OK hotshot, it’s time to either put up or shut up! Joe Manchin has spent the last year stoutly refusing to reform or blow up the filibuster, because he swears on a stack of bibles that is forces better legislation to be written in order to get bipartisan support. Manchin is of course so full of shit that he can fertilize Kansas, but I am not going to relitigate my complaints here.

But things are different this time, and not in a way that is favorable to Manchin. Up until now, Manchin has used his filibuster fetish to knock holes in everybody else’s legislation. But in this round, Manchin actually has some serious skin in the game. In fact, Manchin is the game.

From day one, Manchin opposed the For the People Act for being too broad and overreaching. He wouldn’t even vote to support the bill, much less vote for filibuster reform to pass it. But as more and more HOP states kept enacting more and more restrictive state voting laws, Manchin found himself coming under more and more pressure. And so he undertook to negotiate a better, more slimmed down, targeted voting rights bill that could attract 10 GOP votes to break the filibuster.

Manchin blew a mental gasket at the cost of Biden’s original infrastructure bill that the Democrats wanted to pass through reconciliation. Instead, he undertook to pass a smaller, more scaled down hard infrastructure bill that he was sure would attract 10 GOP votes. In return, he would consider a larger, Democrats only soft infrastructure bill that they could pass through reconciliation. Schumer gave Manchin his head, and he got 69 votes to pass his bipartisan infrastructure bill.

Now Manchin wants to do the same thing with voting rights. And he’s negotiated a pared down voting rights bill to put it to the test, and it has the support from all 50 Democratic Senators. But there’s just one simple problem.

It’s actually kind of easy to negotiate with people to do something that they already fucking want to do! GOP Senators already knew that Biden’s infrastructure plan was wildly popular. Therefore, their job became to negotiate a bill that would maximize the glory that they all brought back home, while minimizing the benefits the Democrats would get. Which is exactly what they did.

But this is different, and the rubber is about to meet the road. Manchin negotiated a voting rights bill so narrow and focused that he was sure that he would have no problem in getting GOP buy in to support it. And before the ink was even dry on the bill, Moscow Mitch came out and announced that not a single GOP Senator would vote to support the bill.

Joe, dude. You’re a fucking drunk! Your wife is not going to stop cheating on you! Your business partner is robbing you blind! Wake up and smell the coffee, man. You’ve been played. This is your baby, your best bill to show the path to bipartisanship, and the GOP is shitting all over it. Kentucky Lucy has once again pulled the goddamned football away at the last second!

Senate Majority Leader Schumer has been more than patient with you. He let you go your way not only once, but twice. It is time to wake up, smell the coffee, and see the filibuster for what it truly is. A Jim Crow leftover, which has never fostered bipartisan legislation, instead only blocking the majority. Pick your poison. Do a carve out for civil rights legislation, go to a talking filibuster that brings the bill to the floor once the talking stops. Whatever. But if you keep this up, you’re doing nothing more than make yourself look like a fucking idiot. Grow a pair!

Follow me on Twitter at @RealMurfster35

Help keep the site running, consider supporting.

5 COMMENTS

  1. Manchin doesn’t seem to have figured out that if WV wanted two R senators, they’d have voted for two R senators. He also doesn’t seem to have figured out that Biden’s ideas are *very* popular, even in WV.

    • Well, Manchin’s been losing support since his initial Senate win.

      He won the 2010 special election with 53.5% of the vote (283,000 votes out of just under 530,000 cast). Robert Byrd (who Manchin replaced) won re-election in 2006 with 64.4% of the vote (296,000 out of nearly 460,000 cast).

      He did win the regular 2012 election with a significant percentage increase, winning 60.7% of the vote (400,000 out of 660,000 cast) even as Mitt Romney won the state’s presidential vote with a GREATER percentage of the vote, 62.3% (417,000 out of 670,000 votes cast).

      But, 2018? Manchin barely survived by the skin of his teeth. Manchin won with a mere 49.57% of the vote (290,000 votes out of 586,000 cast); his GOP opposition got more than 271,000 votes for 46.26% of the vote. NO previous successful Senate candidate from West Virginia had won re-election with less than 50% of the vote (the last time a Senate candidate with less than 51% was back in 1978 when Jennings Randolph won re-election with 50.5% of the vote).

      His Senate cohort, Shelley Moore Capito, won re-election last year with more than 70% of the vote (she won her first election in 2014 with “just” 62%; it’s worth noting too that in 2020, she alone received more votes in the election than had been cast IN TOTAL in 2014).

  2. I was recently in Welch. W.Virginia. it’s a beautiful town of 3k+ that looks as if there was a time the town thrived. Like many towns, Welsh sits in a very narrow valley with flowing rivers. Driving around town on a beautiful day, I did not see a single person downtown amongst old, crumbling, stylish buildings. It was a ghost town on Saturday morning. I live in carrboro, n.c. It is about 20k & it hums. I was shocked. There were, what once were large nice homes crawling up both sides of the valley. This is a very poor state, near the top for opioid addiction & poverty. How they tolerate this assclown, especially considering how rich the oil, coal, & gas industry has made him & his children, is beyond me. Guess I will throw that into the mystery pile.

    • Unfortunately, it lines up with the GQP supporters here in Texas. I think most of the common folk have been conditioned for years to believe the republican view of things and that they are the right ones. It has just gradually and surely gone in the direction of fascism and oligarchy. The voters don’t seem to realize it, because the pols spout the garbage they want to hear.

  3. Bu first, if old Joe caves, he will have to give a reguld to hos fossil fuel owners. Think he will do that or just wait to retire with his ill gotten millions?

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

The maximum upload file size: 128 MB. You can upload: image, audio, video, document, spreadsheet, interactive, text, archive, code, other. Links to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other services inserted in the comment text will be automatically embedded. Drop files here