Let me start with something you don’t often hear from liberals these days: A few words of praise for Joe Manchin.
By the standards of the age, Manchin is a political magician. West Virginia, the state he represents as a Democrat in the Senate, has a 35.5-point lean toward the Republican Party, according to FiveThirtyEight. To put that into context, there is only one Republican in the Senate representing a state that’s even mildly bluish, and that’s Susan Collins, from Maine, which has a four-point Democratic bias.
Put simply, Manchin shouldn’t exist. And Democrats cannot take him for granted. Their Senate majority, and thus the whole of their legislative agenda, hinges on his ability to win elections anyone else would lose. None of that makes Manchin’s every decision laudable, or even wise, but it demands recognition. He has honed instincts worth respecting. And now, in the 50-50 Senate that teeters on his vote, he is the most powerful legislator of our age.
The question obsessing Washington, then, is simple: What does Manchin want? And Manchin, in statement after statement, has offered a clear answer: bipartisanship.
This is the core of Manchinism. All of the stances he takes that frustrate Democrats right now — his defense of the filibuster, his opposition to the For the People Act, his insistence on endless negotiations with Republicans on infrastructure — run downstream of his belief in bipartisanship. “The time has come to end these political games, and to usher a new era of bipartisanship where we find common ground on the major policy debates facing our nation,” he wrote in The Washington Post. This is maddening to his colleagues who want to judge legislation on the merits. But Manchin has been clear about his goal.
What has not been clear is his strategy. At his worst, Manchin prizes the aesthetic of bipartisanship over its actual pursuit. In those moments, he becomes a defender of the status quo and, paradoxically, an enabler of Republican partisanship. But over the past 24 hours, a plausible path has emerged through which Manchin could build a more cooperative and deliberative Senate. It’s narrow, but it’s there.
Part of the strategy relies on changing the rules. Manchin has said, over and over again, that he will not eliminate or weaken the filibuster. I wish he’d reconsider, but he won’t. The possibility remains, however, that he will strengthen the filibuster.
Historically, the filibuster was a way for committed groups of senators to force debate, for as long as they wanted, on issues of unusual importance to them. Modern filibusters betray that legacy. They do not require debate, they do not require the intense physical commitment of the minority and they do not encourage the long, dramatic deliberations that focus the American public on issues of consequence.
It’s possible to imagine a set of reforms that would restore something more like the filibuster of yore and rebuild the deliberative capacities of the Senate. This would begin with a variation on the congressional scholar Norm Ornstein’s idea to shift the burden of the filibuster: Instead of demanding 60 votes to end debate, require 40 (or 41) to continue it.
That would return the filibuster to something more like we imagine it to be: Impassioned minorities could hold the floor with theatrical speeches, shining public attention on their arguments, but the majority could end debate if the minority relented. To sustain this kind of filibuster would be grueling, which is as it should be. The filibuster is an extraordinary measure, and it should require extraordinary commitment to deploy.
The majority, for its part, would have to carefully weigh the consequences of proceeding with partisan legislation: They would gamble weeks or months of Senate time if they chose to face down a filibuster, with no guarantee of passage on the other end. A reform like this would demand more from both the majority and the minority and ignite the kinds of lengthy, public debates that the Senate was once known for.
In leaked audio published by The Intercept on Wednesday, Manchin appeared to favor exactly this kind of change. “I think, basically, it should be 41 people have to force the issue versus the 60 that we need in the affirmative,” he said.
In addition to changing the rules, Manchin could embrace his role as a broker of legislative compromise. His leverage is immense, and he could use it to force Republicans as well as Democrats to the table. But on voting rights, at least, Manchin hasn’t been wielding his power symmetrically.
“The truth, I would argue, is that voting and election reform that is done in a partisan manner will all but ensure partisan divisions continue to deepen,” Manchin wrote in The Charleston Gazette-Mail this month.
In suggesting that he would oppose any voting reform that was not bipartisan, Manchin offered Republicans a veto over the legislation rather than a choice between partisan and bipartisan bills. He was not asking of them what he was asking of his colleagues, or even of himself.
But on Wednesday, news broke that Manchin’s position was shifting. He is circulating a compromise voting rights memo that he believes could serve as the basis for a bipartisan bill. It eliminates much of what Democrats wanted, like the more ambitious campaign finance reforms, but it bans partisan gerrymandering, restores key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, makes Election Day a public holiday and puts in place automatic voter registration. It also includes some Republican priorities, like mandating that voters show certain forms of identification.
But the question Manchin faces isn’t whether there’s a voting rights bill he can support. It’s whether he’s willing to force Republicans to accept it. As the hinge vote, Manchin could offer both sides a choice: a bipartisan bill designed by Manchin (and whatever allies he chooses) or the outcome on voting rights they fear most — for Democrats, that would be nothing, and for Republicans, that would be everything.
If Democrats refuse to support his bill or offer something reasonable in return, Manchin could join with Republicans to kill it. If Republicans refuse to support it or offer something reasonable in return, he could join with Democrats to pass the original For the People Act, or something more like it.
Core to this strategy is Manchin admitting something he often pretends not to see: It is not in the Republican Party’s interest to cooperate with Democrats on major legislation. Republicans would prefer to pass nothing and watch Joe Biden’s presidency fail. This is not my supposition or slander. This is their own testimony.
“Mitch McConnell’s come under a lot of criticism for saying at one point he wanted to make sure that Barack Obama was a one-term president,” Senator John Barrasso, a member of the Republicans’ Senate leadership team, said. “I want to make Joe Biden a one-half-term president.”
Just as Manchin believes he needs to force Democrats to agree to compromise bills, so too does he need to force Republicans to agree to those bills. Bipartisanship needs to go both ways. If Manchin allows Republicans to kill any bill they do not choose to support, he will be strengthening their incentives for partisanship.
I said, at the top of this column, that Manchin is a political magician. So far he’s mostly been an escape artist, wriggling free of the partisan gravity that governs almost all other Senate elections. But if he could turn the filibuster into a rule that actually encouraged debate and deliberation and pass a bill that made automatic voter registration and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act the law of the land (and partisan gerrymandering a thing of the past), that would truly be his greatest trick.
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y66, on 2021-June-14, 15:06, said: