WaPo : Meet the Democrat who may take the next Democratic president hostage

[Celerity]

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/31/meet-democrat-who-may-take-next-democratic-president-hostage/

The Democrats running for president, even those like Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg who are being characterized as “moderates,” have some significant plans for legislation they’d like to pass if they become president. Doing so, however, would require their party to take back control of the Senate, where Republicans currently have a 53-to-47 majority. Such a victory won’t be easy, but it’s certainly possible, given that Republicans are defending more seats and have a number of vulnerable senators up for reelection. But if you’re a liberal, what you may not have thought about — because it may be too depressing to contemplate — is what happens if Democrats win control by a vote or two, and the fate of the entire progressive project lies in the hands of Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia. We’ll get to the implications in a moment, but first, take a gander at this clip from an interview Manchin just gave to Fox News:

Link to tweet

This was in reference to an interview Bernie Sanders gave in which he was asked whether Manchin and other more conservative Democrats would vote for his agenda, and Sanders said, “Damn right they will.” Not only is Manchin making clear he wouldn’t, but in answer to the question of whom he’ll vote for in 2020 if Sanders is his party’s nominee, Manchin said, “It wouldn’t be Bernie.”

This may not be all that surprising, given that by most measures, Manchin is the most conservative Democrat in the Senate. In fact, he’s just about the only Democrat who could win statewide in West Virginia, which Donald Trump won in 2016 by 42 points. Nevertheless, the appropriate thing for even a Democrat from West Virginia to say is not “It wouldn’t be Bernie” but “It wouldn’t be Trump.” By the way, West Virginia is the poorest state in the country, so you could argue that Manchin’s constituents would benefit more than anyone else from Democratic agenda items such as universal health coverage, universal pre-K, enhanced workers’ rights and a higher minimum wage. How much is he really going to stand in the way of all that?

The answer is: probably quite a bit. Manchin’s entire political identity is built on being the guy who tells Democrats they’re being a bunch of dastardly libruls, and he has to pull the party to the right for its own good. Not only that, if he really holds the balance of power — if the Senate is 50-50, or if it’s 51-to-49 Democratic and he can join with another conservative Democrat (for instance, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, an unpredictable centrist who opposes getting rid of the filibuster), Manchin will have every incentive to throw sand in the gears of the party’s agenda.

That’s because if Manchin supports everything a President Sanders or a President Warren or a President Biden wants to do, he loses his power. He’d just be one vote out of 50 or so. If, on the other hand, he refuses to go along with health-care reform or whatever other bill is being debated, he immediately becomes the most powerful person in Congress. Democrats will have no choice but to give in and tailor their bills to Manchin’s liking if they don’t want the agenda to fail completely. And if he simply wants some part of that agenda to fail, he can make it happen.

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