We’re all Joe Manchin’s prisoners

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., is happy to drive you crazy. And he’s going to make sure that at least through 2022 and perhaps beyond, he’ll be the one to decide not only the substance of what legislation gets passed, but the procedures by which the Senate runs.

So what does he want?

It’s not always clear; Manchin can be cagey, sometimes almost self-contradictory. He has signaled that he might be open to some reform of the filibuster. But now Manchin has written an op-ed for The Washington Post declaring: “There is no circumstance in which I will vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster.”

Instead, Manchin says, “The time has come to end these political games, and to usher a new era of bipartisanship where we find common ground on the major policy debates facing our nation.”

Which is kind of like me saying, “The time has come to make me the starting point guard for the Washington Wizards, where I’ll average 35 points and 15 assists per game.” I might like that to happen, but there are some pretty good reasons it won’t.

I won’t go through all of Manchin’s rationales for defending the filibuster, except to say that some are so ridiculous it’s almost as though he’s just trying to make readers throw up their hands in exasperation.

Manchin claims, for instance, that the fact that Wyoming’s 600,000 residents get the same two senators as 40 million Californians “goes to the heart of what representative government is all about.” That’s quite a view of “representative government.”

Manchin also claims there’s “bipartisan support for voting reform,” meaning Democrats should seek GOP support for it. Really? While Republicans are furiously passing voter suppression laws in state after state?

There are a couple of ways to look at what Manchin says about the filibuster. One is that he can’t grasp what’s right in front of his face, and he’s so absurdly nostalgic for a long-gone era of comity and cooperation that he has blinded himself to the reality of modern partisan politics and the past 20 years of history.

That’s hard to believe. Manchin has shown himself to be nothing if not a canny politician.

Another possibility is that Manchin has a set of goals – for himself, for the Democratic Party and for the Senate – that he’s trying to achieve. The better we understand what he’s after, the easier it will be for Democrats to make progress while he still holds the power he does.

Remember that while Manchin has policy preferences, he isn’t an ideologue in the sense that, say, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is. Sanders has specific goals that he pursues relentlessly; Manchin’s ideology is “centrism,” which always defines itself in terms of what other people believe. When the goals of those other people change, so do the goals of the centrist.

But no matter what, Manchin wants to be seen constraining Democrats. Which is why, when they’re pursuing a strongly progressive piece of legislation, Manchin will try to pull it back toward the center – but because they started substantially to the left, he’ll wind up more to the left than he otherwise would have been.

In the case of the American Rescue Plan, Manchin could exercise his power as the 50th vote precisely because it was a reconciliation bill, and therefore not subject to a filibuster. That highlights the central reality of the next couple of years of legislating: Either Joe Manchin gets to decide what bills pass, or Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. does.

If the filibuster isn’t reformed, it’s all in the Senate minority leader’s hands. There will never be a bill on which 10 Republican senators will defy his wishes and vote for something Democrats want. And we know with 100% certainty what McConnell wants: Nothing. There will be no legislation of any consequence.

The terrifying thought is that might be fine with Manchin. It would mean he will continue to be the center of attention, as Democrats beg him to change his mind. But instead of asking him what he wants out of every bill, they’ll be stuck beseeching him to allow filibuster reform so that bills have any chance of passing at all.