Joe Manchin Says Congress Should Give 'Consideration' to Ousting Cruz, Hawley Over Capitol Insurrect

[JoeOtterbein]

Mediaite

By Reed Richardson Jan 15th, 2021, 9:42 pm

One of the Senate’s most moderate Democrats, Joe Manchin (WV) said that Congress give “consideration” to expelling fellow Senators Ted Cruz (TX) and Josh Hawley (MO) for violating the 14th Amendment’s rule against inciting an insurrection.

During the latest edition of PBS’ Firing Line with Margaret Hoover, the West Virginia senator discussed the events of January 6th and his disapproval of both Cruz and Hawley’s insistence on objecting to the certification of Joe Biden’s victory after the Capitol had just been cleared of violent, pro-Trump rioters who falsely believed Donald Trump had won the 2020 election.

Manchin, who has unequivocally stated that the Capitol assault was an attempted insurrection, then recounted how the 14th Amendment was adopted after the Civil War to ban seditionists from holding office. Both Hawley and Cruz have come under intense criticism and been called on to resign for their open signs of solidarity with the pro-Trump rallygoers not long before hundreds of them stormed the Capitol, injuring dozens of police officers and killing one.

“Since you mentioned it, Senator,” Hoover then quoted from the relevant portion of the Constitution.

snip

more at link

[ProudMNDemocrat]

1. Only to be replaced by other Republicans.....

If that were to happen. Texas and Missouri have Republican Governors. Don't trust Abbott to pick someone who actually wants to govern.

But the shame of being expelled is monumental on your resume and the reason for the expulsion, even worse.

[BGBD]

3. Texas

would require a special election fairly soon after the vacancy. He's get to appoint someone, but not for very long.

[moonscape]

9. Go Beto! How sweet would that be. n/t

[jcgoldie]

13. Maybe another go for Beto?

[Gore1FL]

36. I am OK with that.

Let them put someone in who isn't a seditionist and everyone wins.

[PatrickforO]

47. Well, even so, what Cruz and Hawley have done is despicable. Neither

deserves to remain in the Senate. No matter who might get appointed afterwards, the need for expulsion is absolute.

[BigmanPigman]

2. Manchin, really?

I guess I need to rethink my opinions of him.

[tavernier]

4. Yeah

Kind of shocked me too

[GulfCoast66]

6. It would have been easy for him to switch parties in the last 4 years.

Probably would have helped him. But he did not.

Not every member of the Democratic Party is a progressive. I’m not. But we are still loyal democrats.

[Blue_true]

17. A lot of people ignore that about him.

The guy appears to be a very loyal democrat. He could have easily switched parties, but that doesn’t appear to square up with his politics. He is a true moderate Democrat. I argue that we even need moderate-conservative Democrats in the party, and if we plan to take seats in some places, we will need that to happen. I actually believe that the ying-yang of policymaking between different segments of the party is very healthy, as long as they keep the disagreements on policy within caucus meetings and don’t go running to the Press or Twitter.


BTW, where have you been, in witness protection?

[GulfCoast66]

25. Ok. I disconnected for a while. Mental health and all!

Ironically, my beliefs are not all that moderate. I’m a social democrat. But understand the reality of the situation. If you live in NYC you have no idea what it would take for a Democratic candidate to win in lake county Florida. Same as West Virginia.

There is a long distance between wanting universal healthcare and Medicare for all.

[Blue_true]

44. I believe that many of the people here on DU who come from very progressive

areas don’t really understand what it is like to do daily ideological combat with the people that we live among. I see brutally poor people running around with Trump banners and flags on everything. Those same people vote republican like lemmings, even as republican policies in the state have held them down for the last 2+ decades. It took the efforts of a Democrat, John Morgan, to get the $15 wage law passed, yet, the people that benefit from that law likely will continue to vote for any republican that comes out spewing law & order and family values (even the serial adulterers among them).


I am a social democrat, but more in the line of Angela Merkel, but measurably to the left of her. I can’t think of any policy initiative that more left Democrats support that I don’t believe is the best policy, my issue is how to best realize those policy changes in a nation that as a whole is not where we are politically.

[GulfCoast66]

55. Well stated.

Living in Florida will bring home the idea of politics of the possible quickly.

The guys who I manage make between 22-33 dollars an hour. But look in derision on those making less. Trump voters mostly. I can’t figure them out. They have theirs? We work for a company that could easily pay $20 an hour to everyone. But stock prices you know.

And many of those who make way less have trump stickers on their vehicles. And hate immigrates.

Makes no sense.

[Blue_true]

62. When I worked in corporate America, the people that I dealt with were the highest paid,

along the hourly rate that you stated, but higher when overtime was included. Almost to the person, they were all Neanderthals when it come to recognizing the rights and aspirations of others, they had theirs and didn’t care about anything but kicking anyone trying to climb up back to the ground. But they were not alone, I was one of the few liberals in management.

[BGBD]

28. Manchin also

attacks Democrats a whole lot less than *SOME* of the people who are hero-worshipped on this board. However, you'll get a post deleted if you say they aren't democrats.....yet it seems to be fair game for people to run down Joe Manchin here, because those posts never disappear.

[Blue_true]

45. Yes. I have seen that Manchin is the only Democrat that can be called out

even with insinuations that maybe he should change parties. I don’t like the idea of calling out any proven Democrat, whether they are to the right of me or to the left of me. I will be blunt about whether I believe that their policy prescription pace proposals are wise, but that is part of a healthy debate among people that have the same value systems, with only how to best realize those values separating them.

[Thekaspervote]

7. Surprising !!

[DrToast]

10. I don't understand the hate...at all

He's a Democratic Senator from West Virginia. West Virginia! Dems have no business having that seat. As soon as he's gone, so is that seat.

[redstateblues]

15. I wish he was one of my Senators instead of Marsha Blackburn

[Blue_true]

19. I actually believe that we can retake WVa seats with smart tactics.

The part of that state closest to DC and the metropolitan DC area is increasingly being populated by people who work in DC or metropolitan DC and take trains to and from home. What we need to do is economic expansion into the declining mining areas and work to keep those economies afloat as they transition from mining to future industries and medicine available to citizens. We need a similar effort in inner cities, though I believe there is organic change happening in inner cities right now.

[BGBD]

43. We could win a senate seat there...

in theory, but it would be far fetched. National Democrats can't win there, it's too polarized. A popular WV democrat could win, like Manchin does, but there aren't any popular statewide democrats right now. Democrats have no bench in WV. The next best choice is Ojeda, but he couldn't even win his home district in 2018.

Ben Salango, the Democratic candidate for Governor in 2020 lost by 35 points to Jim Justice, who was a fairly unpopular incumbent. He only managed to win about 60% of the vote in his own primary. Justice did win as a democrat in 2016, but then promptly changed to R at the first chance. Justice also won because he had much greater name recognition across the state than Bill Cole and plenty of money to spend against him.

So, the problem is that there is no Democratic bench of talent in WV right now.

[Blue_true]

46. Don't you have some pretty good Democrats (and youngish)

in the WVa House and Senate? Benches have to be built, that is what I hope Jaime Harrison sets about doing in red states and red areas of blue states and in purple states like Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina, although Georgia seems to have a ton of talented young Democrats active in that state, led by Stacey Abrams, and the Georgia Young Democrats. Georgia Democrats have developed a very effective grassroots system that we Democrats in Florida need to copy - we need to build strength all between elections, not in the last few months before an election. Ossoff and Warnock won because Abrams and others have been building up democratic power in Georgia since a few years before Abrams ran in 2018.

[BGBD]

48. I can't think of any.

Natalie Tennant held the SoS office once, but she was obliterated by Capito in the 2014 Senate race. The last Democrat to win AG is Darrell McGraw. Him and his brother Warren were prominent statewide politicians...but they are both in their 80s now. Doug Reynolds is young and has run statewide before, but he lost by 10 or so points to Morrisey, who Manchin beat for Senate in 2018. There are some Democrats in legislature, but they are not plentiful and I think would have a very hard to even competing for state office. Republicans are still taking democratic seats each cycle.

Honestly, the best chance Democrats have is for Capito to vote for impeachment and the Trump base to turn on her just enough to let her still win the primary but lose in the general to a moderate democrat.

However, the situation is pretty dire and doesn't seem to be improving.

https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/politics/wv-democrats-ready-to-live-and-learn-from-2020-election-set-sights-on-2022-midterm/article_3911e04c-c451-5caf-a4ba-bcdfabd12b4b.html

WV was dominated by democrats for decades.....but it was on the backs of strong unions and with people who's first vote for President was for FDR. Those unions are broken thanks to people like Jim Justice, Don Blankenship, and Robert Murray (may he burn in hell). The FDR Democrats who helped Kennedy win the WH are also all dead now.

Georgia flipped, but it's a much more democratic state in terms of demographics. Lots of college educated people, lots of suburban voters, and some very urban areas. People like that from WV end up moving to GA, VA and NC.

[Blue_true]

52. One problem that we have here in Florida is a brain drain

of a good part of our educated young people. The universities here do a good job of educating young people, but a poor job of spinning off innovative business and industries that utilize the outcomes from research done in the universities, that is changing slowly, led by universities like Florida State University (FSU) and the University of Central Florida (UCF), those two are spinning off a technology infrastructure that should lead to retaining educated young people in the state, instead of having them leave for places like Atlanta, Northern Virginia, Boston, NYC. Unfortunately, the university that I got my degree at, the University of Florida (UF) has not been as active as it’s state flagship university status should cause it to be, maybe the issue is concern around whether universities should be primarily advanced learning and research institutions versus being those things and venture capital hotbeds - venture capital can corrupt the primary duties if not monitored properly. However we do it, we need to keep more young people in the state to offset the power of older people that retire here for tax saving purposes and have no interest in a broader civic engagement.

[demosincebirth]

49. The poorest state in the union - scratching my head.

[Blue_true]

53. Stop scratching and remember what President Lyndon B. Johnson said about

the power of hate “If you can convince the lowest White man that he is better than the best Black man, then he won’t notice that you are picking his pockets. Hell, you convince him that he is better than any Black person, he will empty his pockets for you”. Of course Johnson used “Colored” instead of “Black” because that is what African Americans were called then. But his message was clear, the upper class has historically used racial animus as a tool to retain it’s power and wealth, even when that left the instruments that they used to those ends, poor White people, even more improvised than they were before they were used.

[demosincebirth]

56. I'm old enough to remember LBJ. He was a good president.

[PatrickforO]

50. Yeah, funny, isn't it? We are starting to see which members take their oaths

seriously and actually want to try and govern us. I've come to the conclusion that though I don't always agree with Manchin and VERY SELDOM agree with either Romney or Liz Chaney, they have stood tall when our republic needed them to.

Fucking Trump. Jesus God, how could we have been so stupid as to elect that monster in the first place? He just took a crap on our entire country. I mean, we have three major crises going on - pandemic, economy and massive insurrection - and look at what is happening now the vaccines! These fucks didn't even count the doses - they just promised everybody and when the time came, there are no reserves.

Everything Trump has touched has wilted, rotted, or otherwise failed.

I want nothing more than to see that piece of shit and his entire crime family, along with Hawley, Cruz, Cosar and the rest in prison for what they have done. It's going to take YEARS to dig our way out of this shit.

Sorry for the rant.

[BigmanPigman]

60. Agree 100%

[dflprincess]

59. For Manchin to say this makes me think that he is privy to information

Last edited Sun Jan 17, 2021, 01:21 AM - Edit history (1)

that we can only speculate about. And what he knows may be even worse than what we've speculated about. He was among those talking "healing and unity" in the first couple days after the coup attempt.

[BigmanPigman]

61. You might be onto something there.

I didn't think he changed his position due to inside info but now that I think about it, it makes sense.

[MyOwnPeace]

5. First, it's comical to think that

either of those insurrectionists would be replaced by someone else that would be more "sane" or "reasonable." Consider the source - ain't gonna' happen in those states - yet.

But to me, even more comical is that the article called Joe Manchin a "Moderate Democrat." He's as much a "Moderate Democrat" as I am a famous "Porn Star!" (Yeah, ain't ever gonna' happen!}

We need to be conscious of the fact that Manchin has a tough job in keeping his seat in a very "Red" state right now - and he'll be the FIRST to tell you that while he's driving a "RepubliCon" agenda to keep his seat at the table.

I SAY that HE needs to step up and tell his people why the DEMOCRATIC program is so much better for his state than what the Trumpsters offer. AND, WE need to do more to support him there in that state.

BUT, at the same time, the Dems cannot let him dictate how the new regime should be run. He needs to be a good soldier and put up the good fight. He will get his rewards - if he plays his card right.

[MyOwnPeace]

26. Good hair!?!?!?!

"Beam me up, Scottie!"

Don't know your age or history, but WOW, you'd LOVE this hair - and the rest of the "package!"

Jim Traficant - Congressman from the Youngstown, Ohio area - 1985/2002.

Thanks for the memories!!!!

[MyOwnPeace]

33. Oh, grasshopper, you have SO much to learn......

Google will tell you all about it, but soon-to-be PRESIDENT BIDEN had a serious round of hair plugs placed all over the place! There MUST be a bunch of pics of him going through all of that - but boy, how that HAD TO HURT!
Apparently it worked - if you didn't know - it was a good job!

[MyOwnPeace]

40. Oops! My BAD!!!!

Yeah, Joe Biden had the plugs.
As for Joe Manchin - well, maybe I was dealing with.......

All my memories gather 'round her
Miner's lady, stranger to blue water
Dark and dusty, painted on the sky
Misty taste of moonshine, teardrop in my eye.....

[Gore1FL]

38. It won't be them and it will be a smack down that will give pause to those who might try it later.

I am more concerned with ousting the overly-ambitious and opportunist Cruz and Hawley. They embraced sedition when it was convenient. They need to have personal consequences for their actions.

[catrose]

8. HELL YEAH

[demtenjeep]

11. ya think?

wow

[BlueIdaho]

12. Now if we can just get him to consider removing filibuster...

Regardless - he deserves credit for standing up for our Democracy.

[Etherealoc1]

18. For sure

He should show the same passion for removing the filibuster to get Joe's agenda passed to help the American people.

Never mind grandstanding about something that's not going to happen.

[mvd]

14. That's a good step

He also needs to not interfere with Biden’s relief plan and hopefully we can get him to come around on the Supreme Court expansion and filibuster. I prefer keeping the filibuster, but the Republicans have wrecked all normalcy.

[halfulglas]

16. Good for you, Joe Manchin!!

I've often been angry at Joe Manchin when he disagreed with most of the Dems, but he's always been pretty sincere. Having grown up in Western PA, I had relatives living in West Virginia and my son went to college in Morgantown. The people are as a rule much more conservative. I'm hoping that if Joe Biden not only does a good job with the pandemic, but demonstrates Democratic policies work for the ordinary man in rural West Virginia, we will get more West Virginia Democrats. Trouble is, they don't have much faith in government because they haven't seen it work for them so they're pretty cynical about big government. But they like Joe Manchin because he's real.

[MyOwnPeace]

30. Agreed!

HE needs to be stronger in delivering the Democratic message, not just "if it's not me they'll vote in a Republican!"
Hillary would have been SO MUCH BETTER for them - a program to move out of coal dependency as a viable income. How did IQ45 work out? TERRIBLE!!!! She had a plan - but she was a, well, you know, a WOMAN!!!!
It is time - lead - be a good DEMOCRAT!!!! Sell the program - they want/need the help. Show them how you and the DEMOCRATS can deliver.

[MyOwnPeace]

34. Thanks, Chin!

Back at 'ya!

[LudwigPastorius]

24. Even the blue dogs are barking at those treasonous bastards.

Start drafting the laws so they're ready to go on the 21st.

The new Congress needs to toss those scumbags like the trash they are.

[SunSeeker]

29. Yes it should. Make it so. nt

[Fiendish Thingy]

31. In order to pass a 14th amendment resolution, you gotta kill the filibuster Joe...nt

[CentralMass]

37. 'Moderate" ?

[MustLoveBeagles]

39. K&R

[turbinetree]

42. Well there are 147 more that should be expelled and in my opinion indicted after all there words led

to the death of capitol hill police officer, and another committing suicide ................they literally have blood on there hands

[Blue Owl]

51. K&R

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

54. Agree

[demtenjeep]

57. I agree

the most hated man in the Senate is losing his spot

[ellie]

58. Wow!

Joe Manchin said this? Very good