America Didn’t Elect This Joe

Trump and Manchin. Looks like a Junior Prom photo.

I had hoped after I finished my last article on West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin I was done talking about him, just like I had hoped we were all done talking about Donald Trump after November 2020.

But here we/I are, talking about both Joe and Donald still, one for being obstinate and clueless, refusing to let the outdated past go and the other…

Well, for pretty much the same thing.

This weekend Trump gave what had to be the laziest, more low energy speech I’ve ever seen him give, playing the hits for the crowd (stolen election, covid not his fault, Trump good, Biden bad) like a 60s band of on the second to last date of a year long 50th Reunion Tour of dive bars; tired, bored of their own crap, and ready to go back to the greenroom party. Really, I think Trump is a horrible human being, but he can fire up a crowd, and play it like Satan’s golden fiddle. This time, he seemed to be playing Satan’s cousin’s borrowed tambourine. Dead, boring, droning and not wanting to be there. Even Fox News didn’t bother showing it, one of the few times I’ve agreed with Fox.

Trump made no real news, said nothing that wasn’t predicted by nearly everyone, and the biggest takeaway seemed to be that he was wearing something beneath his pants. Maybe an adult diaper, maybe not, but still odd. Can’t say I really care. We’ll see what kind of things he says at the rallies he’s starting to book, to the people who show up to worship His Orangeness. He’s down, but his not out.

Fucking Joe Manchin.

Really, so tired of this man. The world’s most aggravating politician, friend of Donald Trump, shooter of bills he doesn’t like, and almighty Emperor of Bipartisanship, Manchin has now fully come out against the Democrats voting rights reforms, stating he refuses to modify or “weaken” the filibuster, that undemocratic relic that has been used to stop progress for decades. Seriously. Joe Manchin is more interested in protecting the rights of the minority in the Senate, than protecting the rights of minority voters. A bill that protects the voting rights of the American people is too ‘partisan’.

Too partisan.

Making sure people can exercise their right to vote, that states will have to be free and fair in their districting, that they must be answerable to the Constitution, is ‘partisan’? That’s nuts. It makes no sense, unless bowing to the GOP’s screwing of those who dare not vote for them is somehow ‘non-partisan’.

Insanity.

I don’t understand his endgame here. Does he really believe his own crap? Is he really thinking the Republicans are operating in good faith? Where are his ten Republicans, good and true, who are ready to help Biden fix this country?

They aren’t there, and won’t be.  

I’m sure Joe believes he’s the hero here, the one saving democracy from those damn liberals intent on destroying it, hell, we’re all the hero in our own Hollywood screenplay. But the nation did not elect Joe Manchin. For the past ten years, with McConnell in the Senate, (and then Trump in the White House) we have had a minority-ruled government, where people not elected by the majority of Americans, thwart what the majority of American voters want. The minority gets to say ‘no’ to the majority, over and over again. With little to no consequences. They have done this with the filibuster, using this archaic instrument to smash and kill everything not proposed by them.

Long past time for that to change.  

I don’t think Joe’s a stupid person, in fact, I think he’s fairly intelligent. This is all about being a Democrat in a deep red state. If he can stall the popular Biden agenda with silly ‘bipartisan’ nonsense, it gives him cover at election time. Maybe I’m wrong, but I bet I’m not. A political calculation is holding back the necessary reforms needed to keep this ‘American Experiment’ safe and functioning. Much like his Friend Trump, he’s willing to gamble country for reelection.

But if he really wanted to do something about the filibuster, but keep it in place, he easily could.

He could have proposed a ‘talking’ filibuster, as used to be the case (see ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington’, no, really, go see it), or he propose could flipping the vote requirements. Right now, the majority has to get 60 votes, but the minority doesn’t have to do anything, nada, squat. Make the minority prove they have the 40 it would take to uphold their filibuster. Make them gather them up for every vote, and then spring votes on them, make them work to keep their filibuster going. My bet is they’re going to get sick of the whole thing pretty quickly and give in.

There are ways to fix it and still keep it, lords knows why.

But Manchin has proposed nothing. Nothing. He made a couple feints at the beginning of congress, sounding almost reasonable, and but just wants to stamp his foot and hold his breath. If this were a terrible sitcom, we’d have a shot of Manchin, arms crossed and shaking his head, saying “You can’t make me, you can’t make me!” and then cut to him voting ‘yes’ on the bills.

But this isn’t ‘Gilligan’s Isle’, and we’re all the worse for it. At least Gilligan listened to his Skipper.

Manchin has proposed nothing but hope. He ‘hopes’ he can get more of his bipartisan, Republican pals to come to his party, over time, but until then he’s going to keep the rec-room lights on, the punchbowl filled, the chips and dip laid out, and Buck Owens on the turntable. And he’ll sit in that old recliner (with the handle on the side), just waiting for his buddies to leave the frat and show up.

Like we have all the time in the world to save democracy.  

He Won’t Let Us Walk Away

Wouldn’t you like to see that last of this face?

Here we are.

Six months from the defeat of Donald Trump, and we can’t walk away from him. Why is that? After we got rid of the last awful, destructive administration (yep, it was George W.). We talked about him, but we moved on as quickly as we could. Bush helped by staying out of sight and not popping up to swing at every pitch thrown at the backstop.

Trump has no such problem. He issues opinion and edicts, scorn and ‘blistering’ takes on everything thrown his way, and always ties it to either; how great he was and how everyone sucks, or how the election was ‘stolen’ from him and everyone sucks.

Rinse, repeat.

But that’s just Trump himself. We may have Joe Biden in the White House, but we are still living in the sulfur ruins of TrumpWorld ™, which threatens at all times to ignite into wildfire proportions. This is why we can’t rid the national psychic of the man and his followers. He may not have social media anymore, but he still has the entirety of the GOP to push and scream his message. Like an parasite, Trump has hollowed out the host GOP and now controls the party, making them more than happy to keep advocating his lies, keep swinging spiked baseball bats at the legs of democracy, keep riding that wave of Trump grievance into power.

We can’t stop talking about Trump not because he won’t go away (and he just won’t) but because we have to. He’s the toddler that heads right for the china collection the minute you look away, the dog who will pee all over the living room if you don’t pay an ever-increasing amount of attention. Only this time, the living room is our democracy.  

Look at Texas.

Texas has been descending into the fever swamps for years, but now they’re expediting it using Trump’s elections lies as an excuse. This past weekend, under a midnight deadline, the Texas house GOP was trying to ram though a particularly egregious voting ‘integrity’ bill. This was a bill that went into closed-door negotiations one size, and came out nearly double, with all manner of conspiratorial garbage shoved in. Like making it easier for a friendly judge to thrown out an election based on a ‘preponderance’ of the evidence of fraud, instead of actual evidence of fraud. Or limiting early voting to 1pm-9pm on Sundays. Or illegal to transport more than two non-family members to the polls. I wonder who that might be directed at?

Lots of crap like that. And they had the votes.

The Texas house Democrats (the minority, of course) though, after trying everything they could, just slowly, one-by-one, left the chamber. When the time came to vote on the bill, the Democrats were gone, denying the Republicans a quorum. The deadline passed, the bill died. For now. It’ll be back. But it’s still a victory.

The Democrats did two things here: they stopped a voter suppression bill and made headlines, and they took that ugly, racist and grotesque bill and dragged it into the sunlight for all to see. ‘This is what the Trumpublicans are doing! This is what we have to stop!’ and the Texas Democrats literally said “This is how we are fighting in Texas, why aren’t you fighting in Washington?”

They listened to Trump, just as the GOP is listening to Trump, but they acted to stop him. In DC, we have at least two Democrats who refuse to listen, who refuse to act and will likely continue to do so until it is too late. Joe Manchin, I think, has a stubborn if deluded sincerity to his insistence on a bipartisanship that hasn’t existed in decades, killed mostly by the grab for power by one party. The other, Kyrsten Sinema… Well, I have no idea what the hell Sinema thinks she’s doing. Arizona, her state, is a purple state where the GOP is screaming that it’s really dark, blood red if you only count the votes the right way. Maybe she thinks she’s keeping to the middle? Maybe she thinks she’s being a ‘maverick’ by acting like well, a jerk. She does admire John McCain she says, but playing cute games while the building is on fire is not the way to be a ‘maverick’, it’s the way to be a dead donkey.

And out of a job next election. If we still have elections by then.

No, we can’t look away from Trump and get on with our lives as much as we all yearn to do so, because he and his followers are still there, flicking matches into the pool of gas that is the country at the moment, trying to stay in power, or just to see what will happen if it all goes up at once.