When Democratic Sen. John Fetterman introduced his Republican colleague Doug McCormick at the GOP midterm convention, I could only roll my eyes. But now former Sen. Joe Manchin has endorsed Sen. Susan Collins, and that’s infuriating.
Let me explain. I have a long record of defending Manchin — even when he attacked Democrats and voted with Republicans against former President Joe Biden’s nominees. But that was while he was representing ruby-red West Virginia in the Senate, possibly running for re-election and open to negotiations when Democrats desperately needed his vote.
Has the former senator missed the last couple of years? The import of the last few elections?
Manchin, now 79, did not run for re-election. And while Democrats don’t need his vote, they do need him to keep quiet if he can’t say anything nice about them. But the former senator, who registered as an independent two years ago, took a different path. He endorsed a woman known best for her expressions of concern and her furrowed brow even as she is almost always on Team Donald Trump — voting with the president 90% of the time in his first term and 95% in his second.
Collins voted yes last year on former Attorney General Pam Bondi. Yes on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, former National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard and Education Secretary Linda McMahon. Yes on Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, an architect of Project 2025. Yes on Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanagh and Neil Gorsuch, who have voted to overturn Roe v. Wade and legal abortion access, gut the Voting Rights Act and concentrate power in the White House — for Trump.
Losing Collins, Manchin said, would be to lose “the soul of the Senate.” And yes, they did work together on bipartisan infrastructure, gun safety and election reform. Yet keeping her, and the Republican majority, risks losing the soul of America.
Has the former senator missed the last couple of years? The import of the last few elections?
In truth, when he was in office, Manchin was a constructive legislator yet constricted by tradition, procedure and his insistence on bipartisanship. This led him to miss at least one critical moment to potentially make a difference: When he joined Sen. Amy Klobuchar and a half-dozen other Senate Democrats in 2021 to introduce the Freedom to Vote Act. The bill, an alternative to the sweeping For the People Act that Manchin had opposed, would have set what the Brennan Center for Justice called “baseline national standards” for voting rights. Its standards would have covered early voting, voter ID, redistricting, voter registration, mail ballots and drop boxes while preserving state flexibility. It would also have made Election Day a holiday.
Does Manchin think that high gas prices and less healthcare are good for his state? That another Republican Senate majority will check Trump in the next two years?
Lawmakers had ample reason to worry about a president or party trying to manipulate an election, even after the fact. Congress and the country had just come through the trauma of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. We all knew what could happen if Trump or anyone like him — obsessed with money, power and loyalty — ever exerted such a cult-like grip over supporters in the future.
So what kept the elections package from becoming law? Democrats had 50 votes and former Vice President Kamala Harris as a tie-breaker. But the party — in particular, Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema and Manchin himself — refused to scrap the filibuster, which requires bills to get 60 votes in order to advance.
Now we’re living the sequel to Jan. 6 with Trump himself, and it’s indescribably worse than the original — in alliances nuked and taxpayer dollars wasted, food aid and health coverage gone, illegal acts and constitutional violations, and in lives lost and trauma inflicted at home, in Iran, in the Caribbean and in prisons from Texas to Africa.
And, not least, the nonstop work of Trump’s high court to skew elections against minorities and Democrats, and of Trump’s enablers in Congress — the Republicans who are bystanders to war, tariffs, corruption, disinformation, a shrunken and dysfunctional government and the president’s ongoing project to destroy the city around him.
Does Manchin think that high gas prices and less healthcare are good for his state? That another Republican Senate majority will check Trump in the next two years? That Collins will transform from credulous to courageous?
Last week, after Fetterman’s convention cameo, humorist Andy Borowitz wrote: “In an emotional tribute on Wednesday, former Senator Joe Manchin ceded the title of most-despised Democrat in history to Senator John Fetterman.” That game is once again afoot now that Manchin has endorsed Collins. I’m not convinced, however, that it will do her much good. Maine knows her well, and polls suggest voters there may be ready to move on.
As for Manchin, it makes me wonder anew who he really is and what he really wants. Because the stakes are clear to most us: Win or die.
The post Why Joe Manchin’s endorsement of Susan Collins is so infuriating appeared first on MS NOW.
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