not those registered) does Manchin really represent? I, for one, voted for third party candidates (WV Mountain Party) rather than for a D or R when he ran for state-wide and federal office.
I know too much about him (for instance, I doubt that he ever graduated from college, although a source close to him said he did graduate from Fairmont State College. His family’s business, a carpet store, burnt down in the 1970s, cause unknown. He should never have reached this position.
The WV Democratic Party as led by his minions have totally lost control of state government. Most of these minions, except for those who bolted the party to become Republicans, lost control to progressives this summer. Yes, there is a long progressive history in the Mountain State, which makes Manchin’s stupid lies and betrayals more infuriating.
If you are in a state with an open Senate seat, please help put Manchin out of his misery, and elect actual Democrats.
I’ll do my best.
WVU, bachelor’s in business admin, according to the official bio. Afterwards went to work in the coal-brokering business and got into state politics where an uncle had already been a long-time figure.
Manchin is not a benefit to the Democrats if he bargains with them in good faith. Without that, decidedly less so.
Absolutely. Just think about all the stuff the Republicans haven’t been doing because they don’t have a majority. I don’t like Manchin, but he’s as good as you’re going to get out of West Virginia.
The real problem is having a narrow majority, the Republicans had the exact same problem when they had a same narrow majority, remember when John McCain tanked their stupid “Repeal and Replace” health care plan?
Dear JR
When he was in the West Virginia Senate, the WV Legislative Manual bio listed that he “attended West Virginia University and Fairmont State”, when his peers would list “graduated”. He left Farmington High to go to WVU as a QB, but hurt his knee as a freshman. If he graduated from FSC, it was sometime during his political career. If you recall, his daughter Heather Bresch had her WVU MBA questioned as well. She was in a one year MBA program and received her degree while one of her grade school/high school classmates was WVU’s president (briefly). His uncle A. James Manchin was a well known WV politician but had his own baggage.
He lost an uncle in the 1968 Farmington Consol #9 disaster which killed 78. He has been a coal-industry related person forever.
Robert Reich wrote an editorial the other day saying that the Democrats should just kick Manchin out of the caucus. The obvious huge downside is that if he caucused with the Reps, McConnell would be back in as Leader and none of Biden’s appointments would be confirmed until at least the next election. That’s a really fucking huge downside.
The argument he made, though, is that this would help us in the midterms. Lots of younger, progressive, low information semi-engaged voters are thinking “The Democrats told us they would do all these great things, but they’ve done nothing about climate change, or protecting abortion, or (the list goes on). Screw the Democrats!”. If you’re not following too closely, you just see that “the Democrats” control the White House and both houses of Congress and aren’t getting shit done; you don’t realize that the problem is not so much with “the Democrats” as with one particular Democrat. With Manchin gone, the battle lines become much clearer and we no longer sound like idiots saying “Give us a Senate majority and we’ll pass our agenda!”
I’m still not really convinced this is a GOOD idea, but he made a better case for it than I had expected.
Emphasis added.
Absolutely gigantic. If Clarence Thomas drops dead from a pulmonary embolism tomorrow, Biden can use Manchin to push through a reasonable replacement. Manchin voted for Kentanji-Jackson. No Manchin, that becomes a much worse potential fight. Maybe Biden gets blocked right down to 2024.
Young progressives as a reliable voting block are Fool’s Gold. Always have been, always will be. I do very much want to motivate them. But there is absolutely zero certainty that kicking Manchin to the curb, while it might generate cheers, will actually translate into a large turnout on election day. Trading the ability to push through judge confirmations, probably these days the most important long-term administrative impact a President + a Senate majority can have, for a potential electoral bump is too risky for my blood.
^ 100% agreement.
“Nyaa nyaa nyaa Joe Manchin” is NOT going to bring millions, or even thousands, to the polls. The lower-information voters who know enough to know who Manchin is will simply assume ‘okay, the Democrats have now solved their problem, and we can expect to see some great legislation passed’ (which of course is the opposite of what would actually happen).
Reich’s heart is certainly in the right place, in my view–but, again in my view, he’s got a streak of vindictiveness that clouds his reason at times. (Look at his views on Billionaires, for example–it’s not just that he wants them to pay their fair share in taxes, it’s that he wants them to suffer.)
Oh my God! Won’t anyone leave these poor Billionaires alone??
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W Va., announced Wednesday that he has reached an agreement with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a fellow Democrat, to support the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
The bill, which would have support from Democratic senators alone and will therefore be passed via reconciliation, includes measures such as tax increases for corporations, funding for climate, energy and Medicare.
“Rather than risking more inflation with trillions in new spending, this bill will cut the inflation taxes Americans are paying, lower the cost of health insurance and prescription drugs, and ensure our country invests in the energy security and climate change solutions we need to remain a global superpower through innovation rather than elimination,” Manchin said in a statement.
I predict in 11 days or less, Joe comes out against it.
I was listening to a podcast a day or two ago and the political pundit they had on agreed that Manchin is terrible but opined he is probably the best we can expect from West Virginia. Get rid of him and the replacement will almost certainly be worse.
You don’t think Lucy will hold the football?
This one sounds different to me, though.
Manchin gets up my fuckin nose, no doubt. But he’s no Lucy holding a football: he’s never agreed to play ball before now. At best he’s gone into negotiations.
As I understand it, now he’s announced publicly and jointly with Schumer that they’re in agreement on a bill with specific text.
He might back out, because this timeline is just the worst and it’s hard to believe that anything good, however milquetoast, will come out of it. But I don’t think he will.
Instead, I expect that he’s negotiated for some real bad shit, e.g., the extra drilling permits that the administration plans to announce, to make up for the good stuff.
Yeah, he’s been weasely but I don’t think he ever publicly signed on to a specific agreement and then backed out of it.
I also don’t think he wants the Dems to lose their majority, and the drug pricing and obamacare subsidies are pretty significant in that effort. The drug pricing is the rare policy that is both extremely popular and will have an effect in a short enough term that it should be noticeable for some voters by November. And if the Dems let the ACA subsidies expire immediately before an election they are just asking for trouble.
I’ll definitely heave a sigh if the ACA subsidies renew. That’s both good politics and good for working families.
I always thought it was a pretty dim possibility that the Dems would screw up that bad - if literally nothing else could be agreed to, the Dems would probably have given up on any type of omnibus legislation and just passed an extension to the subsidies if they were up against it.
Obviously it’s much better that (unless there’s some other hangup) they’re getting what appears to be fairly significant other policies in there.
I’m curious if corporate taxes are the best kind of tax to fight inflation in this type of economy - is there a risk that the corporations pass the taxes to consumers and inflation goes up more? Unfortunately with Manchin and I think even moreso Sinema’s weird hangups with income tax that we weren’t able to raise those. At least SALT is out of it.