OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Manchin in the middle

Rather than demonizing him as a Republican in poor disguise who ought to go ahead and join the Republicans--which would deliver the U.S. Senate to Mitch McConnell--Democrats ought to be thankful for Joe Manchin.

The Democrats' only hope of retaining power after these midterms is to restrain themselves from their instincts to overplay their policy hands and engage in the tiresome tit-for-tat with similarly overplaying Republicans.

The only mandate they got out of the last election was to behave better than Donald Trump and otherwise hold their horses.

It was to govern with smart strategic pragmatism and incrementalism to produce an occasional policy advancement, ideally with a few Republican votes to try to get off the biennial up-and-down seesaw with the GOP.

As their unlikely 50th vote in the U.S. Senate, hailing as he does from the Trump-diseased state of West Virginia, the savvy and personable Manchin must concern himself with self-survival in a way that happens to serve broader Democratic tactical and strategic interest.

Yet the Democratic left decries him as egomaniacal and power-hungry. And it might be that he enjoys leveraging uncommon power.

But that doesn't mean it's not helpful to Democrats for him to do so.

James Carville is as yesteryear as I am, but he still knows a few things, one of which is that, as he put it, Democrats can't afford to get to the left of Manchin because they don't have the numbers and the deck is stacked against them already because of the inordinate Senate-electing power of small red states.

To have Manchin occupy a seat from small red-state West Virginia is kind of like stealing a seat, the decisive one. So, Democrats ought to appreciate rather than decry him, especially since he votes with them about two-thirds of the time, including in vain on Tuesday to deny a filibuster on voting rights. He only strays on high-profile issues when his survival is at stake and his personal interest happens to blend for the time being with the broader Democratic interest.

Manchin is simply the kind of senator Mike Beebe would have been if he had chosen to run at an opportune time a decade or more ago.

Manchin is a non-golfing Beebe. He seems to enjoy negotiating with Mitt Romney and Susan Collins the way Beebe enjoys a birdie opportunity at the Searcy Country Club.

If you think Beebe would be a better Arkansas senator than Tom Cotton or John Boozman, then you ought to appreciate Manchin.

And his Democratic colleagues do appreciate him. Some of them, anyway.

His declared opposition to ending the filibuster, and the heat from the left he takes for it, provides cover to a dozen or so Democratic senators who don't want to do away with the filibuster, fearing repercussion and long-term effect, but don't want to have to say so and incur the left's wrath.

As long as Joe and Arizona's Kyrsten Sinema do their dirty work, they can stay clean.

Ending the filibuster would be a fateful overplay, leading to the Republicans' swift return not just to power, but to newly unfettered power thanks to the filibuster repeal the Democrats would have teed up for them.

On infrastructure, Manchin insists on spending less and bringing 10 or 12 Republican senators along. There is nothing wrong with having a few GOP partners as you accept that some new infrastructure is better than none and that this will not be the last infrastructure spending ever undertaken.

And on voting rights, Manchin's opposition has done the Democrats more than the favor of sparing them a political overplay and legal vulnerability by seeking to infringe too much on state control of elections--and losing the vote, anyway, since Republicans are unanimous in filibustering.

He has countered with an incremental and decent voter rights bill. It would mandate more early voting with a guarantee of 15 consecutive days of it, expand voter ID options to include utility bills, forbid gerrymandered redistricting, and make Election Day a federal holiday so that working people could be off work for the convenience of voting.

Now what is so horrible about that? It can't be all that horrible, considering that President Biden has said he likes it as a fallback position and even Bernie Sanders says he's open to it should it come to that kind of retreat, which it will.

The way to stop state-imposed voting discouragement is to win some governorships and state legislative seats, an objective that would be aided by a tactically restrained national party.

Of course there always is the option for Democrats to disown Manchin and leave West Virginians to their natural Trumpian devices.

It'd be all right, I guess. McConnell has plenty of experience as majority leader. He'd know what to do.


John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

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