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But here we/I are, talking about both Joe and Donald still, one for being obstinate and clueless, refusing to let the outdated past go and the other…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

What the F**k, Joe Manchin?!!!

WV Senator Joe Manchin, contemplating how he’s going to screw the Democrats.

I don’t get it.

Seriously, I really don’t.

Senator Joe Manchin just announced for Biden’s Infrastructure bill to pass, it has to be ‘bipartisan’. Yes, you saw that, ‘bipartisan’. Joe seems to think the GOP is ready and willing to pass anything that might help average Americans, and thus maybe reflect well on President Joe Biden. No, Joe, that won’t happen, ever, not if the Republicans can help it. And Hey! With the help of their buddy Manchin, they can help it!

Joe Manchin is helping to kill the very popular agenda of a Democratic president, a member of Manchin’s very own party. This is a bill that would greatly benefit his own constituents, the very people who elected him to help them!!!

I…It’s just that... It’s like…

I got nothing.

It’s just fucking insane.

I’ve been buying this ‘man of the Senate’ crap, at least for a while. I gave him some line... Let it play it out... Thinking, ‘Well, maybe he’s sincere about this’ but now… gotta cut that line. He’s not interested in actually helping people, even those back in his home state. He seems to care more about burnishing his own brand than helping his voters. He’s playing to his base, without actually delivering for that base. He’s David Copperfield, preforming the illusion of legislating while actually just waving his hands and throwing up smoke.  

In other words, he’s a Republican.

He was already in cement up to his knees with the ‘no tampering with the filibuster’ pledge, now he’s up to his neck, dead set on killing the infrastructure bill, hell, the whole Biden agenda, unless ten Republicans sign on.

I don’t understand what his game is here, unless he’s playing a re-election game with the people of West Virginia, polishing his ‘bipartisan, man-in-the-middle’ image at the expense of, well, our democracy. Kyrsten Sinema’s game is more transparent and pretty damn disgusting, but comes down the same thing, but with more “maverick” trimmings ala the rep John McCain was supposed to have during his senate tenure. Could it really be that openly callous? Or is he actually that clueless as to who and what the current bunch of radical Republicans are? They’re not conservatives and haven’t been since Reagan; they’re insurgents, radicals pretending to be ‘conservative’ but unable to define what they are for, only what they are against. And what they are against is allowing Democrats air to breathe… literally.

Senator, we need to talk.

———————————————-

Dear Joe, old buddy, ‘ol building-and-loan-pal,

Well, Joe, where are they? Where are the Magical Republicans, ready and eager to sign on to help save the crumbling physical and mental infrastructure of America? Where are the ten brave GOP souls who want to bust out of Mr. Mitch’s Reform School for Trumpaholics (secret cure, more Trump), step into the sun and proclaim they want to help Americans?

Yes… that is the sound of crickets, and not the cool Buddy Holly kind.

Joe, if you want this bill to be bipartisan, why don’t you and Kyrsten get out there and convince those ten to step forward and vote with you? Frankly, because you can’t. I do believe if the filibuster weren’t in play (though it always is, isn’t it?) you just might get those votes. But, since this is the party of Trump, and especially the Senate of Mitch McConnell, (Minority Leader be damned) you won’t get them. You know it.

You know it, Joe.

Time to pack it up. You lost this one. Time for the agenda that 80 million people voted for to go forward. Time for you and Senator Sinema to accept the fact you’re being/been played. Time to help the people of West Virginia get their roads, bridges fixed, get the childcare they need, and help with their aging parents. Time to give them the relief promised. Time to be a different kind of hero, Joe, one that gets things done for the people who elected him.

Time to deliver for the people.  

Magical Republicans be damned.

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.

Mitch Has a Message For America

Mitch might be putting up a thumb, but he’s really thinking ‘middle finger’.

There was a time, and I’m not completely crazy here, when politicians actually tried to help people other than themselves. Or at least they helped other people while helping themselves. Something got done, benefits at least trickled out occasionally to ordinary Americans and the country lurched slowly forward.

 Yeah, those were good… times?

All that’s done now, and has been for the last few decades. Helping people had its run, but we’re on to other things now. We’re in the age of announcing, via statements to the DC press, that we’re helping ourselves as policy and acting as if that is a benefit, as if that was what we were elected to do in the first place. Hurting the country and their own voters as if that is what those voters wanted all along. “Please, make sure our lives are harder, our struggles more painful so you win more power!”

“Can do!”

Kentucky Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is always one to put his own power and that of his party before the good of the country. We saw that under Obama with McConnell’s proclamation that his job was to make Obama a ‘one-term president’. Fought everything, from healthcare for the uninsured, to stimulus designed to get us out of a financial disaster presided over by Obama’s Republican predecessor. This opposition lengthened the recovery by years, needlessly causing financial pain to Americans. Now, he’s at it again.

This time McConnell has said “One hundred percent of my focus is on stopping this new administration.” Not on helping the American people, not on getting the country back to sanity after a devastating pandemic that killed well over a half million people, not trying to revive the economy, no. Petty politics is where his head is, preserving his own power at the cost of the country is his goal, but then it always was.

Not only did he try to kill the covid relief bill, now he’s trying to kill infrastructure, voting rights, and a bi-partisan investigation into the origins and happenings of the January 6th insurrection. After the Democrats gave basically everything the GOP was asking for, he proclaims it ‘not enough’. He not only is trying to kill it by allowing a filibuster, he’s also lying about the nature and makeup of the committee itself.  

Why?

He’s worried it could “could hurt the party’s midterm election message,” which is ‘Biden is horrible, he’s done nothing (because we made sure he could do nothing), he’s too ‘woke’, he destroying America, so vote for us’. He’s worried finding out the truth about an attack on the US Capitol would somehow hurt the GOP’s message. Scared of the truth.

Again, why? They claim it was ‘antifa’ and Black Lives Matter supporters, now is their chance to prove it.

Why is the GOP afraid of what a bi-partisan look at the insurrection would find? Well, they must know it was their supporters out there beating police, using the very Trump flags they were flying as blunt weapons to put cops in the hospital, smash windows, and use the shields stripped from the police to break down the doors of the Capitol. Instead of facing up to this fact, and dealing with the fallout and the lies that brought us all to that day and to this, to try to protect themselves and their colleagues from further attacks…

…they filibustered it. Ignore it, and the insurrectionists will just go away.

I hear Joe Manchin is oh so very shocked and disappointed. The very thing that nearly everyone told him would happen, that the GOP would block everything regardless of benefit no matter what, has happened.

And I hear there’s gambling in the back room at Rick’s.

And then McConnell announced opposition to police reform that does away with ‘qualified immunity’, the bizarre rule that lets police get away with civil and criminal acts (like killing people), upending negotiations his own party member Tim Scott is carrying on with the Senate Democrats.  

So, no money for crumbling infrastructure, childcare, elder care, no police reform, no voting reform and protection, no investigation into the threat against our democracy, all because it “could hurt the party’s midterm election message.”

The Republican message seems to be “Fuck You.”

And nothing has stopped them from getting that message out in the last 40+ years.

Are you finally listening, Senators Manchin and Sinema?

The Last Free Election

Vote here, while we still can.

 “When you give up integrity the rest is easy”.

- JR Ewing

Was our last free election in November of 2020?

It was if the GOP has its way.

What we are seeing right now is an extension of the January 6th coup attempt, a slow-motion insurrection going on in the states where the Republicans hold the legislature. They are purging the party of anyone who doesn’t at least pretend that Donald Trump won an election he lost by 7 million votes. They are working to suppress the votes of those who dare not to vote Republican, to remove barriers that hold them from throwing out the will of the voters, to make flesh the bones of what Trump tried to do in the months after he lost. To make the ‘Big Lie’ our new reality.

Georgia, for example, in 2020 had Brad Raffensperger as Secretary of State. He oversaw a fairly uneventful (as actual electoral problems go) election. It was after the call was made and the outcome was one not expected by Trump and the Republicans that the problems occurred. Now, for a bit of context here, Raffensperger oversaw an election system set up by the current Georgia Governor Republican Brian Kemp when Kemp was Secretary of State, a system designed to elect Republicans. Kemp threw every dirty trick he could in his run for governor and as Secretary, there were a lot he could throw.  

That is the system that Raffensperger oversaw. It should have worked, but it didn’t, at least not the way the Georgia GOP thought it would. Shock turned into anger, turned into accusations of fraud, fanned by the lies of Trump and his supporters. Raffensperger, to his credit, stood up to it, denied the lies and held open recounts of the votes. He didn’t try to ‘find’ the votes Trump demanded he find. He actually ‘stopped the steal’, the attempted theft of the election in Georgia by Trump and his supporters.

Yeah. Well, the Georgia legislature fixed that. They removed the Secretary of State as head of the board of elections, making that position a political appointment. No more Raffensperger getting in their way. They also gave themselves the power to remove local election officials and reject vote totals if they suspect ‘fraud’. How do they define fraud?

When Democrats win, of course. It is obviously a crime and cannot be allowed.

Silly voters, you got it wrong! Don’t worry, we’ll fix that for you.

They are tossing anyone who will not toe the Trump ‘Big Lie’ line, from local election boards (remember Republican Aaron Van Langevelde in Michigan, the election board member who voted to certify the Biden votes? They got rid of him) to national leaders like Liz Cheney. They are setting up the mechanics to deny any Democrat who would win the 2024 presidential election the position. What seemed like fantasy in 2020, refusing to certify the election and throwing it to a GOP congress who would then decide the election themselves, is now the goal. This is the Republican dream, power without having to actually rely on people voting for them. Why bother with voting when you can just take power? Why pass go to collect $200? Just reach over to the tray and take $200, or maybe more? Who’s going to stop you?

The GOP is a party that has given up on voters and democracy. As demographics change they see their base shrink. If this was a business, they would introduce new products, try to grow into new markets, try to figure out what the people want and work to give it to them. Identify the need, and fill it. The problem here is the majority no longer wants what the Republicans are selling. Lower taxes for the rich, fewer services, and no social safety net for Americans just isn’t a good sell (never was, which is why they push the never-ending culture war), and they’re slowly running out of angry White people, so do they change their message to appeal to a broader audience? No, they just won’t bother with that messy democracy stuff anymore, too uncertain. Better to just take power, to declare the opposition as ‘un-american’ and ‘enemies’ and any defeat of Republicans as ‘fraud’.

There will not be another national election, or probably even local, where if a Republican loses they will not cry ‘fraud’. It’s already happening, Trump has shown them the way, what they must do in the future, and that’s exactly what they will do. Why not? Who will stop them?

They will audition this in 2022 in the sticks to see how it will play. 2024 is opening night.

This is the worst kind of ‘doom and gloom’ porn, I know, where the writer pelts you with godawful news, hardballs thrown fast and furious, one smacking you as you duck the others. I know, but this is what is happening right now, as I type this in a slow dawning morning here in Seattle. A fix for all I write here is sitting in the US Senate right now, S. 1, about to be introduced by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, where it will die under the weight of a Republican filibuster. Right now, with this ‘Senate tradition’ the anti-democratic filibuster in place, celebrated by those who enjoy the fruits of nothing getting done, the proposed bill making it easier to vote will gasp and will die.

What to do?

We all know who is holding this up. Senator Joe Manchin claims bipartisanship is more important than actual reform, and his definition of ‘bipartisanship’ is not that the majority of the country (Democrats and Republicans) support it, it’s that the majority of his friends in the Senate support it, country be damned. Now that may be harsh, but I really don’t care. That is the motive I attribute to such an attitude that puts a Senate rule over the will of the people, over the health of our governing principles, our democracy. What else can we say about it?

We can say it to Joe, and the rest of the Senate. Manchin’s contacts are below. Letters are usually better than emails or calls, but anything will help. Mailing mine out later today.

We’ll talk more tomorrow.  

https://www.manchin.senate.gov/contact-joe