Following up on tristero’s quip below, I’ve got some reporting by Josh Marshall on what precipitated the “final straw” for Joe Manchin and it’s even dumber than you thought:
We’re getting a bit more sense here of the final blow up that led to the demise of the BBB. Apparently the real blow up was that the White House put out a statement last week in which the President said he believed he was making progress on finalizing a Build Back Better deal with Joe Manchin. The key apparently was that he named Manchin specifically rather than Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema or Manchin and the rest of the caucus or whatever else.
In other words, in what was actually a positive and cordial statement he pointed to Manchin by name. In other words, kinda sorta implicitly saying that Manchin was the hold up but that he was optimistic they’d get to a deal. This apparently set Manchin off and led him to torpedo the negotiations and basically the President’s whole domestic agenda. How do we know this? Steven Clemons goes into the details here and Clemons is very close to Manchin.
As Clemons explains, Manchin saw his being named in the statement as “a breach of process, a breach of spirit, a breach of Joe and Joe working this out.” He seems to believe it was Biden’s staff rather than the President himself who committed the lapse. This is what Manchin was apparently referring to this morning when he told a West Virginia talk radio station: “They drove some things, they put some things out that were absolutely inexcusable.”
The level of pettiness on display here may be difficult to comprehend or believe. But as far as it goes I do believe it.
But the big picture is the important one to understand. For almost a year Manchin has strung his caucus and President Biden along, changing his positions, changing his rationales, being cagey about what he supported or what he would do. He’s strung them along and forced them to play the fool, repeatedly, while being entirely indifferent to the impact of his own actions on the political standing of his colleagues or their deeply held views.
Manchin doesn’t owe any his vote. But someone in his position owes the members of his caucus and a President of his own party a strong good faith effort to get to yes, to be candid, not to embarrass or humiliate his colleagues. He failed to do any of those things. And in his mind it was basically fine to put everyone through the wringer. But the first time the White House gave even the most delicate push back Manchin went berserk and blew everything up. That’s petulant and petty and just pathetic. And yet he has the vote. It’s in his power to do.
None of this changes the reality of the demise of serious climate action or a refundable child tax credit or universal pre-K or a bunch of other things. But it does illuminate the last year and makes clear that ‘getting tough’ on Manchin wasn’t really a tool the White House had in its arsenal. Just putting out a press release that named him and made him feel bad and somehow made him think people would blame him for what was happening made him go postal. The only real argument here is whether the process of coddling Manchin starting in the first weeks of Biden’s presidency helped nurture and fructify the tender sapling of touchiness that has grown into this broad oak tree of clinical think-skinnism we see on display today.
He’s an egomaniac and they read him right. Nothing you can do about that.
I agree with Josh. As I hear everyone screaming at the top of their lung today that this is all Biden’s fault for failing to be more forceful with Manchin and Sinema, I have to shake my head. Ok. Maybe if Biden pulled a Trump and called them a couple of Old Crows or “Cryin’ Joe and Crazy Kyrsten”, that would have made them wilt and come crawling. But when you see that Manchin took offense at being named in a positive press release and abruptly pulled the plug on the Democratic domestic agenda it’s probable that he might not have responded any better to having his arm publicly twisted.
If we know one thing it’s that the razor thin margin in the polarized senate always gave the most conservative Senators veto power and the ones who are showboating morons would be the ones who took advantage of it. Voila — Sinemanchin.
Update: Yep, it was about using his name. But it appears that Manchin and Biden are still talking so …
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and President Joe Biden spoke Sunday night after a major blowup in negotiations around the president’s domestic agenda, three people familiar with the call told POLITICO.
The conversation ended with a sense that negotiations would, in fact, resume around the Build Back Better Act in some form in the new year. The tone of conversation was cordial and it was agreed that they would speak again on legislative priorities.
White House staff had given Manchin a heads-up on Thursday that the president was soon to put out a statement accepting a delay in the Build Back Better Act and that it was going to mention the West Virginia senator by name. Manchin objected, asking that either his name be left out or that he not be alone because his family had already been the target of abuse and he didn’t want to be singled out.
But the statement went out anyway, and contained only Manchin’s name. The senator then snapped at White House aides and told them that he was done negotiating. The West Wing interpreted that as meaning that current talks were done but could pick up again next year.
But Manchin meant that he was totally walking away — which he said publicly a few days later on Fox News Sunday, in a move that blindsided and outraged the White House.
It’s hilarious that he says he didn’t want to be singled out. He has been chasing every microphone he can find for months. If he didn’t want to be “singled out” maybe he should have shut his piehole once in a while. Oy…
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