The seduction of Joe Manchin
The WaPo tick tock of the effort to persuade Manchin to negotiate the IRA contains this fascinating little tidbit:
Democrats did not want to squander their final opportunity to fulfill the pledges they had made to voters ahead of the 2022 election, so Schumer began work on a smaller measure — one focused on lowering prescription drug prices and insurance premiums. Biden endorsed the approach in a statement on July 15 that omitted any mention of Manchin, stressing: “The Senate should move forward, pass it before the August recess, and get it to my desk so I can sign it.”
But some in the party, long frustrated by inaction on climate change, embarked on a pressure campaign targeting Manchin anyway. A wide array of Democrats including Sens. Carper and Christopher A. Coons of Delaware, Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Tina Smith of Minnesota, and Ron Wyden of Oregon each worked with their aides to canvass environmental groups, energy companies and economists who might have be able to change Manchin’s mind.
Some Democrats enlisted the likes of Summers, a former treasury secretary who had been warning about inflation for a year, to make the case to Manchin that climate spending would not imperil the economy. Others targeted Gates, the former Microsoft chief executive who has a number of clean-energy investments. He eventually rang the West Virginia senator to make the case for climate investments; his office declined to comment.
Hickenlooper, meanwhile, turned to top executives from PG&E, DuPont and other firms. “They were kind of mopey,” the senator recalled in an interview, though he urged them to call Schumer and Manchin and encourage them to keep pursuing a deal. “You can sit on your hands, or be useful,” Hickenlooper said.
A few tried more personal outreach. Only weeks earlier, Coons had huddled with Manchin on a trip to Brussels and Switzerland, discussing policy during hours of conversation. So Coons broached the topic of the fast-warming planet on Monday, July 18, making a direct plea to Manchin during a closed-door meeting in the Hart Senate Office Building.
“There are folks in our party who are saying all sorts of terrible things about you, who believe you were stringing us along for a year and that you were never going to come to a deal because of your state or because of your conflicts of interest,” a source recalled Coons saying. The comment appeared to reference long-standing concerns about Manchin’s ties to the coal industry.
Coons then told Manchin: “I can’t think of a better way for you to prove them all wrong than to sign off on a bold climate deal. Prove every critic wrong.”
Manchin thought for a second, the source said, then responded, “It would be like hitting a homer in the bottom of the ninth, wouldn’t it?”
This suggests that the Democratic base scorn of Manchin proved to be useful. That’s the inside outside game that Democrats have to play if they are going to be successful in the face of silly divas who grandstand. It’s always been that way…. (Remember Joe Lieberman, Bob Kerrey, David Boren, Ben Nelson …. on and on and on?) Sometimes it doesn’t work but this time it did. Thank God.