The Democrats Won't Have Joe Manchin To Kick Around Anymore. Well That's A Shame. NEXT!
The Democrats Won't Have Joe Manchin To Kick Around Anymore. Well That's A Shame. NEXT!
The retiring senator had one final pointless gesture for the party.
Weep, weep, Wonkette, for Joe Manchin, Democratic Senator from the state of West Virginia, at least for a few more months. A few more months on the “Senator” part, anyway. The “Democratic” part went kaput on Friday when Manchin announced he has left the party to register as an independent. This makes him the second Democrat in the Senate to pull this move in the last few months, following his partner in pain-in-the-assery Kyrsten Sinema.
Of course Manchin did not actually leave the party, the party left him. Just ask him, he’ll tell you, on and on, ad infinitum, world without end, amen.
From his statement announcing the most inevitable move since the Roman Senate heard that Caesar had crossed the Rubicon:
“[S]ince becoming a United States Senator in 2010, I have seen both the Democrat and Republican parties leave West Virginia and our country behind for partisan extremism while jeopardizing our democracy.”
This is, to put it politely, utter horseshit. There is only one party that has shown over and over that it is done with democracy, and it is not the party that Joe Manchin has been a member of for the last few decades.
But that’s the nice part about putting this out as a press release: There is nobody there to ask you some direct questions like “You jackass,” and “No, seriously, you jackass.”
Okay, that’s more of a comment than a question.
“Today, our national politics are broken and neither party is willing to compromise to find common ground.”
There is no point in rehashing all the examples that would show this is not true, and has not been true since even before Manchin first came to Washington. Again, there is one party that has made it a virtue to never compromise and it is not the Democrats, whose leaders’ willingness to compromise has been driving anyone to the left of Chuck Schumer absolutely insane since at least the Obama administration.
We’ll just assume Manchin has spent the last couple of decades orbiting Alpha Centauri in a soundproof sardine can with his hands clamped firmly over his ears.
“To stay true to myself and remain committed to put country before party, I have decided to register as an independent with no party affiliation and continue to fight for America’s sensible majority.”
What Joe Manchin is committed to is putting Joe Manchin before both country and party. He likes the attention he got from Joe Biden and the rest of party leadership when he was basically the fulcrum upon which major legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act turned. He liked that he could steer major legislation in his preferred direction because the Democrats could not afford to lose even one vote in the evenly divided Senate.
And to be fair, who wouldn’t like being constantly invited to the White House so the president can beg for your cooperation? Who wouldn’t get a kick out of being able to tell the most powerful man in the world that eh, you’d love to help him, but the American people (“American people” in this case being a euphemism for the Appalachian coal barons who are constantly dropping bags of cash off at your office) just aren’t that liberal, you know? You’re pretty sure you heard that at the last meeting at the Huntington Elks Lodge, anyway.
Manchin had already announced he won’t run for re-election this November. And this move likely won’t change the number of times between now and then that he votes the Republican position on a bill. And also too, there aren’t any tough votes on the horizon. Congress is unlikely to try to pass any particularly significant legislation over the next few months, as its members will be spending more time running for re-election than doing any work.
So really, this announcement barely even counts as symbolic. The issue is that no one greeted Manchin’s flirting with a presidential run on the No Labels ticket with hosannas, and his announcement that he would not run for re-election brought on much more cheering than sorrow, particularly among his colleagues’ staffs who worked their tails off to satisfy him only to see him yank the cape away again and again.
In short, no one had paid attention to Joe Manchin in a while, a state of affairs up with which he will not put.
So long, Joe. May this be the last time you piss yr Wonkette off enough to give you the attention you so desperately crave.
[Joe Manchin’s Senate website]
The cocktail we will make later to celebrate Manchin exiting political life is only possible because of your generous donations.
Manchin hasn't been Democrat since democrats decided coal was bad.
Joe Lieberman II.