Why Joe Manchin Is So Willing And Able To Block His Party’s Goals | FiveThirtyEight 11/1/21, 4:07 PM

Why Joe Manchin Is So Willing And

Able To Block His Party’s Goals
Perry Bacon Jr. 9:53 AM

Mar. 31, 2021, at

Caroline Brehman / Getty Images

Senate Democrats need all 50 members of their caucus to band together to

pass bills that don’t have any GOP support. So, in theory at least, any
senator could constantly force the party to bend to their will.

In reality, though, only Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia is using that power.
He’s already blocked President Biden’s nominee to run the White House

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Office of Management and Budget, and he forced congressional Democrats

to make changes to the economic stimulus bill before he would provide his
needed “yea” vote. Manchin is also opposing proposals embraced by the
Biden administration and most congressional Democrats to raise the federal
minimum wage to $15 per hour and to mandate background checks for
nearly all gun sales.

‘There’s a reason why … (GOP has) tried to make it harder

for people to vote’: Silver

Perhaps most important, Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona are
the two Senate Democrats most strongly opposed to changing the
chamber’s filibuster rules. That opposition is becoming increasingly
controversial within the Democratic Party as Republicans in states such as
Georgia enact laws that will likely make it harder for liberal-leaning people to
vote and have their ballots counted. Democrats won’t be able to pass laws
pushing back on these GOP provisions without changes to the filibuster
rules.

So, why is Manchin the only senator really using that leverage and thereby
impeding the goals of many in his party? It’s pretty simple, actually. He’s the
only one who can use that leverage and who wants to. He can because no
Democratic senator is less beholden to the party than the senior senator
from West Virginia. He wants to because he seems to have different goals
and political values than many others in the party.

Manchin’s freedom from the Democratic Party

Because voters increasingly back the same party in congressional and
presidential races, only six of the 100 currently serving senators are from a

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different party than the one their state backed in the 2020 presidential
election.1 Even among that group, Manchin stands apart. Hillary Clinton and
Biden were completely trounced by Donald Trump in West Virginia in 2016
(42 percentage points) and 2020 (39 points), respectively. But in 2018,
Manchin won in West Virginia (by 3 points) despite an aggressive GOP effort
to defeat him.

Manchin has a strong electoral record

Percentage point difference in vote share between senator and presidential

candidate of the same party in that senator’s state, since 2000

Senate Presidential
senator state pty year vote % year vote % pt. diff.
Snowe ME Republican 2006 74% 2008 40% 34 pts
Dorgan ND Democrat 2004 68 2004 35 33
Byrd WV Democrat 2000 78 2000 46 32
Conrad ND Democrat 2000 61 2000 33 28
Baucus MT Democrat 2008 73 2008 47 26
Manchin* WV Democrat 2012 61 2012 35 25
Snowe ME Republican 2000 69 2000 44 25
Chafee RI Republican 2000 57 2000 32 25
Conrad ND Democrat 2006 69 2008 45 24
Baucus MT Democrat 2002 63 2004 39 24
Collins* ME Republican 2014 68 2016 45 24
Lee* UT Republican 2016 68 2016 45 23
Bayh IN Democrat 2004 62 2004 39 22
Nelson NE Democrat 2006 64 2008 42 22
McCain AZ Republican 2004 77 2004 55 22
Byrd WV Democrat 2006 64 2008 42 22
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Inouye HI Democrat 2004 76 2004 54 22

Rockefeller WV Democrat 2008 64 2008 42 21
Collins* ME Republican 2008 61 2008 40 21
Grassley* IA Republican 2004 70 2004 50 20
Rockefeller WV Democrat 2002 63 2004 43 20
Manchin* WV Democrat 2018 50 2020 30 20
Reed* RI Democrat 2002 78 2004 59 19
Grassley* IA Republican 2010 64 2012 46 18
Hoeven* ND Republican 2010 76 2012 58 18

*Still serving.

Excludes races that were uncontested by one of the two major parties.
Senators’ electoral performance is compared with the presidential
candidate’s from the same party in the senator’s state — that same year or,
in the case of midterm elections, two years later.

Source: Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections

In fact, considering the extreme GOP lean in West Virginia, Manchin’s 2012
and 2018 victories are two of the most impressive wins of any American
politician in the 21st century.

What’s Manchin’s secret? It’s hard to pinpoint. He votes with Republicans

more than most of his Democratic colleagues do, but so did former Sens.
Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, and they were
blown out in 2018 even as they ran in states that are a little less GOP-leaning
than West Virginia. Manchin is a well-known figure in West Virginia because
he was once governor. But Democrats have run former or sitting governors in
other red states (Tennessee’s Phil Bredesen in 2018, Montana’s Steve

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Bullock in 2020), and they haven’t done nearly as well as Manchin. Manchin
is personable, but not spectacularly charming or charismatic.

However he is doing it, though, Manchin’s winning a very red state gives him
incredible power. He is a lifelong Democrat and seems committed to the
party. But he doesn’t really owe Biden, his fellow Senate Democrats or the
formal Democratic Party much of anything — his political brand is really
separate from theirs.

So Democrats don’t have much, if any, leverage over the West Virginia
senator. Prominent Democrats are surely aware that Manchin could switch
parties and join the GOP and that that might help his political career, so they
can’t really attack him too harshly when he takes more conservative stands.
Also, there is virtually no chance that a Democrat to the left of Manchin
could win a general election in West Virginia, so Democrats can’t really keep
Manchin in line with the threat of a primary challenge, either.

“What are they going to do … go into West Virginia and campaign against
me? Please, that would help me more than anything,” he told The New York
Times recently, referring to the inability of the Democratic left to challenge
him.

Indeed, the lack of a credible primary threat makes Manchin freer to buck his
party than Trump-skeptical Republican Sens. Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt
Romney and Ben Sasse were able to when Trump was president. All four of
these senators represent states where a Republican to the right of them
could win a general election. Similarly, Sinema has cultivated a brand
independent of the Democratic Party but probably can’t veer too far right in
a state where both Biden and Democratic Senate candidate Mark Kelly won
last year.

This all explains why Manchin can buck Biden and other Democrats without
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fear of electoral repercussions, but it doesn’t necessarily explain why he is

doing so.

Why Manchin is pushing the Democratic agenda

rightward
You might say, “Duh, reelection.” But it’s not clear that Manchin’s behavior is
totally, or even mostly, electorally driven. First, we’re not positive that
Manchin will run again. The West Virginian will be 74 in August. So, if he
seeks another term — he’s up for reelection in 2024 — he would essentially
be planning to remain in the Senate until he is 83.

Old age isn’t the only reason Manchin might retire. He may be great at
electoral politics, but Manchin is not immune to the broader political
environment — one where, as we mentioned, the majority of people in red
states such as West Virginia increasingly vote only for Republican
candidates. Manchin was first elected to the Senate in a special election in
2010, winning the race by 10 points. Two years later, he won reelection by 24
points. But in 2018, he won by only 3 points. It is likely Manchin would have
lost his Senate race had it taken place in either 2016 or 2020, since a
presidential election would have drawn out more solidly Republican voters
than a midterm. Manchin’s next race will be in 2024, which is, of course, a
presidential election year, so Manchin might be an underdog.

And even if Manchin is running and thinks he can win, it’s not totally clear
that his moves right now to limit Biden’s agenda are that electorally helpful.
Manchin no doubt benefits electorally from keeping some distance from the
Democratic Party. At the same time, can Manchin really earn a lot of votes by
pushing Democrats to offer people $300 a week in federal unemployment
benefits instead of $400, as he did during the stimulus negotiations? Will
West Virginia swing voters in 2024 remember and appreciate that Manchin

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wouldn’t go along with Biden’s nominee to run OMB? On both questions the
answer is probably not. In fact, on the most-high-profile issues (the stimulus
package, Trump’s impeachments), Manchin tends to vote with his party.

Will the stimulus bill boost Democrats’ electoral

prospects?

So, if it’s not all about electoral politics, what else is driving Manchin to break
with Democrats?

First, the West Virginia senator seems to sincerely disagree with the
dominant view among Democrats that the GOP is totally unwilling to work
with Democrats when a Democratic president is in office. Manchin argues
that there is real potential for bills pushed by Biden and Democrats to get
support from at least a few GOP lawmakers if Democrats really try to work
with the GOP. He is balking at changing the filibuster rules in part because
he thinks that bipartisanship is possible but neither party is trying hard
enough.

As Manchin told Capitol Hill reporters recently, after they saw him chatting
with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor, “We just talked. I
talk to everybody. Wouldn’t it be nice to see Democrats and Republicans talk
like that? Wouldn’t it be nice to see him and Chuck Schumer talk like that?”

Mike Plante, a West Virginia-based Democratic strategist, told me, “Joe

always feels there is room for compromise.”

The evidence is considerable that the overwhelming majority of Republicans

on Capitol Hill aren’t going to support any major policy initiatives backed by a
Democratic president. So Manchin’s view of his GOP colleagues seems
somewhat untethered from reality. But his optimism about the potential for

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bipartisanship makes sense from his perspective. After all, Manchin is

friendly with a lot of Republicans on Capitol Hill, most notably Collins. He and
a bipartisan group of lawmakers were key figures in passing a COVID-19
relief bill in December. (That was, of course, when Trump was still in office.)

Second, Manchin may not see the contentious issues of the day — in
particular, the filibuster and voting rights — in the extremely high-stakes,
democracy-in-peril, “Jim Crow in new clothes” way that other Democrats do.
West Virginia is not Georgia, which has a Republican coalition dominated by
white people trying to hold on to power by any means necessary against a
growing Democratic coalition in which people of color are the majority. West
Virginia’s non-Hispanic white population is 92 percent, much higher than the
nation overall (60 percent). I’m not suggesting that Manchin doesn’t care
about Black voting rights, but he doesn’t have a huge Black constituency
pressing him on this issue, as only 4 percent of West Virginians are Black
(compared with 13 percent in the nation overall).

“Manchin Values Bipartisanship Over Voting Rights,” read the headline of a

New York magazine article on Thursday, aptly capturing a growing sentiment
among Democrats.

Third, it’s entirely possible that Manchin really cares about voting rights but
thinks that getting rid of the filibuster and passing election-reform legislation
on party-line votes is bad electorally for the broader Democratic Party (not
just for him) and worse than Democrats trying to win elections even after
some of these GOP-backed voting laws are in place. Manchin, as I noted
earlier, seems deeply committed to the Democratic Party. But he might
disagree with the dominant electoral thinking in the party. After all,
emphasizing bipartisanship is Manchin’s strategy, and he’s the one winning
in a super-Republican state.

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“I’m concerned about the House pushing an agenda that would be hard for
us to maintain the majority,” Manchin told The New York Times.

Fourth, Manchin seems to be ideologically to the right of most congressional

Democrats, electoral considerations aside. In a Democratic Party that is
increasingly organized around pushing for economic and racial equality,
Manchin and the party’s more liberal members are essentially from different
planets. There is little evidence that Manchin got into politics to implement
his deeply held vision for changing the American economy (like Sen.
Elizabeth Warren) or its racial policies (Sen. Raphael Warnock). Manchin is
more an old-style politician. He grew up in a small coal mining town in West
Virginia (Farmington), where his father and grandfather had both been
mayor. In 1982, at age 35, he was elected to the West Virginia House of
Delegates and climbed the ladder from there — state senator, secretary of
state, governor, U.S. senator.

“Joe Manchin was always a center to center-right Democrat,” said Plante.

Plante managed the 1996 gubernatorial campaign of Charlotte Pritt, who
defeated Manchin in the Democratic primary that year. Back then, Manchin’s
more business-aligned moderate politics were to the right of the state, which
was dominated by Democrats aligned with labor unions.

As the current Democratic Party moves left, Manchin has to be more

cautious for electoral reasons. But there is little evidence that he is trying to
push that boundary — to be as liberal as West Virginia will allow. In contrast,
Biden seems to be trying to move as far left as electorally possible on a
number of issues.

Put all that together and the Democratic Party’s fate is in the hands of a man
who doesn’t owe the party anything, can’t support some of its agenda for
electoral reasons and probably just disagrees with some of that agenda
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anyway. Much of the Democratic Party believes that the biggest problem in
politics is that the GOP is becoming anti-democratic and that this anti-
democratic drift is an emergency for the country. Manchin sees the
Republican Party as including people he can work with and seems to think
that the biggest problem in politics is that elected officials on both sides
aren’t being bipartisan enough. This difference in views between Manchin
and much of the rest of the party may be irreconcilable. But if they aren’t
reconciled, Manchin’s view will win out, because he has a deciding vote and
seems very much willing to use it.

Aaron Bycoffe contributed research to this article.

Police misconduct trials are rare. Instead, cities pay

millions to settle claims

The new voting restrictions many states are considering

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