With America’s Democrat Party pursuing an ever-more-socialist agenda, you might think the only hope of stopping them is the currently outnumbered GOP or the Supreme Court. But one of their own, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, has stepped in, thus far blocking the so-called voting rights bill and the Democrat attempt to do away with the filibuster.
Manchin is a member of an endangered species — the centrist Democrat. With a 50-50 split in the Senate currently, Manchin’s vote — along with fellow centrist Democrat Krysten Sinema of Arizona — on key issues for the Democrats is crucial but, thus far at least, Manchin is denying Democrats his support on court packing, ending the filibuster, and the current attempt to federalize elections: S. 1 (H.R. 1 in the House), the so-called For the People Act.
In an op-ed published Sunday, Manchin laid out his reasons for not supporting S. 1, citing a complete lack of any bipartisan support for the legislation.
“Unfortunately, we are now witnessing that the fundamental right to vote has itself become overtly politicized. Today’s debate about how to best protect our right to vote and to hold elections, however, is not about finding common ground, but seeking partisan advantage. Whether it is state laws that seek to needlessly restrict voting or politicians who ignore the need to secure our elections, partisan politics won’t instill confidence in our democracy — it will destroy it.”
Talking about the For The People Act on Fox News Sunday, Manchin quipped, “It’s the wrong piece of legislation to bring our country together and unite our country.”
For his defiance of his fellow Democrats, Manchin has been ruthlessly attacked by media personalities over the past three days. Disgraced former ESPN personality Jemele Hill called Manchin a “cowardly, power hungry white dude” and a “clown.” Clara Jeffery, editor of the far-left Mother Jones magazine, tweeted that Manchin was a “democracy killer,” and Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks called Manchin “worse than a Republican.”
But it wasn’t just the media calling for Manchin’s throat. Fellow congressional Democrats also launched verbal attacks at the West Virginia senator. Representative Cori Bush (D-Missouri) tweeted: “Manchin & Co. be like ‘defund the police cost us elections’ while actively sabotaging our Dem agenda. Our movement was at the heart of the organizing that won us the 2020 elections. Now conservative Dems block our progress. Join us in saving lives or get out of our way.”
Democrat thought-leader Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was unmoved by Manchin’s call for bipartisanship. “H.R. 1 stands up against lobbyists and dark money. I would reckon to think that this is probably just as much a part of Joe Manchin’s calculus as anything else. Because when it comes to this bipartisan argument — I don’t buy it,” the congresswoman said on MSNBC.
Ocasio-Cortez seemed to indicate that Manchin may be listening to right-wing political operatives rather than his own conscience. “Cause you look at the Koch Brothers and organizations like, you know, the Heritage Foundation and conservative lobby groups that are doing a victory lap, claiming victory over the fact that Manchin refuses on the filibuster,” AOC said. “And I think that these two things are very closely intertwined.”
If so, those conservative hobgoblins got to Manchin early. Just a week after the election in November of 2020, Manchin was already signaling that he wouldn’t support either court-packing or ending the filibuster or other “crazy stuff” that Democrats were planning on doing.
On November 9 of last year, Manchin told Fox News’ Bret Baier: “I commit to tonight and I commit to all of your viewers and everyone else who is watching, I want to allay those fears, I want to rest those fears for you right now because when they talk about, whether it be packing the courts or ending the filibuster, I will not vote to do that.”
This was on November 9, well before the Georgia senate races gave Democrats an even split in the Senate — a de facto majority since Vice President Kamala Harris is the tie-breaking vote. Democrats want to act as if Manchin somehow blindsided them in their efforts to radically change voting in the United States, but the Senator has been quite clear for a long time on how he would vote on certain issues.
As a senator of a state that went for Republican Donald Trump by a nearly 70-30 margin last November, Manchin may want to reassess which party he wants to caucus with going forward. Democrats hate him right now. The GOP might welcome him with open arms.
