Manchin shocks Republicans by revealing he’s a Democrat
The news hit like a thunderclap last week.
Joe Manchin is … a Democrat?
Sen. Tom Cotton, RArk., turned with fury on the centrist senator from West Virginia. “It was obviously a double-cross by Joe Manchin,” he declared on Fox News. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., alleged “bad faith.” Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the Ways and Means committee, perceived “deceit.”
What terrible thing had Manchin done to deserve such howls of betrayal from Republicans? Well, it seems Manchin, the Republicans’ formerly favorite Democrat, had dared to act like a Democrat.
Manchin agreed with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on legislation lowering prescription drug prices and providing renewable-energy incentives, paid for by cracking down on large, tax-dodging corporations. After two years of Manchin’s resistance to such a deal, Republicans had come to believe he would never agree (though he never said as much). So when he did, they lashed out with self-destructive rage.
Forty-one Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would help veterans who had been exposed to toxic burn pits - even though 25 of the 41 had previously supported a nearly identical bill. In the House, GOP leaders fought to defeat a bipartisan agreement helping U.S. semiconductor chip makers compete against China, getting all but 24 House Republicans to vote against the bill. Now, Senate Republicans are saying that because of pique over Manchin’s actions, a bipartisan effort to codify marriage equality might be doomed.
Democrats, by contrast, showed rare unity, with the party’s woke wing heaping praise on the Manchin-negotiated energy and prescription drug bill. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., head of the Progressive Caucus, called it a “very, very major step forward.”
The episode is a key reminder that the supposed “polarization” in American politics is not symmetrical. Democrats, after a long struggle, are finally making a bid to hold the political center. They’ve reached near-universal agreement on a bill that pays down debt, makes medicine cheaper, eliminates unfair tax breaks for the biggest corporations and the richest one-tenth of 1% and implements an allof-the-above energy policy that streamlines drilling permits while accelerating the switch to clean energy. And Republicans responded by voting against veterans and U.S. manufacturing.
Manchin, no partisan, scolded Republicans for “basically holding the veterans hostage because they’re mad.” He added, “My Republicans friends . . . get wrapped up in thinking, ‘Well, we’ve got to be against something because it might make the other side look good.’ “
The senator from West Virginia has been a huge irritant to his fellow Democrats (he says he’s been “ostracized” and “victimized”), but he is at core an old-school populist.
Selling his agreement to his constituents in Trump country during an interview on Thursday with West Virginia’s MetroNews, Manchin struck a populist note worthy of Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., or Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Manchin called it “ridiculous” to say the bill is a tax hike. “There were some very, very large corporations that could basically take advantage of the tax code and pay nothing. I didn’t think that was fair, and I think most Americans don’t think that’s fair,” Manchin said. “They are paying for the ability to be in this country, with the defense we have, the protections we have and the opportunities. And they don’t want to participate? I want them to come forward. Tell me who you are.”
Asked to respond to the claim by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., that the Manchin bill amounts to “giant tax hikes” that will “kill many thousands of American jobs,” Manchin replied, “That’s just a shame.” Manchin said he worked with Republicans in the past on similar energy bills, “and now you’ve got a chance to get it and you’re going to boo-hoo it?” The longtime broker of bipartisan deals said of Republicans: “This is a bill we would have worked on in a bipartisan effort if we could’ve, but they can’t.”
Or, more accurately, they won’t. Manchin, no doubt, has given his fellow Democrats fits for two years. But in one sense, he is very much one of them: He still wants to get things done. In the current American political system, only one side is even trying.