NEW: I profiled Joe Manchin. I cover his 4-decade career, and his improbable rise to become Democrats’ key 50th senator.
I interviewed him about the filibuster, HR1, the minimum wage, whether he’d ever switch parties, and more. Some highlights: vox.com/22339531/manch…
On Manchin's op-ed saying there's no circumstance under which he'll eliminate the filibuster:
“The op-ed was as clear as it could be... If you want to argue about it for two years, then you’re going to waste a lot of your energy and your time.”
Manchin on HR1/S1: “How in the world could you, with the tension we have right now, allow a voting bill to restructure the voting of America on a partisan line?”
He insists it will just feed more distrust in the system and "anarchy" like Jan 6 — "I'm not going to be part of it"
Historically, Manchin has spent decades defining himself in contrast to his party's left flank. He was part of the conservative wing of WV Democrats and often clashed with unions in the '80s and '90s, leading to his defeat in a tense 1996 governor primary.
In the years following his '96 defeat, Manchin won over many of his critics in the party, making clear to unions that they could live with him as governor.
He won that job in '04, but by the time he won, he knew the state was slipping away from Dems
The backdrop for the piece is the erosion and then collapse of the Democratic Party in West Virginia. Dems had controlled the legislature for eight decades, and both Senate seats since 1959, before the 2014 midterms. But cracks were evident beforehand. Manchin saw all this happen
Yet as governor Manchin found a path to overwhelming popularity, mixing canny political branding, image management, legislative dealmaking, and old-fashioned retail politics.
His legislative style: bring every interest to the table and come up with a deal everyone can live with
In the Senate, Manchin has the most conservative voting record of any Democrat. Yet his vote has had a tendency to materialize when Democrats really need it — such as in saving Obamacare, or passing Biden's stimulus. vox.com/22339531/manch…
Progressives hope Manchin's opposition to rules reform will be negotiable too.
But to me he insisted that he truly believes that ending the filibuster would "lose the purpose of this democracy," by ensuring "violent swings" from one party's control over the law to the other
The argument that Republicans will let "nothing" pass isn't convincing to Manchin — in part because it's a bit out of date.
As political scientist Frances Lee told me, Congress has gotten a surprising amount done in the last few years. vox.com/22339531/manch…
Manchin has been involved in many bipartisan deals, on issues like rescuing miners' pensions, energy policy, and of course last December's Covid relief package.
But these came while Republicans were trying to keep control of the Senate. Unclear whether they'll continue
Manchin is concerned about extremism from the GOP base ("if you saw my emails on a daily basis, it's unreal," he told me). But he argues the solution is for Democrats to moderate, to try to turn down the temperature. He hopes that, by rejecting filibuster reform, that can happen
I asked Manchin if he'd ever switch parties, and he said, "I know I can change more from where I’m at." And he defined what he said were the principles of the Democratic Party he grew up with.
Separately, @mattyglesias has written a critique of the bill today.
When I asked about redistricting I was told that the politics of it are extremely fraught among House Ds and considering their small majority, a broader overhaul is just too difficult
I promise you, if the Senate can line up 71 votes, they can overcome today's filibusters! This was not a feature somehow unique to the "talking" system.
The supermajority threshold to advance legislation is what matters. Not the spectacle.
What "talking filibuster" proponents are really hoping for is that, by making the filibuster more "painful" to use, they will turn back the clock to when it was much more rarely used.
I think this is a total misunderstanding of current partisan dynamics.
Dunno exactly how it would be structured but Manchin doesn't seem to be inclined toward the "Trojan horse to let Dems slip stuff through with a majority" version of the talking filibuster.
He seems to be saying "make 'em talk but Ds still need 60."
The GA election call most people think of is the Raffensperger call which broke (with accurate audio) 1/3. Capitol-storming was 1/6. The incorrectly-quoted (deservingly corrected) story was on 1/9 about a separate GA call. Didn't really shape narrative
The report on the Trump/Raffensperger call, with audio, was a bombshell and shaped the narrative. It was totally accurate.
The (now-corrected) 1/9 report on Trump's call with another GA official was more of a follow-up. Oh, he did a similar thing in this other call too.
Trump was indeed doing a similar thing in this separate call, but the exact quotes the Post's source (a state official) attributed to Trump were wrong.
Substantively, "find the fraud" vs. find "dishonesty" in Fulton seems immaterial. "National hero" seems more off.
1) Dem opposition to reform may be broader than Manchin and Sinema. But many you'd expect to be skeptics are on board or open. And if you win over Manchin and Sinema, you've probably won over everybody else
"Talking filibuster" rules change intuitively feels right to a lot of people, but I doubt it would practically play out in the way its adherents hope
The devil's in the details, I guess, but if doing "shifts" are allowed it would be easy for the 50 Rs to trade off shifts on a talking filibuster. And they'd get laudatory coverage on Fox and conservative media outlets for doing so.
"Require 40 votes to block a bill, not 60 to advance a bill" is similarly unimpressive. There are 50 Republicans! They will manage to do that easily.