Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA via AP Images
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) speaks to the press at the Capitol in Washington, May 28, 2021.
On Sunday, the quirky West Virginia Democrat wrote an op-ed in his home state Charleston Gazette-Mail, declaring that he would not vote for the Democrats’ omnibus pro-democracy bill, H.R. 1, called the For the People Act. He also declared categorically, “Furthermore, I will not vote to weaken or eliminate the filibuster.”
The New York Times print headline captured the gravity of the situation: “Breaking Ranks, Manchin Dooms Key Voting Bill.” But as always with Manchin, things are a little more complicated than they seem.
Take the case of the “key voting bill” that Manchin has doomed. This refers to an 818-page behemoth wish list that includes every possible reformer’s dream, from public financing of elections and anti-gerrymander rules, to much tougher conflict-of-interest prohibitions, and a great deal more.
In an ideal world, it would pass Congress overwhelmingly. But this is far from an ideal world. And there are some in the pro-democracy movement who will tell you, way off the record, that treating this nonstarter of a bill as the core objective is not strategically smart.
Far more important for 2022 than H.R. 1 is H.R. 4, also known as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. That bill would restore and expand the preclearance powers of the Justice Department under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which were taken way in the 2013 Supreme Court decision Shelby County v. Holder.
In his majority opinion in Shelby, Chief Justice John Roberts held that preclearance by the Justice Department was no longer warranted because jurisdictions that once discriminated on the basis of race had ceased doing so. It took about ten minutes after the decision came down for much of the Deep South to invent new forms of discrimination and suppression. It would be hard for the high court today to maintain that a new preclearance bill was no longer necessary based on the facts.
Here, Sen. Manchin has left us some hope. He says he is for a version of voting rights restoration that in some ways goes further than H.R. 4. “I continue to engage with my Republican and Democratic colleagues about the value of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act,” he wrote in the same op-ed. Some Manchin-watchers suspect that he went out of his way to trash H.R. 1 in his hometown paper, so that he could more easily support H.R. 4 as the more moderate alternative.
Manchin says he is for a version of voting rights restoration that in some ways goes further than H.R. 4.
Manchin points to GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who has said she is open to supporting some version of the voting rights act. The problem is that she is very lonely in the Republican caucus. At most, one or two other Republicans might vote with her, far short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.
This brings us to the next act of the Manchin drama, Joe and The Filibuster.
Soon, it will be very clear that Republicans are not close to meeting Democrats halfway on public-infrastructure spending. At that point, Democrats will either need to try to break a filibuster and pass the bill by a simple majority, or use the next budget reconciliation (which can’t be filibustered) to do it by simple majority.
My educated guess is that Manchin will refuse filibuster reform to enact the infrastructure bill, but that he will vote with his party to enact infrastructure outlays via reconciliation, just as he did on the last major $1.9 trillion Biden spending bill for COVID relief, in March.
But what about the endgame on voting rights? In the next several weeks, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will bring up one bill after another knowing that all will be killed by filibuster.
This will make clear to Manchin that his fantasy of ten good Republicans coming to the aid of the republic is just that—a fantasy. This is especially the case on voting rights, where the entire Republican game to take back a House and Senate majority is based on voter suppression.
Once it is clear to Manchin that the only way to get the voting rights reform that he supports is via a one-time exemption from the filibuster (which can be done by simple majority), Manchin may walk back his previous stance. There could even be a Manchin-Murkowski bill that Leader Schumer makes the official Democratic bill. Would Manchin allow Republicans to filibuster to death a bill with his name on it?
We’ll soon find out. Whether Democrats stand a chance of having tolerably fair midterm elections next year and keeping control of Congress could literally hinge on which way Manchin goes.
And there is one possible exception to the utter failure of bipartisanship. That is the China bill that Schumer has carefully worked out with leading Republicans. Unless Republicans get cold feet at handing Schumer a win, the $250 billion bill, called the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, which is industrial policy and economic nationalism by another name, could pass the Senate later this week.
Why? One reason is Donald Trump. Where Trump was a total patsy for Vladimir Putin, in his own inept way Trump tried to get tough with China. So that makes it OK for Trump acolytes in the Senate to get tough with China.
Will any of that bipartisanship on China rub off onto voting rights? Sure it will, when Trump and the Republicans abandon the strategy of clinging to power by killing democracy.
