The wearing down of Joe Manchin (#4502)

      Since the beginning of our new majority in the Senate, Joe Manchin has been adamant that he will not change his position on keeping the filibuster because it promotes bipartisanship. Well that belief, not fact, went out the window two days ago when barely any republicans voted to create an investigative committee into the Capitol insurrection. Joe was left with little to crow about as the bipartisanship he hoped for never materialized. The rest of us who are not stuck to a senate rule that has it's origins in the old Jim Crow south already knew that the republican party was not going to then, and will not work with democrats now, because what democrats are proposing to do is antithetical to today's version of republicanism.
     The Joe Biden administration is going big on Roosevelt like policies that are specifically, but not entirely aimed at getting the working middle poor class back on track to succeed. This is not what republicans want. Instead, republicans would rather have a very large poor class that is beholden to the wealthy and scrambling to accept low paying jobs with little to no governmental programs as an offset to offer them help. Which is why it always seemed strange to me that Joe Manchin was holding out for some form of bipartisanship when republicans are more than indifferent to his offer. I get that Joe Manchin wants republicans to come back from their corrosive edge but it is nearly impossible given their trajectory.
     So after the January 6th 2021 commission failed to happen, which in all logic should have been the easiest chance for bipartisanship to appear, we got nothing from republicans. Joe Manchin was almost beside himself with disappointment that his republican colleagues in the senate couldn't even find it in their own interest to protect democracy. If one event is about to change Joe Manchin's mind on eliminating the filibuster to any degree it was this vote by republicans to deny a commission into insurrection. Joe Manchin is obviously less naive now and that bodes well for the rest of us democrat/independents as we are getting closer to a truer form of democracy.