Yes, the Joe Manchin Situation IS That Bad

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV)

Democrats pulled off an expected victory in November, and an unexpected one in January, to gain control of the United States Congress and the White House.  The victories, though, neither of them were as big as was expected.  It was clear that while Joe Biden dominated the popular vote, to the point where it was not remotely close (the United States as a whole very clearly wanted Biden to be the next president), the electoral college nearly gave Donald Trump a victory thanks to close elections in Wisconsin, Georgia, & Arizona.  Nancy Pelosi, in part thanks to gerrymandering (and in part thanks to Biden voters in California, Florida, & Texas deciding to split their ballots), nearly lost the House, even though she got a healthy majority of the collective popular vote.  And in the Senate, Democrats only won due to Donald Trump's insistence on taking on Biden long past the date where it was obvious he had any chance of winning (rhetoric which would eventually lead to a terrorist attack on the US Capitol), taking two seats in Georgia due to depressed turnout.

This is all to say that the Democrats have full control, but with the slimmest of majorities, something we were reminded of this past weekend when Sen. Joe Manchin announced he would not back the For the People Act, largely eliminating any chance of voting or gerrymandering reform.  Manchin insisted that the bill be bipartisan, using this as an excuse to stop voting reforms that are making it increasingly difficult for African-American & Latino voters to cast a ballot in Florida, Georgia, Texas, & Arizona, all key swing states in 2022 and 2024.  Manchin's decision is predicated on keeping the filibuster, a racist Senate tool that was used to stop Civil Rights legislation throughout the 1960's, intact, under the guise of bipartisanship, despite the filibuster likely stopping most bipartisan legislation (and really, any legislation at all) from passing.  Manchin is not the only one to say this; Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) is also against reforming the filibuster, and some have speculated (though there are no actual names under this bill), others are as well, though I will admit to being somewhat skeptical on that front, mostly because if Manchin & Sinema are getting this kind of heat coming from red/purple states, I sincerely doubt that someone like, say, Dianne Feinstein & Ron Wyden would dare try to stop it from a blue state...I think from a practical standpoint that Manchin/Sinema may be providing cover, but if they caved the Democrats underneath them would too.

I am not going to mince words here.  I understand how important Joe Manchin is-if he were not there, virtually all of Biden's agenda would be at risk, particularly his ability to appoint judges to the federal bench.  But that does not excuse this, and Joe Manchin is a coward.  He knows that this stance will disenfranchise millions of Americans, particularly Americans who have already endured an incredible historical hardship in their ability to express their rights.  He has seen what states like Texas & Arizona are doing, putting in laws that recall apartheid & Jim Crow, essentially setting up a system where Democrats not only can't play on the same field, but they will need a miracle to actually win.  Gerrymandering has become so sophisticated you can draw maps that virtually guarantee you will disenfranchise the most people possible, and Manchin, given a chance, refused to do what he needed to do to ensure that this was stopped.

The evidence is clear that the filibuster would fix this, and that it's beyond repair.  We saw that when 57 US Senators (and a bipartisan, strong majority of House members) supported an investigation into a terrorist attack on the United States, but the filibuster stopped that.  I'm going to repeat that because this is not hyperbole, and it needs to be repeated: the filibuster is now being used as a tool to protect terrorists, and Joe Manchin thinks that it's still worth protecting.  It's not hard to imagine this sort of mentality.  Americans engage with it repeatedly, ensuring that systems ravage families (like healthcare costs that make you bankrupt, sick, or even dead if god forbid you lose your healthcare through a layoff)...a kindergarten classroom was shot up by a gun that was legally purchased, and yet the only thing Congress was able to muster was thoughts & prayers.  500,000 Americans died in the past year because one man decided he didn't want to admit there was a problem & tell people to wear a mask and get a shot.  So it is not shocking that Joe Manchin is such an incredible coward that even after a terrorist attack that put his own life at risk, he still cannot look beyond his very narrow viewpoint & realize that American democracy is broken, and needs to be fixed.  America has spent much of the past two decades admitting that we no longer have the strength or ability to collectively solve our own problems, or even admit we have them.

I normally end these types of articles with hope, but I don't know how much we have left.  The laws that are being put in place don't out-and-out ban certain people from voting (yet), but they set up a clear chain reaction.  Without some sort of reform, it is very likely that the Republicans will take control of either the US House or Senate (or both), potentially a majority of which will publicly back "the Big Lie," the falsehood that Donald Trump was the true winner of the 2020 presidential election.  Two years after the fact, it could be a case where Joe Biden or Kamala Harris win the popular vote and the electoral college, but because of Republican-gerrymandered state legislatures in a place like Arizona, Georgia, Florida, or Wisconsin, they'll attempt to send two slates of electors to the electoral college, and Congress will have to decide who actually won.  If they back a second Big Lie (which there's zero evidence at this point that they wouldn't), we would have a situation where the legal choice of the American people is denied the White House because of the actions of Joe Manchin this weekend.  This isn't far-fetched, it is increasingly the most likely scenario.  What happens after that is anyone's guess, but it would almost certainly be bad, the worst moments in American history since the Civil War.  And it's all preventable, if only one man had the courage to admit that his role as a senator is more important than his reelection chances.

But Manchin refuses to, putting himself in the shoes of Neville Chamberlain.  I don't have a great solution here.  Obviously, the best-case scenario for Democrats is that they somehow buck the trend in 2022 that they can't win the midterms.  That will be next to impossible, particularly with gerrymandering & historical trends, but it's not actually impossible (the recent special election results in New Mexico show that Republicans are theoretically being impacted by low turnout right now, though this past weekend's results in Texas prove Democrats can fall for the same problem).  The Democrats also, clearly, need to net at least two Senate seats next year to make Sinema/Manchin inconsequential, and they need to do that with Democrats that support filibuster reform, something that we need to start getting Democrats on the record for right now while we can still punish them in primaries (Cheri Beasley & Tim Ryan, it's time to start talking).  And the Democrats need to make as concerted of an effort as possible to win Governor and Secretary of State elections in as many swing states as is humanly possible (AZ, TX, GA, FL, PA, WI, MI, NV, NH, OH, MN, & IA all have at least one of these offices open in 2022-it's time to start donating), as they need to have as strong of a defense mechanism against a second Big Lie as is possible for 2024.

But these are, and I cannot stress this enough, tall orders.  Historically none of these three things will happen, and with Republicans making it more difficult to vote, and with Joe Manchin making it more difficult for Democrats, who did literally just win but still don't get an actual victory, to get to have fruits to their labors, it's going to be made that much harder.  I have said that democracy cannot function if only one party believes in democracy, but Joe Manchin could have bought us time on that front, time to start having meaningful conversations with Republicans (and achieve actual bipartisanship), potentially negating this problem with enough time as we weeded out Republicans who don't believe in America (or show them that this message is a ballot box loser, and they need to switch it up).  But he didn't-he chose cowardice, betraying his sacred oath & his country in the process, and he set up a 2022 midterm election where American democracy is on-the-line, and thanks to Joe Manchin, it's now an uphill battle to win.