He begins:
Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect, assesses the role of Senator Manchin in sinking President Biden’s signature legislation. Manchin surely sunk his constituents: West Virginia is one of the poorest states in the nation. He says he was worried about the cost, especially the cost of lifting children out of poverty. But economists lowered their estimates of economic growth for 2022 after Manchin said no, and the stock market tumbled. What a guy.
Kuttner writes:
You can understand the pent-up rage and frustration. With his yacht and his Maserati, his fake concern for the suffering people of West Virginia, his bad economics and his penchant for moving the goalposts, Joe Manchin III is a first-class phony.
But that doesn’t make rage smart politics. And there is another unfortunate R-word at play this week in Bidenland—recriminations.
Let’s see, who screwed up? Was it Biden for not just taking the $1.75 trillion deal when Manchin made his bargain with Chuck Schumer in July? (Except that Manchin left himself some wiggle room.)
Was it Biden for not shelving Build Back Better in favor of making voting rights legislation the top priority? (Except that Manchin is almost certain to screw his fellow Democrats on this, too.)
Did the Progressive Caucus overplay its hand? Did Pelosi mess up the very complex bargain between progressives and corporate Dems over the bipartisan infrastructure deal? Was it a mistake to whip the House Democrats to pass Build Back Better at $2.2 trillion in the hope of then giving up some of it to Manchin?
Jeezus, give these people a break. They have been dealt a really lousy hand, and Manchin has all the cards.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Senator” Manchin was heard speculating that parents might buy drugs with monthly child tax credit payments instead of providing for their kids. He is also reported to have said that Americans might fake an illness to claim paid sick leave to go on hunting trips.
And Daddy Manchin taught daughter well. Heather Manchin Bresch, was the president and chief executive officer of Mylan Inc., a pharmaceutical company that specialized in generic drugs. The company raised the price of a two-pack of EpiPen from around $124 dollars in 2009 to $609 in 2016. The 2021 cost for EpiPen 2-Pak injectable kit 0.3 mg is around $645 for a supply of 2 kits, depending on the pharmacy you visit.
Neither Manchin thinks much of We The People. But Pluto Power Positions, now that is something both revel in.
Well said.
Oh and let’s keep it all in the family. Mrs. Manchin sat on the school board and she was the reason why the EpiPen was sold in the 2 pack. She came up with the scheme to have parents provide 2 doses of EpiPen….just in case the first dose didn’t work. What a family! Horrible, horrible people.
Kathy,
Thanks for reminding us of the Manchin daughter and EpiPens. Greed seems to run in the family.
New Joe Manchin campaign song
Hey, Joe, where you goin’ with that bill in your hand?
I say, hey, Joe, where you goin’ with that bill in your hand?
Goin’ down to get me some scissors.
Throw help for poor folks in the can.
Buy me one more Maserati.
Trash hope for the common man.
With apologies to John Prine, who is in heaven now
Daddy, won’t you take me up to Marion County,
In north West Virginia, where paradise lay?
Sorry, my son, but you’re too late in asking.
Mr. Joe Manchin’s coal train has hauled it away.
New Joe Manchin Campaign Slogan
Who needs Earth-raping, Big Pharma-suckling Repugnicans when Joe is on the Job!
Manchin is obviously a conservative dressed like a Democrat, a mole in the blue party.
But could Trump be holding evidence that Barr gave him after the FBI raided Jeffrey Epstein’s properties and confiscated all the computer hard drives?
Manchin may be an alleged pedophile who visited Epstein’s NY City mansion or ranch in Arizona.
I wonder how many other elected officials both Democrats and Republicans (or Supreme Court Justices) that traitor Trump is blackmailing for allegedly visiting Epstein’s mansion, ranch, or sexual fantasy island?
Too bad there’s absolutely nothing Biden or the Dems could do about Manchin. Like, I dunno, take away his committee leaderships. Or, maybe not give his wife a plum six figure job. Or any other kind of pressure they could apply. (Guess that only works on Bernie and the Squad….)
Funny how Trump was so powerful that he could singlehandedly end democracy, but Biden is so weak he can’t govern with “President Manchin” and the parlimentarian always standing in his way.
Why is it easier for you folks to pretend Biden is incompetent rather than admit he’s complicit?
Dienne, I wish I could understand your logic. I can’t. Manchin is very very rich. There’s nothing Biden could give him or take away from him that would change his vote. Certainly he would not change his vote if he were publicly humiliated by taking away his committee assignments.
Biden is our Neville Chamberlain.
Why do you liken Biden to the ultimate appeaser, Neville Chamberlin. If Biden had been elected with the same majorities in Congress that Obama had, he would be hailed as the second FDR. It’s very hard to succeed with a 50-50 Senate where one Senator can hold the President hostage.
You are right, Diane. My comment was a mark of my frustration with the fact that the administration hasn’t gone forcefully after Trump and the other insurrectionists. But I went too far.
My fear is that we face the very real possibility of a fascist takeover in this country by 2024, and I don’t feel that the administration is taking this with sufficient gravity/seriousness. Consider the recent op-ed by three retired U.S. generals warning of the danger of an insurrection of the ranks in 2024. That’s a reading of the extremism and division in the rank and file. And then there are the academic determinations that by various measures, the U.S. is no longer a democratic state and has passed through the initial stages that have historically led to Civil War.
So, that’s why. Biden is conciliatory and statesmanlike. These are good traits. But ours are perilous times. The German government gave AH the spa treatment after HIS failed coup. We should not repeat this grave mistake. Trump and his cronies in Congress and the Justice Department attempted a coup. If there is no accountability for that at the top, we are doomed.
He would have been hailed as the second FDR.
A couple more Dems in the Senate, and this would have, indeed, happened. So, yes, you are right.
And this is the most consequential, in the long term, of Manchin’s manchination: by making Biden look ineffectual, unable to deliver, Manchin is handing victory to the Repugnicans in 2022 and 2024. I sincerely believe that that would be the end of experiment in democracy here.
He is not a variety of slimy invertebrate like Jabba the Trump, but this is not a time for appeasement and half measures. Where TF is Garland? Golfing?
dienne77
There is an excellent reason why Bernie Sanders has never called for Joe Manchin to be stripped of his committee assignments, and it not because Bernie Sanders is either complicit or incompetent.
It is because Bernie Sanders wants to remain as head of the Senate Budget Committee – and progressives want Bernie Sanders to remain head of the budget committee – which means that if they make Manchin powerless, Manchin simply switches parties and Bernie Sanders is no longer chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.
Is that what you want?
Bernie Sanders did make an excellent suggestion to bring the bill up for a vote and force Manchin and the Republicans to publicly vote no.
But if Manchin does vote no, what should Bernie do?
Bernie Sanders and real progressives understand that the way to strip Manchin of power is NOT to “punish” him or take away his committee chairmanship.
It is to fight to elect a lot more Democrats to the Senate in Ohio and Pennsylvania so that Manchin no longer has power.
And Bernie still remains head of the Senate Budget Committee instead of some right wing Republican.
Why would any real progressive want Manchin to switch parties so that the right wing Republicans are empowered and Bernie Sanders is not?
NYC public school parent
My long response I just accidentally deleted . Simply put “both parties are the same” Now I don’t actually believe that nor do you.
Go back and read Lofgren 2011.
https://truthout.org/articles/goodbye-to-all-that-reflections-of-a-gop-operative-who-left-the-cult/
The Democrats had a choice go big to prove that they can deliver to the American people or go home. The failure to do so, fails to bring Democratic leaning voters to the polls at the same time as it allows White voters motivated by racial anxiety to vote for an authoritarian demagogue seeing no appreciable change to their wallets. If that sounds like bribery. You bet your butt it is. Politics \ Governing in its simplest definition ” is deciding who gets what”
Sanders is right make them vote . As Carville said” every good story needs a villain”. You can not make Republican obstruction the villain when you are in charge. The simple fact is that there will always be a Joe Manchin or however many Joe Manchins are needed.
I agree with Bernie that the legislation should be put up for a vote.
But if Manchin is going to vote no, what happens then? If Manchin switches parties? Bernie has pulled his punches with Manchin and isn’t demanding he be stripped of his chairmanship, but he does criticize him, as do others.
I looked up how big the Democratic majority in the House and Senate was when Truman and LBJ were passing historic progressive legislation and the Dems had a significant majority. In some cases a filibuster-proof majority in and others the Republicans didn’t use the filibuster the way they do now.
The Senate made a mistake in 2009 not to end the filibuster. But they didn’t know the future. And I guarantee that if the Dems had ended it and Trump got elected and lots of terrible right wing legislation had passed, the Dems would be called idiots and traitors and complicit for ending the filibuster. In 2009, I didn’t realize the Republicans would pay absolutely no political price for filibustering and the Democrats would be entirely blamed.
That is our media’s fault. It doesn’t matter how many good things the Dems do when they have power – the focus will always be on their failures, even when those failures are because of a single Democrat. Until that ends, I don’t believe anyone who purports to “know” what the Democrats need to do to win elections. Democrats could pass successful progressive legislation and that could result in the next Richard Nixon. Democrats could pass everything Jimmy Carter wanted them to pass – which they did — and that could lead to the Reagan takeover of politics.
Is it Jimmy Carter’s fault that Reagan and the Republicans took over this country in 1980? Was Carter too complicit and too co-opted? Is that what dienne77 would say? If only Jimmy Carter had not quashed all progressive legislation in service to his greedy, co-opted personal interests (at least according to the reasoning of dienne77), Reagan would not have ever been president.
According to dienne77’s logic, Reaganism was empowered because of the corrupt and awful Jimmy Carter.
I realize that if Manchin just switched parties and the Republicans were empowered, dienne77 would lose her talking point blaming this on Democrats.
If Stacey Abrams had not so brilliantly GOTV in Georgia, and elected two Democratic Senators, Mitch McConnell would be in charge and dienne77 would not have her talking point blaming this on Democrats.
But even if the Democrats are greatly constrained because of Manchin and Sinema, a 50/50 tie is better than 49/51. Bernie Sanders knows this. Bernie Sanders also knows that the way to disempower Manchin is not to strip him of committee assignments so he switches parties, but to elect a lot more Democrats.
It’s all part of the plan. Make Manchin the fall guy. The Dems never wanted BBB to begin with. The Dems and the Repubs are both owned by the big Corps. They serve at the Contortions pleasure. Manchin saying no was built in form the beginning.
So I don’t know much about Joe. He is a senator, so he must like power. Sounds like he is wealthy enough, so his entire motivation must be power. Indeed, a good many senators must fall into the same room, because money seems to be no problem for this erstwhile group.
His family owns a coal mining company that nets him about $500,000 a year.
Manchin is also very rich because he is bought and paid for by the international, corporate fossil fuel industry located OUTSIDE West Virginia.
The WVA Charleston Gazette-Mail sums it up:
Manchin’s campaign finance report reveals that employees and political action committees from out-of-state oil and gas companies, most of which are based in Texas, dwarfed contributions made to Manchin from in-state [West Virginia] individuals and political action committees. BY MORE THAN TEN FOLD!
And this according to the senator’s own, newly filed quarterly campaign finance report.
Manchin is The Abominable No Man.
Every citizen of West Virginia should quickly be made aware in great detail just what their state is and they individually are economically and service-wise losing out on because of his betrayal of those who voted for him.
I wish they knew that he announced his opposition to a bill that would lower their prescription costs, include dental and vision costs in Medicare, and help them with child care costs.
The Abominable No Man
Perfect
I would like to announce a language contest. First prize is a virtual pat on the back for a job well done. Second prize is the smugness of knowing that you should have gotten that pat, but didn’t because the game is obviously rigged.
Who can come up with the best definition for the verb manchin (what does it mean to be manchined)? People in the past made quisling a verb, manchin certainly deserves the same treatment, hopefully with the same longevity.
Does it include concepts like betrayal, lying, paternalism of wealth, ideas based on worn out, disproved stereotypes, or smiling in your face while simultaneously stabbing you in the back? Or is it more consequential, like knowingly destroying democracy when one is fully aware of the consequences? Basing them on ignorant misconceptions seems fitting for a senator from WV.
You doubtless know what Wittgenstein said about definitions of words like “games.” They’re fuzzy. They stand for constellations of predicates with family relations among them. The linguist Lakoff picked this up and elaborated it in a bunch of books. Replacing Aristotle’s theory of natural kinds with a theory of prototypes/archetypes–it’s a bird because it’s more or less like the first thing that we saw as being a bird–a robin, perhaps, or a sparrow. So, I say let Manchin hereafter stand for this constellation of betrayal, dishonesty, droits de seigneur, amorality, narcissism, and so on, and let him be the archetype of the disgusting thing he is.
In other words, I think he just became what biologists call a holotype–the exemplar specimen of a particular variety of human lowlife.
cx: doits du seigneur
So, game x has properties A, B, and F, game y properties B, F, and W, game z properties C, F, and W. And there is no set of absolutely definitive essential characteristics. When we are young, we see robins and learn that these are birds. And then other things are birdlike–sparrows, eagles, dodos, boobies, and the class is expanded based on family resemblance to the prototype. Manchin is a particularly strong distillation of a number of sickening traits of the worst figures in political history and so makes a good natural prototype for creatures of his ilk in the future, those makers of manchinations.
Oops. And game yy has characteristics C and W, neither of which game x has.
I find this all very confusing. I wish you would just tell me what to believe.
Sorry, I wasn’t at all clear. Aristotle advanced a theory of natural kinds. Things had certain essential, defining characteristics. It quacks, it has feathers–it’s a duck. Wittgenstein pointed out that this fails because some games have properties with some other things that have games, but there are kinds of games that have no properties in common. The same could be said of things we call poems. Instead of words representing classes or sets of things being defined by essential characteristics, he argued, they belong to networks of related things–with something like family relationships. So, Aristotle would argue, if it has properties A and B and C, it’s a bird. And Wittgenstein would argue that if it shares properties with some but not all other things called birds, then it’s a bird. A fundamental problem in defining classes/sets/categories of things.
And it turns out that this is, indeed, how children learn class names. Bird. Furniture. The child learns an exemplar of the type, and then other things that have similar characteristics get the same name. This is how, at an early age, everything that flies–airplanes, bees–is a bird.
cx: this fails because some games share properties with some other things that have games, but there are kinds of games that have no properties in common. So, no essential defining characteristic of the class.
OK, I think I get the bird thing. Not ready to move on to furniture yet. Does it matter what kind of bird it is?
Boobies! And Great Tits!
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/02/22/prototypes-versus-aristotelian-categories-in-the-teaching-of-writing/
But I definitely think that we need “Manchinations” in our vocabulary.
And while we’re on the subject of expanding our vocabulary:
Yikes, I left “rapaciousness” off that list of Manchinian characteristics!
There must surely be one closet-good Republican.
Lord knows there are plenty of closeted ones.
Based on some unattributed remarks about what they say behind closed doors, I think some of them might actually be closeted socialists! At least that’s what some people say. And we know there’s no more reliable source for news.
Yes. Definitive evidence!
But the Democrats don’t have the fortune that Repugnicans do of access to the dirt that Russian Intelligence has on particular U.S. officials.
The irony is that the word “machination” — plot or scheme — already comes very close to describing what Manchin is focused on.
But maybe “Manchination” would also cover the backstabbing nature of the scheme.
Or Manchination could also be used to describe West Virginia (the Manchin nation)
And “immanchination” might be a good word to describe a devious imagination capable of coming up with such a scheme. Usage: that devious fellow has quite an immanchination.
Or the immanchination proclamation ” might describe a proclamation that promises one behavior with the full intention of doing the opposite.
Manchinator: a weapon used to eviscerate beneficial legislation that would help millions of people.
Maybe Arnold would agree to play the part in the movie.
The Manchinator: “I’ll be back”
Manchinator 3: Rise of the Manchines
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_3:_Rise_of_the_Machines
Manchinator Gumisys
Or maybe they could get Robert Patrick from Terminator 2 to play Manchin cuz he looks so much like him
https://images.app.goo.gl/bFdSbPnjjSKpZjJH7
Manchinator (2) “Hasta la vista, BBB”
The Manchinator.
ROFLMSAO!
I don’t think the problem is Manchin, but that one Senator can wield the kind of power that can make or break such a large piece of legislation. If there were any “statespeople” left, surely some kind of compromise could be reached? I am also concerned about our national debt and the effects that will have on our children and grandchildren.
Your point is very important. The framers wanted to protect the rights of political minorities, but this is not what they had in mind. It is another form of monarchy using parliamentary rules as cover. But it also gets to a deeper point.
This is another in a long line of things–we’ve talked about how Blacks, women, and others have been excluded, how they could not foresee technological change, etc.–that the framers would have found unimaginable. In order for the system they devised to work, it must be on the basis of an unspoken respect for honesty, truth and facts. They could have foreseen one person or a small faction lying, but the idea of a large number of people doing so and having their representatives do so on their behalf was not a thought they entertained. Sure, they talked ad infinitum of “the mob”, but the idea of the mob using the mechanisms they built would surely amaze them. As it should us.
Timing. Just saw this and it makes my point more directly.
https://crooksandliars.com/2021/12/bernstein-civil-war-against-americans-who
but the idea of the mob using the mechanisms they built would surely amaze them. As it should us.
An entire political party emulating their leader, the professional con man
You are right that one senator can yield outsized influence. But I think it also depends on the particular President.
A Senator is less likely to get away with the sort of game Manchin plays with a President like LBj. In fact, I suspect Manchin would already have been sent crawling back to his lair, sniveling and licking his wounds from the encounter.
WV is SECOND (after New Mexico, hence location for Breaking Bad) according to most lists on per capita return for every tax dollar spent. By one measure I have seen, they get back $3.74 for every dollar they spend. I want my $2.74 back and, to build on SDP’s comment, federal projects for that state need to dry up and dry up soon. Democratic appropriators, you have your marching orders. Let ’em keep the federal prisons. They can convert them to housing for anti-vaxxers and drug rehab for their prescription drug epidemic.
Absolutely spot-on, SDP.
If someone has the link to a recent David Sirota written piece that has to do with what’s being discussed, please post here.
74 years old with a Maserati eh? The big coal baron with the micropenis midlife crisis-mobile. Lol.
The Democrats need to focus on the toss up Senate seats in 2022. There are many of them. Articulate what can be done and how this will nullify the influence of Manchin and Sinema.
It is difficult enough to do that when you can claim it is Republican obstruction that is preventing change. It is near impossible when Democrats control Government and fail to deliver .
“There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters’ confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that “they are all crooks,” and that “government is no good,” Lofgren 2011.
Of course that was written when Obama was President and Republicans controlled the House . Well Biden is President and Democrats control congress.
Good Luck .