Is Joe Manchin considering leaving the Democratic Party?
There are rumors to that effect.
I say no, he’s not, and that if he’s talking about it behind closed doors that’s just to threaten the Democrats. Manchin now appears to be one of the most powerful people in the Senate, perhaps even the most powerful. I write “appears to be” because these jockeyings for power are so loaded with behind-the-scenes machinations that it’s hard to be certain about anything.
Manchin has a history of talking a moderate line and then caving and voting with the Democrats when it matters. I have to say that this time it sounds different. But isn’t that what Charlie Brown always says to Lucy?
Over at Hot Air Ed Morrisey argues that Manchin is going to hang tough:
___________________________
Salena Zito warned everyone first, and Punchbowl follows up today with the same message: Joe Manchin means what he says. Democrats and the media may not grasp this as it happens so rarely in Washington, and neither group has included that in its calculations. However, that reality keeps getting clearer and clearer, and the Punchbowl crew warn Democrats to figure it out — fast:
https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2021/10/19/dems-dawning-realization-manchins-serious-n423362
___________________________
Hope so.
He’s chairman of a, I believe, natural resources committee which is important to W Virginia. So he stays a Dem until they lose control of the Senate.
Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it. One thing I’ll say about Democrat Pols, they’ve always stuck together far better than Republican Pols when the chips are down. It’s interesting that despite the high likelihood that many of the (D) House Critters and perhaps even some Senators being chucked out next year, they’ll still all dutifully vote the party line even in defiance of the unruly plebes that make up their constituents. Perhaps many of them figure that even if they get voted out they’ll still be able to find cushy jobs in DC as consultants or media analysts or whatever.
Funny, but just two days ago the WSJ published a letter by my brother Dan summarizing the rationale for Manchin to make the party switch. Fingers crossed!
Unsurprisingly, Manchin denies it.
I don’t think he’ll do it. He and Sinema are putting up with a heck of a lot more than Jim Jeffords ever did, but I just don’t think Manchin could consider himself a Republican. West Virginia is a beautiful state and he seems to genuinely love it. I could easy see him blowing off reelection and going home.
That said, I’d probably take good odds on Manchin handing McConnell the keys to the Senate Majority Leader’s office as soon as he’s sure the infrastructure bill won’t have to come back through the Senate for conference or something similar.
I think a lot depends on if Manchin plans to run again in 2024. If he wants another term beyond this one, then he will have to stand firm against the Democrats’ crazy plans, and both are probably best done as a Democrat, not a Republican. I don’t think the Republicans could clear the primary field for him if he switched parties and ran again in 2024.
Now, if he plans to retire from the Senate after this term, then, maybe, he would be willing to switch parties just to piss off the people harassing him right now.
It won’t happen because Manchin wants to jump. It could happen because the Democrazies make his life a misery.
The Democrat party has been trying to purify itself for 50 years now. First they drove out the Southern Whites. Then they turned on Catholics with abortion. Now they have started on Jews with hatred of Israel.
“Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: ‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.'” — Ian Fleming — Goldfinger
@Yancey: Manchin is 74. As Senators go, he is a mere pup.
An Alternative is to pull a Sanders, and declare himself to be an independent who caucuses with the Republicans.
Walter, that’s exactly what I’ve been pondering.
As jvermeer says, 3:02 p.m., Manchin won’t jump until the Dems lose the Senate. Then, either Independent or R.
I could easy see him blowing off reelection and going home.
He has held elected office for 35 of the last 39 years. It would be perfectly normal for him to retire at the end of 2024 when he will be 77 years old. It would have been perfectly normal for him to have resigned at the end of last year. He would have been vested for a federal pension, had retirement benefits from 23 years as a West Virginia state employee, had his Social Security, and had his pool of private savings and investment. It’s only in a gerontocratic criminal consistory run by the likes of Mitch McConnell (b. 1942) and Nancy Pelosi (b. 1940) that behaving normally is a matter upon which to remark.
He and Sinema are putting up with a heck of a lot more than Jim Jeffords ever did,
Jeffords didn’t have to put up with anything. He crossed the floor when he failed to get some bauble he wanted for one of his preferred interest groups. He was awarded a committee chairmanship by the boss of the Democratic caucus for his trouble. So much for the suckers in Vermont in 2000 who fancied they were voting to return their Republican senator to office. Note, in 2000, he was 66 years old and vested for a federal pension given 26 years as a federal employee; he also had a sick wife; he could have retired.
Now seeing that this “rumor” is coming from David Corn, it’s entirely BS.
Corn, who even by today’s standards is a shameless political hack pretending to be a journalist, is deliberately lying about this. He’s putting out this lie to try and pressure the Democratic leadership to just bulldoze over Manchin and abolish the filibuster because “he’s going to become a Republican, anyway.”
Mike
First they drove out the Southern Whites. Then they turned on Catholics with abortion.
It wasn’t until about 1980 that abortion policy was no longer open for debate in the Democratic Party’s presidential contests; as late as 1988, you still had about 60 pro-life in the House Democratic caucus. The new orthodoxy was alienating for orthodox Catholics, evangelicals, and really anyone with fixed standards whose sense of right had gelled prior to 1965. And you’d be surprised how many fuzz-heads their are in the pews of Catholic parishes.
As for Southern whites, they began decamping to the Republicans for a variety of reasons as early as 1952. A coherent policy stance by the central organs of the Democratic Party was bound to generate incremental losses among Southern Democrats simply because they were getting a better offer from Republicans. What the ‘civil rights’ legislation did was to take the preservation of segregation off the table, which induced Southern whites to consider other issues. (It was off the table because the central organs of both parties favored dismantling it).
The rumors of Manchin switching parties is just a ruse to put pressure on Manchin. His issue with Biden’s “signature” legislation proposal is that it puts THE key business of West Virginia, coal & gas production, out of business. There is very little else on the Democrat’s agenda with which he disagrees. And he’s way more powerful and influential as a rogue Democrat than he ever would be as a Republican.
Manchin characterized this rumor as ‘bullsh*t’ this afternoon. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d encouraged that speculation as a warning to Dems to leash their crazies and stop harassing him.
But they may not be able to – Glenn Greenwald has just released an analysis of authoritarian tendencies among self-declared Democrats that is supported by several years of survey data he’s compiled. Basically the Democratic base has undergone a marked and thorough conversion to beliefs and objectives opposing political pluralism, representative government, and basic civil rights – all supported by strong & durable majorities. He recaps in this video and goes into more detail on his substack – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5GiuWJqYJg
So the bad actor’s we’ve seen aren’t the extreme, they’re much closer to the norm at this point.
Tyro, that is the really scary part. People who say things like, “the country can survive Joe Biden, we have survived worse” are missing the point. This isn’t even close to the same country that it was in, say, 1980.
Neo, I believe it was Lucy who repeatedly told that reassuring lie. And like the gullible American public, Charley Brown bought it time after time.
He is unlikely to switch. Highly unlikely, unless the GOP gains the Senate next year. As many others have pointed out, he has far more power and status as a rogue Democrat than as a Republican, or independent caucusing with the Republicans.
He will be 77 in 2024. Does he plan to run again? Good question.
West Virginia has become a deep red state; will that factor in? Possibly.
Forget about Jeffords. Go back further, to Dick Shelby (who is still in the Senate). Conservative Democrat Senator from an increasingly Republican state. But he waited until after the 1994 GOP victory to switch parties. He did so in part because he planned to run again (and again, and again, and again) and because he knew he’d stay in the majority. That’s Manchin’s plan, I’d wager.
No switch unless and until there’s a GOP Senate majority.
I am not so sure. Manchin want to run for West Virginia governor. So he doesn’t want to get caught messing with the lefties.
Manchin want to run for West Virginia governor. So he doesn’t want to get caught messing with the lefties.
He’s 74 years old and has already served two terms as W Va. governor. West Virginia’s governor thought it prudent in 2017 to change parties from Democrat to Republican, so I tend to doubt Manchin is hoping to prosper by catering to ‘lefties’.
Conservative Democrat Senator from an increasingly Republican state. But he waited until after the 1994 GOP victory to switch parties.
Per the American Conservative Union, Shelby during the period running from 1980 to 1994 tended to vote the right way about 63% of the time. Note, the Dixiecrat element in Congress was largely wiped out in the 1994 elections and there was only a single-digit population left. Shelby’s position was quite anomalous. Manchin is the right flank of the Senate Democratic caucus, but the ACU reports he votes the right way only about 28% of the time and is much closer to the median of the Democratic caucus than he is to the Republican caucus. Shelby was 60 in 1994; Manchin is 74 today. It’s a reasonable wager one of them anticipated a longer run of years in Congress than the other.
If Manchin were to switch parties, the Republicans would be in the majority. So waiting until there’s already an R majority doesn’t make sense, unless it’s for cover.
Powerline blogger Steven Hayward’s analysis is that Manchin would only switch to Independent (ala Sanders), not to Republican, and that he probably won’t be cause he would lose his committee chair.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/10/the-manchin-proviso-2.php
“Mother Jones magazine, which is quite left but actually serious about doing good reporting, has a story out today that has everyone buzzing—Joe Manchin is thinking about leaving the Democratic caucus in the Senate, and becoming an independent. I expect this means he would caucus with Republicans, because otherwise he’d likely have to surrender his chairmanship of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.”
“Never, ever trust a politician’s first denial. That’s the lesson on display after Joe Manchin admitted this morning that he has, in fact, discussed becoming an Independent, though, he’s trying to spin the revelation as something else.”
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/10/21/joe-manchin-admits-he-discussed-becoming-an-independent-n460503?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=onsite&utm_campaign=719
It’s maverick theater, guys. It’s just to fool the Democrats’ base about why the Democrats are not using their majority the way the base wants them to:
“I have told the president, [Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer, and even the whole Caucus that if it is ‘embarrassing’ to them to have a moderate, centrist Democrat in the mix and if it would help them publicly, I could become an Independent,” Manchin told The Hill. “Then they could explain some of this to the public saying it’s complicated to corral these two independents, Bernie [Sanders] and me.”
If Manchin did formally leave the party, he said, he would still caucus with the Democrats, like Sanders and Maine Sen. Angus King.
How much more clearer can they make this?
He cops to what I’ve been saying all along: “mavericks” exist to fool the party’s base about what the party’s actually up to.
@ Frederick > “I’ve been saying all along: “mavericks” exist to fool the party’s base about what the party’s actually up to.”
John McCain perfected that schtick.