Skip to content

Manchin’s silent supporters

I posted this a while back on twitter when I got tired of hearing every Capitol Hill reporter say that Manchin has plenty of support among Senate Democrats but couldn’t name any names:

The Daily Beast’s Sam Brody named some of them today:

It was March 5, right before the Senate’s doomed vote to raise the minimum wage to $15, and, as usual, Sen. Joe Manchin was the center of attention.

But there was no need for reporters to swarm the West Virginia moderate. On that day, he was far from the only Democrat who’d give the thumbs-down to a progressive priority. Seven other Democratic senators would vote the same way—and draw far less recognition or criticism.

That tally surprised observers outside the U.S. Capitol building, but few within it.

Manchin may find himself nationally relevant, and widely loathed on the left, for his willingness to buck mainstream positions within the Democratic Party. But over the years, Senate insiders have developed a view that on the toughest and thorniest issues, Manchin isn’t only speaking for himself; there’s usually a handful of senators who agree with him, quietly, and are happy to let him take the heat.

Which senators are counted within this category changes based on the issue or vote at hand. The minimum wage vote provided a rare, clear look at how Manchin can be a tip of a Senate Democratic iceberg on a key issue.

But exactly who’s aligned with him, even discreetly, on another consequential question—whether to end the legislative filibuster—is less clear. Only one other Democrat, Sen. Krysten Sinema (D-AZ), has been as strident about keeping the Senate’s 60-vote threshold as Manchin. A handful of others, such as Sens. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Maggie Hassan (D-NH), have sounded concerned notes or have avoided answering the question entirely.“It’s something of a symbiotic relationship. There are certainly more senators with reservations about the filibuster that are giving Manchin steam to stay firm. But I have also heard from colleagues that none of those other Senators want to play Manchin’s role.”— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)

Some Democrats look at that and argue that Manchin, who has defiantly insisted he will not gut the filibuster under any circumstances, is publicly voicing concerns that this group agrees with privately.

“There are other Democratic members who share his reservations about eliminating the filibuster,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who strongly differs with Manchin on the issue. “Perhaps they’re less outspoken, and perhaps less vehement.”

[…]

Among those whose job it is to influence lawmakers, it’s widely understood that Manchin is almost never on an island. When Manchin speaks, said one lobbyist for a major D.C. firm, “everyone’s ears perk up.”

“He represents not just a significant swing vote,” this lobbyist said. “He represents a handful of the party.”

There is also a belief among both Democrats and Republicans that Manchin’s current status as a black hole of left-wing outrage and media attention spares these other senators from the same treatment. A Democratic aide told The Daily Beast in a May story on Manchin that a lot of members are “happy Joe Manchin is the tip of the spear, getting shot at every day. Seven or eight of them stand behind him.”

The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer’s piece last March on the Koch Network pressuring Senators is a must read to fill out the backstory here:

On a leaked conference call, leaders of dark-money groups and an aide to Mitch McConnell expressed frustration with the popularity of the legislation—even among Republican voters.

In public, Republicans have denounced Democrats’ ambitious electoral-reform bill, the For the People Act, as an unpopular partisan ploy. In a contentious Senate committee hearing last week, Senator Ted Cruz, of Texas, slammed the proposal, which aims to expand voting rights and curb the influence of money in politics, as “a brazen and shameless power grab by Democrats.” But behind closed doors Republicans speak differently about the legislation, which is also known as House Resolution 1 and Senate Bill 1. They admit the lesser-known provisions in the bill that limit secret campaign spending are overwhelmingly popular across the political spectrum. In private, they concede their own polling shows that no message they can devise effectively counters the argument that billionaires should be prevented from buying elections.

A recording obtained by The New Yorker of a private conference call on January 8th, between a policy adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell and the leaders of several prominent conservative groups—including one run by the Koch brothers’ network—reveals the participants’ worry that the proposed election reforms garner wide support not just from liberals but from conservative voters, too. The speakers on the call expressed alarm at the broad popularity of the bill’s provision calling for more public disclosure about secret political donors. The participants conceded that the bill, which would stem the flow of dark money from such political donors as the billionaire oil magnate Charles Koch, was so popular that it wasn’t worth trying to mount a public-advocacy campaign to shift opinion. Instead, a senior Koch operative said that opponents would be better off ignoring the will of American voters and trying to kill the bill in Congress.

Kyle McKenzie, the research director for the Koch-run advocacy group Stand Together, told fellow-conservatives and Republican congressional staffers on the call that he had a “spoiler.” “When presented with a very neutral description” of the bill, “people were generally supportive,” McKenzie said, adding that “the most worrisome part . . . is that conservatives were actually as supportive as the general public was when they read the neutral description.” In fact, he warned, “there’s a large, very large, chunk of conservatives who are supportive of these types of efforts.”

Guess what?

With so little public support, the bill’s opponents have already begun pressuring individual senators. On March 20th, several major conservative groups, including Heritage Action, Tea Party Patriots Action, Freedom Works, and the local and national branches of the Family Research Council, organized a rally in West Virginia to get Senator Joe Manchin, the conservative Democrat, to come out against the legislation. They also pushed Manchin to oppose any efforts by Democrats to abolish the Senate’s filibuster rule, a tactical step that the Party would probably need to take in order to pass the bill. “The filibuster is really the only thing standing in the way of progressive far-left policies like H.R. 1, which is Pelosi’s campaign to take over America’s elections,” Noah Weinrich, the press secretary at Heritage Action, declared during a West Virginia radio interview. On Thursday, Manchin issued a statement warning Democrats that forcing the measure through the Senate would “only exacerbate the distrust that millions of Americans harbor against the U.S. government.”

I’m sure Manchin isn’t the only one they’ve been in touch with.

Published inUncategorized