If BBB Passes, Grit Your Teeth and Give Manchin (and Sinema) Some Credit

This begins regular members-only reports on what we are seeing and hearing inside Washington on domestic and international issues currently in the headlines.  It will offer opinions and analysis based on our sources, friends, neighbors and people we overhear in the elevator.

Joe Manchin is not a Republican.  If he were, he would be obstructing, twisting the facts and….

Ok, wait, let me start over.  Joe Manchin is not a Republican.  Because Republicans actively oppose the steps necessary to protect voter rights…

Ok, third time’s the charm.  Here goes.  Just because he speaks like a Republican, hangs out with Republicans, supports Republican positions on issues from climate to defending the filibuster, Joe Manchin is nonetheless not a Republican.  Because as infuriating as he is, as much damage to programs that would help serve millions of Americans in desperate need of support, he is doing one thing that Republicans do not do.  He actually is working with the White House to advance important parts of the Biden Agenda.  (For the record, he also votes with Democrats on key issues like confirming judges, confirming senior appointees, and approving initiatives like the American Rescue Plan.)

Manchin is infuriating.  His use of the leverage he currently has translated into over-reach that will make him rightfully despised by a generation.  His nonsense that programs to help preserve child tax credits or other social programs will lead to America becoming an entitlement society is as cruel as it is odious and divorced from reality.  His line that the filibuster helps ensure  bipartisanship has been shown to be unsupported by the facts.

He is as wrong on crucial social issues and on protecting our institutions as he has been arrogant and high-handed in his treatment of the White House agenda and its supporters.

But if there is a Build Back Better package, it will have come into existence because he did not simply turn away from the White House as every single member of the GOP did.  He torpedoed many programs that should have been passed.  But he also will have made it possible to pass not just a BBB initiative that will probably be between $1.5 and $2 trillion, but also the $1 trillion infrastructure package and the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.  That’s a $5 trillion year that will prove transformative for the US economy.  Indeed, thanks to the Rescue Plan, it already has, creating 5 million new jobs in a rebounding economy…more than were created in the past three GOP administrations.

He therefore will deserve some real credit for what has been accomplished…if indeed all goes as we currently think it might.  But others who deserve credit are the president and his White House team who worked and sweated and struggled to pass the best bill possible.  Biden has repeatedly called Manchin a friend (and complimented Krysten Sinema, the other “moderate” Dem who has been an obstacle to Dem unanimity on key programs), working them in the senate tradition from which the chief executive comes.

Biden’s top team have literally been on the phone with Manchin daily.  They have struggled to find common ground.  But as of this writing, they have found some.  They have found enough to create what will be a massive, impactful bill.  They have done this by seeking to understand Manchin’s motives, what makes him tick.

One longtime Dem operative described it to me this way: “If you want to know how Manchin will vote, imagine he is the West Viriginia Chamber of Commerce.  Those are the people he is closest too.  That’s the mindset he is closest to.”  As an example they said, these are people who see some social programs as obstacles to finding the help they need in their businesses, as programs creating an “incentive” for people to stay home.  Yes, this is a GOP talking point.  Yes, it is wrong on almost every level.  But it is how Manchin justifies his views.

Should this package pass therefore, while much of the coverage will be focused on what did not happen, the more remarkable story is what did actually take place and how the president and his team achieved Democratic unity on this agenda when it was essential to passage…and how the progress was accomplished by Dems, Dems of every stripe, progressive Dems and people like Manchin who, it must be acknowledged, in the end, votes with the Dems and has helped make possible what may be looked at as a year of remarkable achievements for the only party still working for the American people.