He’s gotten rich off of obstructing

I was out this afternoon to duplicate my Christmas letter and pick up my Christmas photo cards. Both are different than previous years. For thirty years I’ve been making cards out of my best photo taken in the year. Not this year. I didn’t take many photos and none are appropriate for a card. So my card this year is of a photo from two years ago. As for the letter it is definitely not a full page. Afterward I treated myself to a visit to a good bookstore. There is still a great deal of reaction to Sen. Joe Manchin’s announcement he would vote no for all the great social and climate programs in the Build Back Better bill. Kim Kelly, who writes about American labor, tweeted an announcement from the United Mine Workers urging Manchin to reconsider his stance. Kelly added:

Manchin has lost the coal miners with this latest betrayal. As the UMWA notes here, BBB would’ve extended the fees coal companies now pay to fund benefits for black lung victims. Without it, that necessary burden shifts to the taxpayers. Once a coal boss, always a coal boss. This might not seem like the most strident statement, but given Manchin’s close relationship with the union, it’s a big step.

Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, tweeted:

So let me get this straight: 68 percent of West Virginia voters support BBB, but Joe Manchin decided to torpedo it?

Reich then included poll results to support his statement. Contrast Reich’s poll and the statement by the United Mine Workers with a conversation between NPR host Scott Detrow with Ken Ward who is a reporter for ProPublica and the founder of the Mountain State Spotlight newsroom in Charleston, WV. Ward was asked if he was surprised by Manchin’s declaration of no.

No, not really. I don't think a lot of people who've really followed Senator Manchin closely were. And the politics here, really, aren't that complicated for him. West Virginia is a deep red state, a Republican machine that's turned a reliably Democratic state into a GOP column. It's kind of lying in wait for Senator Manchin. And they're looking for anything. They're on the alert for anything that they can point to to frame him as being in league with the Democrats, you know? They call this a socialist spending spree and reckless. So it's really not that surprising that Senator Manchin made this decision.

It is amusing and annoying that Republicans are accusing a Democrat of being in league with Democrats. But that isn’t the only thing going on. Likely weighing the decision more is who Manchin’s donors are, where Manchin’s money comes from, and how much attention Manchin’s ego needs. To that last point, Georgia Logothetis, in a pundit roundup for Daily Kos, quoted Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post:

I doubt Manchin will switch parties and become a Republican, since he would instantly revert to being a bit player with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) running the show as majority leader. Manchin could conceivably become an independent and continue to caucus with the Democrats, but that wouldn’t materially change the situation.

Jeff Brady of NPR discussed the plans in the BBB bill for slowing down climate change, now likely dead because of Manchin. Laura Clawson of Kos reported:

Even as he postures about the cost of the bill in public—an issue that didn’t seem to bother him when voting for a one-year, $768 billion defense spending bill—Manchin “has told several of his fellow Democrats that he thought parents would waste monthly child tax credit payments on drugs instead of providing for their children, according to two sources familiar with the senator’s comments,” Tara Golshan and Arthur Delaney report.

Yeah, saying people will misuse the money given to them by the government so we should not give them any is a very supremacist statement. And, yeah, we knew that about Manchin a long time ago. In response to a story that Manchin declared his no vote because he felt slighted by Biden, Leah McElrath tweeted:

That’s what he says, but it’s just as likely he was looking for an excuse. I see no reason to extend him even enough good faith to believe he was having a tantrum. He exists to obstruct. He’s paid to obstruct. He’s gotten rich off of obstructing. To understand people like Manchin, listen to what they say they imagine other people will do. Manchin constantly asserts that others will cheat the system and act in bad faith. That’s projection. Occam’s Razor is that he’s just a deceitful mofo.

Joan McCarter of Kos summed up a post quite well in the title: “Democrats don’t have to play nice with Manchin anymore.” McCarter listed several examples of Democrats having a few things to say about him. She added:

That’s the frustration of being blindsided by Manchin showing. Manchin has consistently used media appearances to move the goalposts on Build Back Better, in his long game of delaying the bill until he could whittle it away to nothing.

Robinson of WaPo tweeted:

Be mad at Manchin, who didn't bargain "in good faith" as he claimed. Acknowledge that progressives were right about what would happen if infrastructure passed first. But save hottest ire for 50 GOP senators who'd rather deny Biden a win than help families and save the planet.

Robinson has a point. But Manchin could have been the last vote needed for passage. We knew the GOP senators would vote no. We could deal with that. It’s Manchin stringing us along for a year that is annoying. As for that bit about the infrastructure bill, for a long time the infrastructure bill and BBB bill were linked – we won’t pass the first until the second is also passed. When the link was severed a couple months ago quite a few people recognized what Manchin was now free to do. I was one of them and wrote to Biden and Congressional leadership to tell them to keep that link. Xay tweeted a photo of artist Jonathan Harris standing beside his painting “Critical Race Theory” which captures quite well what Republicans are doing.